I've been trying for weeks now to find a film scanner with the best quality that I can afford and finally came to the conclusion that the Minolta dimage scan dual(2438dpi,30bit,3.0D)was the right choice. So I went to the scanner store and talked with one of the salesmen and he said that the scan dual wasn't a good choice for printing, and that I needed at least 2700dpi,36bit,and 3.6d-range for printing photo quality and he recommended the scan speed which just happens to be twice the price! I own a Epson photo 750 and my question is for printing photo quality images ,will the scan dual give me the photo quality image for a 8x10 print. Please respond soon. Thanks

-- john webb (jwebb72@hotmail.com), January 09, 2000

Answers

In my opinion, you have not been given good or complete information. While more resolution is better (all other things being equal), 2400dpi is plenty for an 8X10 on most inkjet printers. For a 35mm negative or slide, this gives you a 300dpi image to print at 8x10. My personal experience, is that I can get acceptable results at half of that. At any rate, the difference between 2400 and 2700 would only give you less than an additional 40dpi at the 8x10 print size, and I would challenge anyone to discern the difference between a print at 300dpi and 340dpi. 36 vs 30 in bit depth is better, but not as much as one might expect. When you work on color correction and bringing out shadow detail, the extra bits give you more info to work with. This is all done prior to your final scan. If you can import high bit scans into an image editor that will accept them, then you can get a little more control. Before you can print, the files must be changed to 24 bit depth (8 per channel). The dynamic range of 3.6 will be useful if you are scanning slides. For negatives, 3.0 is perfectly adequate. From the reading I've done, I wouldn't necessarily believe the quoted d-ranges from manufacturers, as a lot of this is a specsmanship game. What you've been told can be summarized by saying, more dpi, greater bit depth and a higher dynamic range is better. However, getting a good 8x10 print from a slide or negative can be achieved with 2400dpi or less, 30 bit depth and a 3.0 d-range with most slides and negs. If you have a lot of poorly exposed slides, and this is your main concern, spend the extra money. If not, save some.

Luther

-- Luther Foreman (lforeman1@compuserve.com), January 09, 2000.

I agree, even my lowly Photosmart SCSI 2400ppi film scanner gives me great 8x10's. The minolta I haven't used but I'm sure its better and really, more important than having the higher res scanner would be having a good monitor to view the image with and good profiles for your printer. The scanner is only about 30% of the equation , the rest of your gear is about 50%, and your talent is about 20%. Its amazing what the average equipment will do when you learn it inside and out. You should be able to get excellent 11x17's with Genuine Fractals and res it up to about 46MB ( twice the original size).

-- Cris Daniels (danfla@gte.net), January 10, 2000.