Digital BW, The Print

George,

I bought a SprintScan 120 when they first came out in May and have 
been pleased with the quality of the scans. There is a good review at:

http://welcome.to/computerdarkroom

The 35mm holder as shipped is rather difficult to load but a small 
modification with a razor blade turned it into a very good holder.

The 35mm mounted slide carrier is very good and easy to use.

The medium format carrier 6x4.5, 6x6, 6x7 and 6x9 works well but is 
not full frame on the long side of my negatives from my Pentax 67.

There is no glass carrier available although one has been promised by 
the end of the year.

I have had problems with Silverfast being able to scan medium format 
in high resolution under Windows 2000 using a Firewire connection. 
There are no problems using a SCSI bus connection.

A caution on system memory. Medium format scans can easily exceed 
500MB the system memory limit for Window 98. Truly moving past that 
barrier requires an upgrade to Windows 2000.

The SS120 is a slightly better 35mm scanner than the SS4000 and 
earlier models. The SS120 is 14-bit rather than 12-bit and you can 
see the improvement in shadow area noise on color slides.

The only competition in this are and price range is the Nikon 8000 
which seems to be in short supply and to be having problems with 
banding in some situations.

Given Nikon's problems there seems to be little pressure on Polaroid 
to bring down the price of the SS120 and my impression is that they 
are selling well. The current low prices on the SS4000 reflect the 
upcoming improved model, which at a guess will be 14-bit also. AS to 
the price direction of the SS120 I have no idea.

I bought from Sparco.com, which seems to have competitive prices and 
good service.

I have had to return my SprintScan 120 to Polaroid twice for service. 
The first occasion was caused by an attempt to use Vuescan, which 
drove the film carrier past it's rear limit stop and crashed it. By 
the time it arrived in Bedford, MA it was working fine and Polaroid 
immediately shipped it back. It was only gone 72 hours.

The second failure occurred after I upgraded to Silverfast 5.5 and 
used the software eject button in Silverfast to eject the film 
carrier. This caused the carrier to jam itself against the front of 
the scanner. This trip to Bedford was 14 days long and I received a 
refurbished unit in it's place. This is working fine under Polacolor 
Insight, which seems to do a much better job finding the film frames 
in medium format than Silverfast. Insight will output a raw file that 
can then be opened in Photoshop or with Silverfast HDR. A lot of 
people do not like Insight but I find that it is quite adequate for 
B&W negs.

I would give the unit 4 out of 5 stars. If I had not had to send it 
back the second time, 4.5 with the -0.5 for film carrier design. In 
all honesty I don't see any alternatives at this price point for a 
medium format film scanner unless you want to wait for Nikon to fill 
the pipeline and sort out their problems.

Martin

 

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "George A. Dibble III" 
<gadibbleiii@h...> wrote:
> I'm thinking of buying Polaroid's Sprintscan 120 film scanner so as 
> to be able to scan my 35 & 120 film.  I notice that the 35-APS 
> version has now dropped to around $500, which is very attractive, 
as 
> most of my film is 35 mm.  I'm currently printing on an Epson 1160, 
> Piezography CIS, and HP Photosmart S20 film scanner (2400 dpi max, 
8 
> or 16 bit).  
> 
> I know that this is a personal decision (when to buy), but I'm 
> wondering if I should buy the 35mm -APS version, and wait for the 
120 
> version( by Polaroid or others), also to drop significantly in 
> price.  Maybe someone has some information that would signal a wait 
> on the 120?  
> 
> I also think I read somewhere the Sprintscan 120 is a slightly 
better 
> scanner (quality wise) than the Sprintscan 35-APS, but I don't 
recall 
> why; any truth to this?
> 
> Most important, if anyone has the 120, I'd be interested in finding 
> out how they like it, and if they have had any problems with it on 
a 
> Windows 98 system?  
> 
> It also looks like I will have to order my purchase over the 
> Internet.  I've seen recent mention of Ecost.com, for a low price.  
> Anybody have any bad experience ordering a film scanner from a 
> specific company on the Internet?
> 
> And finally, are there other 120 format choices out that in the 
same 
> price range that might be a better choice?
> 
> Any thoughts on this matter would be appreciated.  
> 
> Thanks,
> George
> Sacramento, CA