I bought a Minolta Multi film scanner to handle my wide ranging film types. I scan equal amounts of 35mm and 120 format transparencies and negs both in b&w and color. I have to say that I have been profoundly disappointed with the quality I am getting. The only thing the scanner seems to handle well are medium format transparencies in color and b&w. I have given up on scanning 35mm and all negatives altogether. Now I just get 8x10 glossy prints made and scan them on my $120 flatbed and get far better results than the Minolta film scanner. The scans from negative look like they have a very low dynamic range, around a 1.2 dmax instead of the 3.6 Minolta advertises. Maybe I'm doing something wrong or there are tricks I don't know about. But I have experince scanning negatives for a major newspaper on a Kodak scanner and never ran into such poor quality, even though the Kodak's specs seemed to be less impressive than the Minolta's. Scans from 35mm transparencies on the Minolta are acceptable but not great. I have seen much better scans come from a Nikon Coolscan 2000. The problem seems to be that the Minolta somehow accentuates the grain of the film so the scans look "dirty" or "muddy". I sent the scanner into Minolta to be "repaired to factory specs". Of course that didn't seem to help. So has anyone had a similar experience? Is it possible to get a decent negative scan fr

-- chris Kilkus (ckilkus@hotmail.com), May 15, 2000

Answers

Many scanners have difficulty with negative scans. One reason is that negative film does not have the dynamic range of transparency film. There is no corresponding difference between deep black and white like there is in velvia film As a result the resulting image is of much lower contrast than the corresponding print. That said, the amount of information is very high. There are no highlights washed out and all shadow detail is available. The problems is trying to compress the range into an acceptable print. Since you don't have an original to compare it to , it can be quite difficult. Now all you have to do is squash up the contrast to get a better image. You may want to try a higher contrast negative film. You may also want to increase the contrast in your original scan.

-- Jonathan Ratzlaff (jonathanr@clrtech.bc.ca), May 16, 2000.

I have been using the Multi successfully with 35mm and 6x7 color and B&W negatives for about a year now. Had a Nikon LS-2000 which I sold to buy the Minolta.

Quality of the Minolta is as good as the Nikon with the exception that the Multi does not support multi-pass scanning (16 pass scanning on the Nikon), which adds to highlight and shadow detail. VueScan will support multi-pass scanning on the Multi if you need it.

I also have a UMAX 4000U flatbed, a 12000 DPI scanner. 35mm scans from negative are MUCH better on the Multi than on the UMAX. The difference is smaller with 6x7 negatives, but the Multi still is best. Never bothered to scan prints.

The Multi has a SLIGHT cyan cast on a straight scan with no correction. The UMAX requires a lot of tweaking.

I usually do straight scans on the Minolta by selecting 6x7, Color Negative, 1180 or whatever DPI. Auto focus, auto exposure.

I assume you are setting to the highest available DPI for each type of scan. Version 1.1 or whatever of the Multi software supports 12 bit capture if you need it. I usually bypass that to get the smaller file size (22 meg +- from 6x7), which is adequate for 8x10 prooofs on an Epson.

Good luck. Post or e-mail more detail if I can help.

-- Michae T. Murphy (mmurph@ix.netcom.com), May 17, 2000.

I have similar problems with Minolta's Scan Speed scanner, only in my case negative scans are OK, but slides are wretched. So bad, in fact, that I too sent the scanner back to Minolta for testing. They say the results I'm getting (chronic underexposure, red tinge, etc.) are "normal" and they don't seem interested in doing anything about it.

-- John Woram (jworam@msn.com), May 18, 2000.

You are right Chris, Minolta isn't interested in doing anything. My Scan Speed does a good job with PERFECTLY exposed slides, but anything less than that, forget it! If you want to learn the limitations of Photoshop, stick in a dense, contrasty slide. This scanner will give you fits!

-- MikeB (airlinestuff@yahoo.com), May 22, 2000.

I just shot my first roll of slide fim (Velvia). I looked at the slides and was ecstatic that they turned out so well.

Then I bought a Minolta Scan Speed so I could make my own prints. I am very disappointed in it. It really washes out the color. The scans look like really cheap film was used, but at least they are very sharp. Just no color. I played with Photoshop and the Minolta software for a couple of hours, and almost got the scan to look like the slide. I tried saving those setings and applying to the next slide. No go. It needed a half hour tweaking to get it close to the original. And the "corrected" images still ended up looking anywhere from a little fake to really fake.

My $80 Umax flatbed scanner does a great job of it for web-page-only scans. For ten times that the Scan Speed out to be $%#@ing PERFECT!

Any ideas?

-- Steve Cirian (steve@ScuderiaCiriani.com), June 02, 2000.

I just got off the phone with Minolta, and they said to get the new software from their web site (from the Support section). Version 1.0.1 might help, the guy said.

He said that they do get a few calls on Fuji film, and also some of the newer Kodak film with a different emulsion.

I got great results scanning negatives, so I am guessing that it just has a problem with the Velvia. The color on the negative scans is perfect. I did not calibrate my monitor, as the scans of negatives are great, and images from my flatbed are perfect as well. It is just the slides. I will see if the photo place down the street will loan me some slides from other film besides Velvia to do a comparison.

I am going to try a few things, but if I can't get it to the point where it is close to automatic (i.e.- not having to spend 30 minutes per slide retouching) then I am going to return it and buy a different brand. I have heard good things about the HP PhotoSmart new model. Lower res, but if it works, what the heck...

Cheers,

Steve

-- Steve Cirian (steve@ScuderiaCiriani.com), June 05, 2000.