Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/03/11
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]the > models i have looked into are the HP s20 and the nikon ls-30. does > anyone out there have any experiance with these. I use a Nikon Coolscan II, which the LS-30 replaced. It cost about $750 three years ago. At the time I compared it with the HP Photosmart scanner ($500) and a Minolta for about $800. The Nikon was clearly superior to the HP, and a bit better than the Minolta. But it still isn't perfect. Any black area of a slide will show subtle streaks in any of these scanners. The HP was particularly poor in this regard, with obvious grey blotches mixed in with black. According to Nikon, their more expensive scanner ($1500 with higher "bit depth" whatever that means) didn't have this problem, but at twice the price, it didn't matter. So if you want the best image possible, do a direct comparison with the $1500 scanners. The specs you see don't tell the whole story. And it's not obvious to the neophyte what all the specs (bit depth, etc.) really mean. For my needs, I can live with the streaks, since they're subtle and I'm not charging anyone for photographs I put on my web site. But if I were a paying customer, I would want black to be black. Peter Jon White Peter White Cycles 666 Mass Ave Acton, MA 01720 978 635 0969 Voice 978 929 9654 Fax http://www.PeterWhiteCycles.com mailto:Peter@PeterWhiteCycles.com "Legislators and revolutionaries who promise equality and liberty at the same time, are either psychopaths or mountebanks." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe http://www.antiwar.com http://www.mises.org >