I am looking to upgrade from the Minolta Dimage Dual scanner. The two scanners I am most interested in are the LS2000 and the Polaroid 4000 thousand and am eagerly awaiting your review of the 4000.

The only advantage that the nikon seems to have is DMax and low noise (not to say those are minor issues.) So part of what I looked for on your site was just how much of a difference does the low noise of the LS2000 make. In the spirit of your philosophy of adjusting the scans to make them look better, I downloaded scans from the various scanners and adjusted them to look more like the LS2000. The musician scans can generally be made to looks exactly alike, but I figured the real test was the train scan. I tooks the train scan from the Scan Speed and tried to adjust it as close as possible to the train scan from the LS2000. The LS2000 definetly has lower noise, but I found that I could come much closer to the general look of the LS2000 by adjusting the Scan Speed scan.

I have posted the results at

http://www.geocities.com/~ianporteous/images/dstr16al_test.jpg

I thought this comparison raised the question of what a fair comparison is. Most people will probably find the adjusted scan speed scan more to their liking than the original. Anyway... just another way to compare the scans that might be interesting. The opposite extreme of no adjustment.

-- Ian Porteous (ianporteous@home.com), May 21, 1999

Answers

I've just got a Polaroid 4000 and like it very well. I don't think that it does as well in the dark areas but everything else seems to work as well as what I've read about the LS-2000 on the internet. Even the dust removal appears to work about the same.

I do think the 4000 ppi does give better detail on the better films. I've scanned some fine grain film at 2700 ppi and at 4000 ppi and found slightly better detail at the higher resolution. Course grain film doesn't make any difference.

I 've tried B/W film with the dust removal and it works.

Try newsgroup alt.comp.periphs.scanners You'll find some interesting info.

-- Robert Johnson (rjjohnson@silverlink.net), May 22, 1999.

Hi, IF the dust removal system really works on the Polaroid that is a HUGE advantage over the Nikon! You cannot use the ICE with B&W films on the LS-2000. That is a major drawback. I'm still hoping the Nikon comes out with an affordable Medium Format scanner. The Minolta is incompatible with my Adaptec 2940U2W card. I had hoped that Polaroid would do medium format...SIGH. Howard

-- Howard (hposner1@swarthmore.edu), May 26, 1999.