Digital BW, The Print

Ken Carney said:

>(snip) I would appreciate it much if
>anyone on the list could comment on >whether that would be a meaningful
>upgrade from my old Heidelberg, or >point me to a resource.

I used the Heidelberg/Linoscan 1400 for several years. I believe it was the 
successor to your Saphir. I recently replaced the 1400 with the Epson 4990.

As I'm sure you know, manufacturers' specs for ppi and dynamic range are 
notoriously misleading and the 4990 is no exception. The scanner clearly 
does scan at 4800 ppi in the sense that the file is the right size at that 
ppi. But according to tests of various scanners including the Epson 4870 
that were published in the current issue of "View Camera" magazine, max ppi 
that the 4870 can actually resolve is 2050 (and the range is 2.55). The 4870 
and 4990 are basically identical machines except for the 4990's ability to 
scan 8x10 film so I assume these numbers would be the same for it.

I believe even Heidelberg's claimed max ppi of your Saphir is 1200 so in 
theory an actual resolvable 2050 ppi would be an upgrade on that spec.  I 
don't recall what the claimed range is so I don't know if 2.55 would be an 
improvement there or not (and who knows whether Heidelberg's published specs 
are any more accurate than Epson's).

From all I've read it appears that the differences between inexpensive 
scanners like the 4990 and more expensive scanners show up primarily with 
very large prints. I've been happy with the 4990 scanning 4x5 and an 
ocasional 8x10 negative and printing at about 11x17 inches.

OTOH, I don't think the results from the 4990 are noticeably better than the 
results I got from the Linoscan (I switched only because I couldn't/didn't 
want to continue using a SCSI connection with my new computer). I've 
suspected that apart from range and ppi, other things important to scanner 
performance might be better with the Linoscan (and Saphir) such as the 
optical alignment and the accuracy of the motor.  The Linoscan 1400 is about 
five times the size and weight of the 4990 and one would hope there's some 
benefit from that.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ken Carney" <kcarney1@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 20, 2005 9:14 PM
Subject: [Digital BW] Scanner info


Hope this isn't too far OT.  Though most of my stuff is digital capture now,
I have a large backlog of 120, 4x5 and 8x10 b&w negs to scan.  So far I have
been using a Heidelberg (Linotype-Hell)
Saphir Ultra 2 SCSI I bought in 1997 or 1998 (about 200 years ago in human
years).  I see the Epson 4990 Pro also takes up to 8x10 negs, and purports
to have a range of 4.0 and 4800 ppi optical.  I would appreciate it much if
anyone on the list could comment on whether that would be a meaningful
upgrade from my old Heidelberg, or point me to a resource.  If it is really
true that it has 4800 ppi optical, that would be a pretty large scan from
even 120 film.  (I can't afford an Imacon).  Thx!

Regards,

Ken Carney
www.kencarney.com



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