Digital BW, The Print

Douglas,

Flatbeds have come a long way in the last few years and I have seen a number
of great prints made from flatbeds scans. George DeWoolfe had nice article
on using the Epson 1640 and wet mounting negs in View Camera magazine a year
or so ago. I did a comparison between my Epson 2450 flatbed, a  Polaroid
SS120 and a Howtek D4000 drum scanner. In doing comparisons there is a huge
jump in quality in moving from the Epson up to the Polaroid. The several
thousand dollar price difference seems somewhat legitimate. In going from
the Polaroid 120 to the Howtek there is improvement but not nearly so
dramatic. As you go up the price and quality ladder you spend more and more
for less and less improvement.

The real bind, and the one I found myself in, was the need to cover 35mm
through 4x5. If all you needed to scan was 35mm and MF then I would go with
one of the MF film scanners unless money is not an object. The flatbeds can
work quite well for scanning 4x5 especially something like the Epson 1680.
The problem is that in order to do all your negs you will really need two
scanners. A film scanner and a flatbed. That is the route I initially took.
I first bought a Linoscan 1400 (1200ppi flatbed) for 4x5 and MF, and a
Polaroid SS4000  for 35mm. I quickly found that the Linoscan was not good
enough for MF. So I sold the SS4000 and bought the SS120 for both my 35mm
and 6x7 negs. It does a very good job of both.

I did some 4x5 scanning on the Linoscan 1400 but I really wasn't satisfied
when comparing the quality to the SS120. So I started looking at the
Polaroid SS45U 4x5 film scanner which sells for about $5,000. Some
investigation found that I could get a used drum scanner for the same amount
of money and I went for that. It makes great scans but it is a little nervy
spending that kind of money for a 10 year old piece of equipment from a
company that no longer exists. It also weighs 150 lbs, has a 2' by 3'
footprint and is rather noisy if it is in the same room with you. Of course
if I had simply bought the Howtek first I would have saved myself a lot of
money.

Nothing against West Coast Imaging but I would always want to do my own
scans even if they were on a lower quality scanner. This is a very important
step in the digital printing process and I want full control of it. Cost is
a factor here too. They are charging $80 for a 100MB scan. I am doing 4x5
4000ppi, 500+MB scans on the Howtek and resampling down to 2400ppi to a file
size around 200MB. I don't know what that would cost but the scanning
charges would pay for a lot of nice equipment pretty quick.

Hard choices. Keep asking questions and maybe you can figure out which way
to jump.

Martin Wesley

http://www.borderless-photos.de/guests.html



----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas Anthony Cooper" <douglas@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 09, 2002 12:23 PM
Subject: [Digital BW] Re: The State of Personal Scanner Technology


>
> I haven't looked into this for some time, and since things change weekly,
> I'm wondering whether it is now possible to buy a desktop scanner capable
of
> getting the results once associated only with professional scans.  Or is
> there still a huge leap in quality between what can be produced at home,
and
> what West Coast Imaging can produce with their Tango Drum Scanner?
>
> I recognize that this question depends very much upon film format and
degree
> of enlargement.  I do, however, shoot medium format and 4x5 as well as
35mm,
> and is it perhaps possible, with an affordable flatbed, to get
professional
> results out of these larger images?
>
> West Coast Imaging argues that you should have them do your scanning *and*
> your printing, for the best results.  Clearly most people here feel that
> they can get the prints they require out of their personal Epson.  Is
> scanning also at this level?
>
> (This is not an implied criticism of West Coast, who are by all accounts
one
> of the very best shops.  Simply wondering whether the dedicated individual
> can replicated these results.)
>
>
>
>
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