Digital BW, The Print

On Jan 31, 2005, at 11:31 PM, David Keenan wrote:
>
> Stretch your budget a bit and get the Minolta 5400. (This assumes you 
> are looking for 35mm only.)

5400 is great, i agree... for 35 mm...

> I've read how people extoll the virtues of Vuescan and Silverfast -- 
> I've given each a try but I cannot find how they are superior to the 
> (free) software that comes with the 5400 scanner. Both are 
> counter-inituitive (especially Silverfast) and don't appear to handle 
> multiple (batch) scanning which even at six frames at a time for negs 
> and five frames at a time for slides can be quite useful at times.

i'm  a vuescan fan -- so let me contradict you :-) --- vuescan does 
handle batches --- very easily, i'm doing one right now - specifying 
which frames i want to get scanned... i sometimes compare scans using 
vuescan and dimage -- when i think that the scan is just not coming out 
OK - to check if something got changed in the vuescan inadvertently...

silverfast --- i don't bother with... it is too cumbersome...

> I don't need my scanner software to do tons of image mantipulation and 
> editing -- I have an overly complicated piece of software called 
> PhotoShop CS

i don't use vuescan to manipulate --- it just gives a nice low contrast 
scan that i can "manipulate" in PS ---

altaf