Digital BW, The Print

Kevin,
 
you do not mention what software you used to drive the scanners. Software can make a huge difference (especially for contrast, blow-out highlights or unreadable shadows), so the best comparison, IMO, should be made using Vuescan for both.
 
Alessandro

-----Original Message-----
From: digikdm [mailto:monroekd@...]
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 3:57
To: DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Digital BW] Dimage 5400 vs Nikon Coolscan 4000


I have recently had the opportunity to compare these two film
scanners and 
have found the following. I use a Mac 10.2.8, 1gigabyte of RAM and PS
7.0
1. The Dig. Ice function on the 5400 results in substantial image
degradation. I 
was shocked how bad the results were with Dig Ice activated. WITHOUT
the 
Dig. Ice turned on, the Dimage scan for most negatives was comparable
in 
quality to the Nikon WITH Dig. Ice activated. Even here, I give a
slight edge to 
the Nikon in quality, crispness etc. Of course, with the Dig Ice
turned off,  there 
is substantially more time/work involved in cleaning up the scans on
the 
Dimage.  You will be disappointed if you expect  the 5400dpi to
result in a 
better scan than the Nikon 4000dpi. IT DOESN'T. 
2. The Dimage was significantly  slower.  With Dig. Ice turned on and
4x 
multisampling at 5400dpi, a scan takes at least 40 minutes compared
to about 
15-20 for the Nikon. With Dig Ice off , the Dimage can do a 5400 dpi
scan(4x 
multisample) in about 15 minutes.
3. The scanning process with the Dimage is markedly impeded by 
simultaneous work in Photoshop. I don't have an explanation for this
, and 
neither did Minolta's technical help. I have a GIG of RAM so memory
should 
not be an issue. All of the scan times are markedly prolonged with
Photoshop 
being used simutaneously, and in some cases the scanner will simply
abort 
the scan leaving you nothing after an hour scan. The Nikon scanner
does not 
seem to be affected specifically by Photoshop, but I've  found it too
will 
occasionally abort a scan for unknown reasons.
4. The Nikon is known for some softness around the edges due to a
very 
narrow depth of field and failure to hold the negative perfectly flat
. I have 
found this to be true for the Nikon, but could not determine in a
test scans if 
the Dimage was any better. They seemed about the same.  I did find
the film 
carrier/holder for the Dimage relatively easy to use. It made for
easy air 
gunning of the negative once it was loaded into the carrier. 
5. Dimage scans in general are more contrasty . I prefer the Nikon in
this 
regard since I can always adjust the contrast in Photoshop and don't
want to 
lose any detail up front.
6. There was one test negative I used that the Dimage totally failed
to give a 
good scan on. On two attempts the scan was overexposed and blown out
on 
the high end.I thought maybe the scanner had broke, but it worked
fine on 
another negative minutes later. No explanation. The Minolta technical
help 
said simply" if you think the scans are overexposed, send it back to
us so we 
can test it". The Nikon did a great job on this negative.
7. The Minolta is cheaper by a few hundred dollars, so if cost is a
factor it may 
be the only way to go. Do not use the digital ice if you want high
quality scans.
The Nikon wins otherwise.
I hope this helps anyone who might be looking at these two scanners.
Kevin Monroe
kevinmonroephotography.com





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[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Daniel writes:

> They don't seem to resolve more detail, but the grain
> looks better and more detailed than a 4000dpi image
> upsampled to 5400dpi. In other words the 5400dpi seems
> useful purely as an upsampling method.

Downsample the 5400 dpi to 4000 dpi and compare with original 4000 dpi
scans.  How do they compare then?

> Part of the reason for the slowness is also that
> the Minolta software enables the grain dissolver when you use ICE,
> without the option to switch it off.

Beware ... on the Nikon 8000, the grain eliminator (GEM, or whatever it is)
degrades image quality, whereas ICE does not.  If you can't turn on ICE
without getting the grain stuff, too, you may be sacrificing image quality.

> I've never had any aborted scans or performance problems
> when using Photoshop, but I'm on a PC (1gig ram) with
> windows XP, so it could be a hardware/os specific issue.

With 1.5 GB, I've seen both Photoshop and NikonScan stall or stop when both
are open simultaneously.  Neither program seems to manage memory very well.
Photoshop has known problems with memory management.

> Downsample the 5400 dpi to 4000 dpi and compare with original 
> 4000 dpi scans.  How do they compare then?

Then they're quite similar.. The Minolta is a touch sharper than the
Canon.
 
> Beware ... on the Nikon 8000, the grain eliminator (GEM, or 
> whatever it is) degrades image quality, whereas ICE does not. 
> If you can't turn on ICE without getting the grain stuff, 
> too, you may be sacrificing image quality.

The grain dissolver in the Minolta is a piece of glass put between the
scanner light and the negative to diffuse the light. The idea is
probably taken from the Scanhancer which has been available for the
Multi Pro for some time. It successfully removes those black specks
which can sometimes appear with Velvia slides, and I've also had
noticably improved grain on Delta 100 and 400 films when I've used the
Grain Dissolver. For many other film types it makes little visible
difference, which is why I think it would be a good idea for minolta to
provide ICE without the grain dissolver, since it increases scan times
so much.
 
> With 1.5 GB, I've seen both Photoshop and NikonScan stall or 
> stop when both are open simultaneously.  Neither program 
> seems to manage memory very well. Photoshop has known 
> problems with memory management.

I know. When photoshop decides to eat up all your memory the best thing
to do is usually to restart the whole application. It doesn't seem to
know how to free up memory again even if you close large files for
instance. Haven't had any conflicts with scanner software though...

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

Daniel writes:

> Then they're quite similar.. The Minolta is a touch
> sharper than the Canon.

You can gauge the quality of the scanner with the lower resolution by
comparing it with a downsample of a good scan at much higher resolution.
The more the two resemble each other the more "real" the 4000 dpi is for the
scanner with the lower resolution.  The Nikon 8000, for example, seems to
come extremely close to the claimed 4000 dpi, thanks to good optics (this is
based on my microscope examinations of slides vs. scans).  Some other
scanners may not, such that they put 4000 dpi in the file, but each pixel is
of such low quality that you aren't really getting anything close to 4000
dpi.

For the same reason, I notice that desktop wallpapers made from MF images
look a lot sharper than desktop wallpapers made from 35mm images, even
though the actual resolution of the desktop wallpaper (1600x1200, in my
case) is far below the resolution provided by either of the film images.  It
seems to be due to having more original pixels to create each final pixel in
the MF case; the more pixels are used to produce the final pixel, the higher
the quality of that final pixel.  The resolution doesn't really change, but
the accuracy with which each pixel represents the detail that isn't there
increases if there were lots of original pixels (i.e., lots of original
samples) to produce it.  The changes in the pixel color are subtle, but the
image looks sharper.  It's an interesting effect.  I wonder if LF would look
even better.  The 35mm images are 13 times smaller on the desktop, and the
MF images are about 32 times smaller, so I'm surprised that the difference
even shows, given how much both have been reduced.

Of course this applies to scanners, too.  Scanning at 16000 dpi wouldn't
theoretically pick up much of anything more than an 8000 dpi scan on most
films, and yet a 16000 dpi scan would probably look better when downsampled
than a 8000 dpi scan.  The same applies to 5400 downsampled to 4000, or 4000
downsampled to 2700.

> It successfully removes those black specks
> which can sometimes appear with Velvia slides ...

They are bubbles in the emulsion, actually.

> I know. When photoshop decides to eat up all your memory the best thing
> to do is usually to restart the whole application. It doesn't seem to
> know how to free up memory again even if you close large files for
> instance. Haven't had any conflicts with scanner software though...

My Photoshop (5.x) behaves even more strangely.  When I load up a MF scan
(468 MB), modify it, and then try to save it as a JPEG, Photoshop releases
all of its memory, until it gets down to 30 MB or so, then it tells me that
it doesn't have enough memory to save the image.  I can watch it releasing
memory on the task monitor.  Adobe denies that there is a problem.  Adobe
doesn't want to rework the memory management because that would cost money
and wouldn't be very visible, and the real idea is to add endless new bells
and whistles to bloat the software and persuade people to buy upgrades.
Pretty much the standard phenomenon that you see in every software company.
Eventually Adobe's products will be blended into one giant mess that will
look eerily like the mess that is Microsoft Office.