I'm in the market for my first film scanner and have scanned (no pun intended) your reviews of the LS-2000 and the Scan Speed. I'm an advanced amateur photographer with 20+ years of color and B&W darkroom experience. I'm finally getting into digital. I want to get this right the first time. Your Minolta review was dated later than the Nikon review. You said that the Minolta beat everything you had seen to date. How does the Scan Speed compare to the LS-2000 and is the latter worth the extra bucks? Digital ICE sounds nice if you routinely walk on your film, but I'm more careful than that. :-)

Thanks, Lloyd O'Daniel

-- Lloyd O'Daniel (lhodaniel@mindspring.com), February 19, 1999

Answers

Important qualification! - The *software* beat everything! - The scanner itself was very good, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it "beat everything" - the LS-2000 is a VERY worthy scanner also. (On the software, I also haven't tested the reputedly excellent SilverScan software, available for many different scanner types.

-- Dave Etchells (web@imaging-resource.com), February 24, 1999.

I've just seen a demo of the Minolta Scan Speed at PMA. The quality was very good but the scan time was much longer than their claimed 30 secs. (and longer than the times quoted in the review here). I got the demo guy to do a full-res scan from a negative - it took 2 mins 10 secs!

Another VERY IMPORTANT point if anybody's considering this scanner to take on foreign assignments - it operates on 100 - 120 Volts only (that's according to the specs on Minolta's brochure).

-- Paul Smith (paul@featureflash.com), February 20, 1999.