New Minolta Scanner with 5400dpi

[hamey]

> Hello Thomas This is my second try so I hope it get's through Sorry about your AC adapter for your 5400 when you do get the cord let us know your opinion on the 5400 as I cannot make up mind between the Nikon Super Coolscan 4000ED and the Minolta 5400. Here in Melbourne Australia there is a two hundred Dollars Difference. for the Nikon Coolscan.

Kind Regards Ken.

 

[trd]

Got my cord ,had to buy a fire wire connection which fits for my Sony Notebook. The fire wire cord which is part of the deal does not work for Sony. Anyway...
@Ken:So far I can´t give you a thorough
information on the minolta scanner since I only tried the Easy scan utility which gives nice results easily(only colour slides though)
Try this onehttp://www.photo-i.co.uk/
and thathttp://www.scantips.com/ one just in case you´re a newbie like me in scanning matters-very informative.
Kind regards to Down Under, Thomas

 

[swann]

A very good working and nice price scanner software is Vuescan, www.hamrick.com. Works great with my Scan Elite II. Maybe you give it a try.
Regards

 

[hamey]

> type your text here!Hello Thomas. Thanks for that information and yes it's getting warmer down under we are into our summer. So good luck with your Minolta 5400. Bye for now Regards Ken.

 

[trd]

Got my first pics 4x6inches which should be 10x15cm scanned with 1350dpi and they are really excellent without any work in photoshop done.
I just scanned them and ordered them via the net.No work besides scanning and that was done quickly.The film used was Kodak 100 VS.Only one complaint:If you intend to use the ICE that lasts forever,results are very good though. In other words.:if you intend to scan a lot of old slides using ICE forget it, your life span won´t be long enough to acomplish that goal....
Kind regards Thomas

 

[agp]

Browsing through the site I saw this article about the Minolta 5400. I have one, and would highly recommend it. It is quite quick when scanning without dust or grain reduction, but then you spend a long time retouching the dust. Using the utilities to remove or control these results in cleaner scans, but a strip of 6 colour negatives can take up to 90 minutes to scan! I always scan at 2700 dpi, giving approximately a 30Mb file. 5400 dpi in unusable as it takes ages, and the files are enormous.

I'm sure the perfectionists would ask why I use colour negative with a Leica. First reason is convenience - I can develop the film, dry-to-dry, in a tank in an hour. I always overdevelop a little. It is MUCH better than black and white, as the Minolta can't use scratch/dust removal with B&W. It's then converted using channels on Photoshop if I want black and white. One thing with colour neg is that it seems to be very tolerant of error, certainly more so than black and white. Never had reticulation, and with an underdeveloped/underexposed neg it was easy to make it into a good print in Photoshop.

Not really interested in slide, as it's too much hassle developing them myself, and they tend to be contrasty. (Love Sensia, though.)

It is a real routine now, to use colour neg with a Leica, and you can tell the results were taken with one! An ex&le is the picture ("singer"), taken at a school function, I am about to post in the photo gallery. It was taken at 4pm and printed by 6pm.

 

[murchu]

> [I have been using this scanner for some time, and can endorse its excellence, having moved up from an Acer 2740S with Digital Ice. The rather large scanned image (around 200MB) is acceptable to me, but I normally opt for 100MB since I tend to burn the scanned images to Dual Layer DVD-ROMS for storage. I use the minimum of touching-up, but find that Photoshop CS and Paint Shop Pro 9 'lift' the finished scans to acceptable levels. I always scan from transparency film, although the machine handles negative film equally well.]