Digital BW, The Print

> Downsample the 5400 dpi to 4000 dpi and compare with original 
> 4000 dpi scans.  How do they compare then?

Then they're quite similar.. The Minolta is a touch sharper than the
Canon.
 
> Beware ... on the Nikon 8000, the grain eliminator (GEM, or 
> whatever it is) degrades image quality, whereas ICE does not. 
> If you can't turn on ICE without getting the grain stuff, 
> too, you may be sacrificing image quality.

The grain dissolver in the Minolta is a piece of glass put between the
scanner light and the negative to diffuse the light. The idea is
probably taken from the Scanhancer which has been available for the
Multi Pro for some time. It successfully removes those black specks
which can sometimes appear with Velvia slides, and I've also had
noticably improved grain on Delta 100 and 400 films when I've used the
Grain Dissolver. For many other film types it makes little visible
difference, which is why I think it would be a good idea for minolta to
provide ICE without the grain dissolver, since it increases scan times
so much.
 
> With 1.5 GB, I've seen both Photoshop and NikonScan stall or 
> stop when both are open simultaneously.  Neither program 
> seems to manage memory very well. Photoshop has known 
> problems with memory management.

I know. When photoshop decides to eat up all your memory the best thing
to do is usually to restart the whole application. It doesn't seem to
know how to free up memory again even if you close large files for
instance. Haven't had any conflicts with scanner software though...

--
Daniel Staver
http://daniel.staver.no