Mike Dixon, what scanner do you use?

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Just wondering. You're images look impressive on-line. I'm looking for a scanner.

-- victor (danzfotog@yahoo.com), March 07, 2002

Answers

Victor, I have been warming up to Nikon Sooper Cool Scan 8000. I've been using it for about three months now and it seems to be a very decent machine, despite its goofy name. I also used Nikon's LS1000 and 2000 scanners. LS 2000 has digital ice and makes good rgb scans, but tends to loose highligh detail on BW films. The 8000 has a much better range and makes much much better bw scans. Plus it will do various formats up tp 6x7. Now... Nikon owes me a grand for pushing its scanner. How do I collect it? Igor

-- Igor Osatuke (visionstudios@yahoo.com), March 07, 2002.

For b&w, I'm scanning prints on an old UMAX PowerLook II.

For color, I'm using a Kodak RFS-3600. I can't really recommend getting one, though. When it works, it does an excellent job (except the "automatic dust injector" works a bit too well), but the driver software is a bad joke. Even with the latest drivers, I have to use various workarounds to get the thing fired up and scanning. I bought the Kodak largely because it came with a coupon for a 100 rolls of the films I often use (E100S & SW), and that made the price very attractive for a 3600 dpi scanner.

For both scanners, I still make some adjustments in PhotoShop to optimize the results.

My stepdad (a book designer) got a $400 Minolta film scanner a couple of months ago--it works like a dream on his Mac.

-- Mike Dixon (mike@mikedixonphotography.com), March 07, 2002.


I got the RFS3600 for the free film as well... after returning the first one (which was broken), the second one has worked okay for scanning, but Mike is right-- it sucks up the dust, and it has me wondering if the dust it sucks up is scratching my negs. The Kodak scanning SW is pretty bad, but it does come with SilverFast. I just wish I could figure out how to make it just do raw scans of my slides-- they always scan too dark. Negatives come out just fine.

But yeah, unless Kodak is offering the 100 rolls deal again, I'm not sure it's worth $800. It's a bit on the cheap side, quality-wise. If you can get it to work, though, it's a good scanner. I'm waiting for a FireWire scanner that is more robust than the current models out there these days.

If anyone has a workaround for dark slides on the RFS3600, I'd love to hear it, by the way.

-- Rich Fowler (richfowler@mindspring.com), March 07, 2002.


Rich,

After doing a prescan, go to the adjustments page in the scanner software, go over to the curves graph, grab the line near about a foruth or fifth of the way up from the bottom left, and raise it back a little bit. Let go, wait a second, and it shows the effect on your final scan. This bumps up shadow contrast, smooths out highlight contrast, and raises mid values so the scan will look a lot more like the slide. Once you set it, it remains the default until you adjust it again. I still do more adjustments post-scan, but that makes the original scan much closer to how the slide looks on the light box.

-- Mike Dixon (mike@mikedixonphotography.com), March 07, 2002.


Mike, Do you know which model Minolta scanner your stepdad has?

-- Ken Prager (pragerproperties@worldnet.att.net), March 08, 2002.


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