I'm wondering what the rest of the world is using for scanning their 6x7 slides? I've sold my wet darkroom and have put in a dry meaning digital darkroom. (still have my jobo for film processing). I'm getting ready to buy a film scanner for scanning and printing my own stuff. What do you guys use for this? I've taken my stuff to a service center for this but it's getting costly and they never do it really right for me. Sometimes great, then other times I think they drop the chrome on the floor step on it a couple of times and glue dust and dirt on it and for good measure use sandpaper to be sure. I've tried a couple of places for scanning too. So what do you use, why and how? Thanks for the in advance for your help.

-- John Miller (vwbus1967@earthlink.net), October 11, 2001

Answers

John,

I have used an Imacon Flextite Precision II for 6x7 and been satisfied. It is slow though and I don't usually manage more than 4 scans per hour - that could just be me. I rent time on one from time to time as it is a rather big investment to purchase. For me I think this is about the lowest level scanner that gets somewhere near reproducing the intrinsic quality of a 6x7 transparancy.

I have never ever seen an acceptable MF scan (acceptable for me that is) from a photo lab or bureau and I have tried in two continents over a 10 year period and paid up to $60 per scan.

> the chrome on the floor step on it a couple of times and glue dust > and dirt on it and for good measure use sandpaper to be sure.

I have never had one back from drum scanning in a condition as good as the one you describe above.

So when the new Polaroid and Nikon came out this yeat I got very excited. Nikon seem to have problems with their software and both scanners seem to be visibly slightly inferior to the Flexcon unfortunately. I read somewhere that Minolta might be bringing out a serious MF scanner, but have not seen it.

-- Tony Cunningham (cmserv@wxs.nl), October 11, 2001.

Bought a Polaroid Sprintscan 120 in early September. Very high resolution and D-max (4.2). Saved some poorly developed transparencies with shadow detail I never expected. Silverfast software is real powerful, I'm still trying to get used to it.

-- Patrick Drennon (latvis@swbell.net), October 17, 2001.

The Minolta I was referring to above is the Dimage Scan Multi Pro. It is reviewed quite positively on www.imaging- resource.com/SCAN/DSMP/DSMP.HTM. Unfortunately Minolta's own literature goes a bit 'over the top'. It scans 6x7 up to 3200 dpi - I suppose that is sufficient for most purposes.

-- Tony Cunningham (cmserv@wxs.nl), October 28, 2001.