[Leica] Re: Slide Scanners

[Pascal <cyberdog@ibm.net>]

On 05-08-1998 00:23 John Chapman wrote:

>But for price and performance Nikon
>have the edge over their competitors for example Polaroid and Microtek.
>What the new Nikon range offers is faster scan times and at higher
>resolutions.

I looked up a comprehensive test report of slide scanners published in 
the 15 May issue of the British computer magazine MacUser and this seems 
to confirm your findings. Tested were: Canon CanoScan 2700F, Epson 
FilmScan 200, Microtek ScanMaker 35t Plus, Nikon Coolscan II LS-20, Nikon 
Super Coolscan LS-1000, Polaroid SprintScan 35LE, Polaroid SprintScan 35 
Plus, Polaroid SprintScan 45. All kind of images were tested (slides, 
color negatives, grey charts).
The Polaroid Sprintscan 35 LE gets the best price/performance ratio for 
an entry-level device, but from the results is is clear that the best 
product of the ones tested is the Nikon Super Coolscan LS-1000 which, of 
course, comes at a much higher price. This one is said to be probably the 
best product for professional 35mm scanning for under 1000 GBP. That was, 
of course, before the new Coolscan III LS-30 and Super Coolscan LS-2000 
came out.
Also very fine was the Polaroid SprintScan 35 Plus. But the Polaroids 
have, in my opinion, many practical drawbacks: power button on the back 
and not on the side, only one SCSI port instead of two for the Nikons, 
and especially much more desk space because the Polaroids are not only 
bigger, they cannot be turned on their sides, and they need extra space 
around because you have to feed mounted slides on top and negative strips 
on the side in the machine, unlike the Nikons where everything is feeded 
into the device at its front.

On 05-08-1998 00:23 John Chapman wrote:

> One last thing if you intend putting your images
>on the web then no one will ever know you use Leica unless you tell
>them! Because of download times resolution has to be kept low to keep
>file sizes small.
>My advice is buy the best you can afford in terms of optical resolution.

On 04-08-1998 17:36 Alexey Merz wrote:

>I really don't agree with this advice. If you wish to scan slides, 
>then dynamic range is absolutely critical. The best scanners will 
>pull *much* more detail out of the shadows than lesser models. 
>Dynamic range is as or more important than resolution per se.

Yes, I can understand that (normal web output should be limited at around 
72 dpi, the normal screen resolution, I read somewhere). That would plead 
in favor of an entry-level slide scanner if your primary use would be web 
publishing. But, and this may sound silly (I am a beginner), can you not 
notice the difference between entry-level slide scanners and their 
high-end siblings even if you set their resolution at e.g. 72 dpi. Is 
there no other noticeable difference (like tonal values etc. ) at low 
resolutions?

On 04-08-1998 17:36 Alexey Merz wrote:

>PhotoCD is definitely the best bang-for-buck ($1-2 per 6 megapixel
>35mm scan, with quasi-archival storage included; expect price to 
>drop even further by next year).
>
>The images on my site are from slide and print scans, and will be
>vastly improved when I get the chance to send 'em out for PhotoCD.

Alexey, I am somewhat hesitant about confiding some of my precious slides 
and negatives to a Photo CD service bureau, after I have seen what a 
so-called professional Kodak lab in Belgium (Littocolor) has done to my 
negatives a month ago (scratches, croppings, fingerprints, dust etc.). I 
would prefer to do things myself, and that's where a slide scanner could 
come in handy.
Also with a Photo CD you have to hand in a whole batch of images to scan 
at one moment, you cannot just let them scan one or two slides on the fly.
But you are probably right as for the final image quality.

One final question: how many MBs can one expect to have for a good scan, 
and how do you people stock these (on special hard disks, Zips, 
removables, opticals)?

Thanks.

Pascal

- --------------------------------------------------------
Check out: http://members.xoom.com/cyberplace/
- --------------------------------------------------------
Macintosh PowerBook G3 - it eats Pentium notebooks for lunch
- --------------------------------------------------------
<<< PGP public key available on request >>>