Digital BW, The Print

(Cross-Posted w/ Piezo 3000 group)

I recently purchased a Minolta Multi Pro, and have been running 
tests with it. The scan times seem excessively long, even though 
I've assigned a full gig of ram to Minolta's scan software and am 
using Firewire (on a G4 OS 9.1): 5 minutes for a 35mm B&W neg 
at 4800, 10 minutes for a 35mm color neg at 4800, 20 minutes 
for a color neg at 4800 with ICE3. These are without 
multi-sampling, which dramatically increases scan times using 
Minolta's scan software. (Digital Resources's review of the Multi 
Pro seems to indicate the Multi-Pro actually scans about 10% 
faster using a SCSI connection on a G3 compared with Firewire 
on a G4 - figure that if you can!).

I've used a Minolta Scan Elite for the past 15 months with 
excellent results - but only by using Vuescan software. My 
positive experience with the Scan Elite - coupled with Vuescan - 
is why I purchased the Multi-Pro. The Minolta software on the 
Elite was slow, and gave mediocre scans, but Vuescan made 
the unit shine - much better than a Nikon 2000 or Polaroid 4000 
for B&W and for color neg (I tested both of them with their 
respective manufacturer's software, although not with Vuescan). 
Vuescan cut the scanning times approximately in half, with much 
better quality and wider dynamic range, when compared to the 
Minolta software. Even Ed's incorporated defect-removal 
software seems to work better than the much vaunted ICE - and 
without increasing scan times by very much - in my opinion.

Ed Hamrick has said that he plans to create a version of 
Vuescan for the Multi-Pro, so I have my fingers crossed that he is 
successful, and releases it soon, and that it scans rapidly and 
efficiently, as Vuescan does on the Scan Elite. (Ed has also said 
he plans to incorporate a histogram in Vuescan in the future - 
which could really make it a dynamite program to use).

Minolta has created a beautiful and intuitive user interface for 
their software, but the underlying scanning program is awful 
(again in my opinion), and doesn't allow the user access to the 
full quality - and potential speed - of the hardware (at least that 
has been my experience using the Scan Elite). 

Too bad for Minolta; they are definitely going to lose professional 
enthusiasm and sales for what may be a beautiful piece of 
hardware, which includes excellent film holders (they have even 
included glass inserts for the 6x6 to 6x9 film holder along with 
the scanner) - that is, unless they radically revise and improve 
the quality and speed of their scanning software, and soon.

I plan to forward these exchanges to Minolta, and to Ed Hamrick.

My 2 cents,
James Lerager