Scanners Guide 2004

Scanner Reviews (Editorial) Sorted by Date – Page 1 – eCoustics.com . eCoustics is getting better and better, they now are a meta-review site that looks at reviews from many magazines and also trolls for user reviews. Very smart.
Here’s a quick list of recent scanner reviews that would have taken hours to get:
* Minolta Dimage Dual IV. “Photographic”:http://www.photographic.com/digitalperipherals/604minolta/ likes the $300 scanner for its modest price. Doesn’t have fancy Digital ICE (the royalty is too high, but it is 3200 dpi. That means BTW, that at full scan resolution, you can reprint a 35mm slide to 15×10 enlargements (and each image would be 36MB or 14 megapixels).
* Nikon Coolscan V ED. “Shutterbug”:http://www.shutterbug.com/test_reports/0504sb_nikons/ liked this $599 scanner. It is a 4000 dpi 35m film , Digital Ice enabled. scanner. BTW at 4000 dpi, you can make 13×19″ photos at 300 dpi with 55MB images! Seems like a good advanced amateur choice. The next model up is the 5000ED ($1099) with same resolution, but wider dynamic range. Main disadvantage is that it doesn’t have batch scanning (you scan 6 frames at a time). Dynamic Range is 4.2.
* Minolta Dimage 5400. “Shutterbug”:http://www.shutterbug.net/test_reports/1203sb_thenew/ and also “Popular Photography’;http://popphoto.com/article.asp?section_id=3&article_id=976 like this $900 scanner. Has Digital ICE and 5400 dpi resolution. That’s enough for a huge 16×23 photo. Need to use with “SilverFast”:http://silverfast.com drivers though which are $200, but apparently worth it.
As an aside all these scanners appear to work the best with the “Vuescan”:http://www.hamrick.com/ software. Great reviews on that or Silverfast for Minolta.
Another thing you’ll need is either Adobe Photoshop Elements (the low end) $100 or their highend full Photoshop ($700). “Popular Photography”:http://popphoto.com/article.asp?section_id=3&article_id=976 also likes the JASC Paint Shop Pro 8 for $90 which apparently also runs many Adobe plugins and is closer to the $700 Photoshop. Worth checking out.

One response to “Scanners Guide 2004”

  1. Gary Burd Avatar

    VueScan is great software for the price. One of VueScan’s best features is the ability to save a raw dump from the scanner to a file. This allows you to reduce time in front of the scanner by moving the lengthy processing step to a night time batch job. It also allows you to try different settings without putting the slide in the scanner again.

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