Digital BW, The Print

> What works best with the Minolta 5400?

Depends on what you're scanning. For BW negative film I've always 
thought Vuescan gave the best results. Keep in mind that my only goal is 
to capture the full tonal range without loss of shadow/highlight detail 
and then do the actual editing in photoshop.

For color negative film I want the scanner software to give me colors 
that match the image as I shot it. I've found it requires way too much 
post-processing if the colors aren't reasonably good in the first place. 
For this I prefer the NegPos plugin. I don't remember if I ever tried 
the NegPos plugin with the 5400 scanner, but it works really well with 
the 120tf.

For slide film almost anything works. I've never had any difficulty 
getting good color from slide film, I just hate the way my pictures 
always end up clipped one way or the other when I shoot slides.

> I have only 35mm film to scan. On a Mac, with which I've heard the 
> Nikon scanners don't work very well. So I thought I'd get a 5400 and 
> maybe buy LaserSoft SilverFast software to use with it, if that would 
> help.

I don't like the Silverfast software. None of the color negatve profiles 
really comes close to what I think the scan should look like, and it 
does too much auto-correction in the software.

The BW profiles are also too contrasty and dark.

> Should a Mac user who is willing to pay a premium for better 35mm 
> scans instead consider getting a Microtek 120 to get better 35mm 
> scans?

Well, it's slower, more noisy and takes much longer time to scan. The 
only good things about it is that it does MF and that it has a glass 
holder to keep the film flat. The glass holder is a big deal for me. I 
was unhappy with the unsharp edges in the scans I got from my 5400. I 
really want to get good edge to edge sharpness in all my scans. The 
glass holder means a lot of extra dust though. You now have six surfaces 
to clean instead of two.

It also doesn't have ICE, so if you plan to scan a lot of color film I 
would definitely skip the 120tf.

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