I am considering buying a polaroid sprintscan 4000. I have recently heard very positive reviews of a product called Genuine Fractals 2.0. I was wondering if anyone would have an idea if using say a HP S20 film scanner which produces an image file of 2400 dpi (20 megs) would and upscaled with Genuine Fractals would be equal to the polaroid Sprintscan 4000 which produces an image file of 50 megs. I need tol produced 16x20 prints from 35mm. Anyone have advice on which way to go. The Sprintscan is triple the cosgt of the HP S20!!

Joel

-- Joel (figtrees@earthlink.net), February 08, 2000

Answers

The sprintscan has a greater dynamic range than the s-20. This means that there will be more shadow detail in a scan made with a scanner with greater dynamic range. This is very important when scanning from transparencies. I used to scan with the original photosmart. I have since upgraded to a minolta scan speed and the shadow detail is like night and day. I can even scan star trails and northern lights where previously I would get a dark sky because of the density of the slide. In addition the polaroid 4000 will give you more detail in the scan. Although genuine fractals will allow you to scale up the image so that the edges are less jagged, it will produce the detail you will get from the polaroid scanner.

-- jonathan ratzlaff (jonathanr@clrtech.bc.ca), February 08, 2000.