Digital BW, The Print

Adam,

I got the Polaroid 120 in May to scan my 6X7 negs and it is doing an 
excellent job. There was some trouble with Silverfast and Windows 
2000 initially but that has been corrected by Silverfast. It also 
gives me slightly better 35mm scans than the Polaroid 4000 it 
replaced (14-bit vs. 12-bit).

My only complaint is that the medium format film carrier is not full 
frame on the edges. At this time there is no glass carrier, which was 
not a drawback in my mind but is an issue for a lot of people. 

I am not too concerned about support Polaroid vanishing over night. 
They are much too big and famous not to continue on in some form, 
probably under new ownership and perhaps in pieces.

Sounds like the Minolta has the better film carriers and the edge in 
35mm resolution at 4800 dpi. I don't know if the 3200 dpi for medium 
format would be significant or not in comparison to the Nikon and 
Polaroid at 4000 dpi. Probably not.

It's a tough call.

Martin Wesley


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Mahesi Caplan-Faust" 
<caplan@n...> wrote:
> I have just stalled my order on the Minolta scanner and am 
considering the
> Polariod 120 which comes bundeled with the silverfast software.
> 
> It is a hard decision to make! Anyone out there using the Polaroid 
that has
> any user feed back.
> 
> Adam
>   -----Original Message-----
>   From: James Lerager [mailto:JLerager@y...]
>   Sent: 14 November 2001 21:13
>   To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y...
>   Subject: [Digital BW] Minolta Multi Pro Preliminary Report
> 
> 
>   (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
> 
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