Digital BW, The Print

Rick,

I shoot and scan mostly 35mm, everything from Velvia to Ilford Delta 3200.
Bought the Nikon LS 4000 ED when it came out and have been very pleased.
Firewire connection is great, Digital ICE also great (for color), ROC/GEM
also there but I haven't found them useful. Mine also came with a full
version of Genuine Fractals. Shadow detail is really impressive (dmax of
4.2, I believe) and noise very low even in single-pass scans, and you can
crank it up to 16x if you feel the need (I rarely use more than 4x).
Excellent, human tech support. I find the scanning software to be mostly
intuitive and Photoshop-like (well...except for Hue/Sat and Unsharp, but I
always do that in PS anyway). It works as a standalone, which I find much
more efficient and less memory-intensive than PS plug-in mode, which is the
only way SilverFast worked. (The scanner does a near-perfect job with neg
mask removal, so never understood the hype over "film profiles" anyway.)
Scan times can be slowish at 4000 dpi/16x/14 bit enabled, but for negs, I
simply set focus point and crop for all the frames I want to scan on one
filmstrip, hit batch scan and walk away for 15 minutes.

I'm sure someone somewhere will claim that a drum scan is technically
"better," but I'd defy them to tell the difference in an actual print. This
scanner functions on a level to where I've found that problems are usually
due to photographer error, not equipment limitations.

Hope this helps,
Doug

 
> Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 23:15:32 -0700
> From: "Rick Schiller" <rschiller@...>
> Subject: Best 35mm Black & White negative scanner?
> 
> Any recommendations or thoughts on an excellent 35mm film scanner if I need
> high excellent tonality scans from traditional silver-emulsion films?
> 
> My Canon 2720 is good for the money, but just good and lack shadow detail.
> 
> Rick