Digital BW, The Print

Hi Folks

Just about to compliment my wet darkroom with a dry one! I have two 
issues I need a little advice with:

1. Film Scanner - I want to print at at max size of A3+ Will a Minolta 
Scan Dual III be capable of producing enough resolution/detail to 
produce a quality image of that size or should I go for the new Minolta 
5400. I appreciate you need a good neg to start with :)

I do have an epson 860 with an old version of piezo and MIS FSN Quad 
inks that produces ok results considering that I am scanning prints.

2. Printer - Am I better off upgrading the piezo system and using a 
1290s or go to the 2100? As I don't have a colour printer the 2100 seems 
a good bet - especially as we have the gray balancer - but are prints 
from the 2100 of the same or better quality than using piezp with the 1290s

Appreciate that there will be lots of different views on this but any 
advice might help me reach a solution that will not need to be upgraded 
in the next few months...we wish eh :)

Many thanks in advance

Carl Radford
carl@...
www.scottishmonochrome.co.uk

I just unpacked it thirty minutes ago. Setup was incredibly easy, just
installed the software and plugged it in and now everything works
perfectly.

I'm upgrading from a Canoscan FS4000US, and it's wonderful to finally
get some decent software. The Canon software was horrible. I obviously
haven't had time to test everthing but the software seems to have
everything I would want - Levels, curves, save jobs and settings, ICE,
multisampling, 16/48bit scanning, etc... The interface is logical and
easy to use.

Making index scans is very fast. Unlike the Canon it doesn't need to
spend ages for calibration, and it moves the slide holder very quickly
through the scanner. Making a preview is done in a few seconds. The film
holders themselves are better quality than the Canon scanner. They're
easy to open, and placing the flim exactly inside the holder is no
problem at all. 

The scanning speed is about 1 minute and 20 seconds for a full frame,
16bit, 5400dpi scan. This was with TMAX 100 and regular exposure.

The grain dissolver had little or no effect on TMAX 100 and TMAX 400
which is the two films I've tried so far. I'll test other films and see
if I get different results.

I'll be testing the scanner almost exclusively on black and white film
in the following days and weeks, and if any of you are curious about its
capabilities in this regard, or want me to make specific tests I'd be
more than happy to do so. Just drop me a note and I'll do my best to
help.


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

I've had time to try the scanner some more now, and here's some further
thoughts:

- The grain dissolver has a small but noticable effect on most films. It
has the strongest effect on color slide film, and the weakest effect on
BW negative films. I still find it worth using, since it smooths out the
grain just a little bit. Scanning times increase with this switched on.
When using ICE the grain dissolver is mandatory and always switched on.

- With ICE and color films the scannig times can be _really_ long. I
measured 14 minutes for one color negative. That was at 5400dpi with ICE
and the grain dissolver switched on. It's worth noting that a 5400dpi
scan is almost exactly double the file-size of a 4000dpi scan, so longer
scan times should be expected I guess. Still, 14 minutes is a long time
to wait... Fortunately I do BW scans 95% of the time, and those always
come in at less than 2 minutes.

- I have some underexposed Kodak HIE negatives (exposed at ISO 50 when I
should have used 400) that my previous Canon scanner had some serious
problems with. The Canon software simply couldn't scan them, and with
Vuescan I managed to rescue the images by increasing the exposure to
very high values. The Minolta scanned them without any problems at all,
just like any other negative.

- The scanner software can run as a separate application and scan
directly to files. This is really nice as I can work in Photoshop on one
image while another is scanning. I honestly can't imagine why I would
use Vuescan anymore. It's a nice application, but the Minolta software
has a much better interface and does everything I need.

- Is 5400dpi worth it? Maybe... With TMAX100 and Supra100 films I feel I
can see some more detail at 5400dpi than 4000. A BW scan at 5400dpi is
70mb for 16bits BW and 230mb for 16bit color, so I resample down to
4000dpi if the scans aren't exceptionally sharp in the first place.

- The image quality is great. I don't really notice much difference from
a good scan with my previous Canon, except for the higher resolution of
course. The work required to get a good scan is much less however, and
that makes it worth it for me.

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

Hello Daniel,

Thanks for the reports on the 5400.  I've been very interested in this
scanner and waiting for it to be available, so I read your reports
with great interest.  I'll look around for some other user
testimonies, but so far I'm pretty well convinced.

BTW, just rec'd your prints today, thanks very much.  I now have a
complete set and will proceed with working on the article.

Best Regards,
Clayton


Info on black and white digital printing at    
http://www.cjcom.net/digiprnarts.htm