Scanning

[jerryplemons]

I need some advice on the purchase of a new scanner to scan 35mm B&W negatives. I have had a Nikon Coolscan III for about 5 years or so and it isn't doing a very good job. While the resulting images are fairly sharp in the middle, the edges are very soft - as if the scanner is not holding the strip of negatives flat. I tried mounting a single negative in a glass slide mount and that helped a little. But what a pain.

I have been considering the Canon Canoscan FS4000US and the Minolta 5400. There is a price difference, but what I want is a good sharp image (assuming I can produce one on the negative)! As long as the grain is sharp, I can work on getting a few images worth printing.

I am shooting a Lecia IIIf with 50mm Summarit, 90mm f4 Elmar, and 35mm f3.5 Summaron. Ilford FP4 and Tri-X in D76 1:1, then Photoshoped.

Any suggestions would be most helpful.

Jerry

 

[dkhaw]

Hello Friends

I have noticed that the negs that I sent out to my photolab for scanning into CD is about 4.8 MB per frame in JPEG format. How does this compare to the normal 4000 dpi scanners eg Nikon Coolscan 4000 etc in terms of resolution?

I did notice that the pictures and colours were sharper on the digital scan compared to direct enlargement from neg on a 8X12 enlargement.

I would love to learn and share from your experience.

Daniel

 

[garth]

Daniel,
I use the minolta dual scann 3 2840dpi, it turns out a 10mb tiff in bw and a 30mb tiff in color. hard to compare by jpeg size unless you know the compression rate.

i regularly make 14x19 prints off an epson printer and for what it is it's pretty good. you see the grain of the film before any sort of pixels. i'd be keen to see the 4000dpi scanners. hard to imagine getting a sharper/nicer print than a fibre based black and white. especially selenium toned! : ) but anyway,

cheers,
garth