Digital BW, The Print

Randy, Colin, et. al. --

I also looked at the Minolta when deciding about a scanner purchase. I read 
that the Scan Multi Pro always sharpens a scan, even when it seems you've 
disabled sharpening in software. It may be that  a sharpening routine is 
built into its hardware or into its driver, but it this is the case it is 
so serious a limitation as to eliminate the Minolta from further 
consideration. Sharpening should always be applied as the last step after 
image sizing and before printing. Otherwise you will find yourself 
manipulating, and likely exaggerating, the inevitable artifacts produced by 
sharpening -- doubtlessly detrimental to your images.

-- Victor Landweber


At 11:18 PM 2/18/2004, you wrote:
>Hi Randy,
>
>We looked at the same things a few months ago and bought the Minolta Scan 
>Multi Pro. This does MF up to 6x9 at 3200ppi and 35mm at 4800ppi.
>
>In a lot of searching on the Web we found less moaning about the Minolta 
>than the Nikon apart from the software, which has now been improved, and I 
>never intended to use anything but Vuescan anyway. The main advantages of 
>the Minolta are better depth of field and better film carriers as 
>standard. The claimed Dmax figures are as daft as everyone else's and 
>hardly relevant for B&W anyway. We have found that the Scanhancer diffuser 
>gives an improvement in apparent grain with fine grain film (eg Pan F) but 
>not quite so much on Delta 3200 (which we use for pinholes).
>
>Whichever scanner you choose, you should use 16 bit files as far as 
>possible for B&W, which means you need lots of computing power, memory and 
>storage space. A 120 film scanned at 3200ppi comes to about 1.5GB!
>
>HTH,
>
>Colin
>
>http://www.travelling-light.net/
>
>randyrancier wrote:
>Well, from what I have been able to gather from those of you that work 
>with MF film, is that there is a clear advantage to using a 4000 dpi 
>scanner over others.  Sounds like most of you prefer the Nikon (8000) 
>scanners.  Are there any other contenders or is there a clear advantage 
>that the Nikon has over the others?  Does Nikon make any other MF 4000 dpi 
>scanners or is the 8000 & 9000 it?
>Thanks again,
>Randy