Digital BW, The Print

My tests are back comparing scans of the same color negative 
from three film scanners in the $3000 price range.  I asked the 
scanner owners to simply make the highest quality scan they 
could without using Ultra Sharp Mask.  

The Nikon 8000 is the clear winner.  The Polaroid SS120 and the 
Minolta Multi Pro seesaw back and forth for second place.

First, the Nikon has virtually no "grain aliasing."  That's is the 
most important issue for me as I am usually printing in b/w.  The 
Nikon delivers the most natural (actually it leans toward the blue 
side) color right out of the scanner.  It has little or no color 
bleeding.  It takes Ultra Sharp Masking in Photoshop beautifully.

The Polaroid SS120 is a little bit softer than the Nikon, shows a 
bit of "grain aliasing" and has significant color bleeding (my scan 
leaned toward the red spectrum).  The SS120 scan deteriorated 
faster using USM in Photoshop.

I'm doing the USM testing because the Minolta Pro is providing 
considerably sharper scans than the other two scanners.  The 
first two are scanned at 4000, the Minolta at 4800 dpi.  I 
discovered that the Nikon with 300% USM looks as sharp as the 
Minolta and still has less "grain aliasing."  The Polaroid scan 
gets that "over sharpened" look at 300% USM.

My Minolta Dimage Scan Multi Pro sure looks crisp and contrasty 
next to these other scanners.  It seems sharper and brighter in 
terms of color.  I can try to get it to look like the Nikon by adding 
1.5degrees of Gaussian Blur.  To look like the Polaroid it needs 
about 2 units of Gaussian Blur.

The Minolta is tops in sharpness, but falls into third place when 
"grain aliasing" is considered.  The Minolta simply looks bad.  It's 
like TriX film versus Tmax 100.  It also bleeds color about as 
much as the Polaroid.  The Minolta also has a tendancy to 
render color as artificial looking.  Of course, if you are trying for a 
David LaChappelle look, the Minolta really pops the color and 
still seems to provide decent flesh tones.

If I had to do it all over again, I'd buy Nikon.  The Polaroid/Minolta 
scans are also vastly different looking, but the Polaroid pluses 
and the Minolta pluses don't add up to a clear decision.  Maybe 
I'd take Polaroid just to cut back on that damn "grain aliasing" 
which is the "black hole" of the Minolta.

If there is enough interest in my tests, I'll post some 
enlargements of the scans I did.

Frank

http://www.culturalvisions.com