Need a new scanner... Recommendations?

[Matt W.]

Finally got it working!

Click to download: 8 bit PNG, about 150mb

Not a good shot (it was a test shot to make sure the camera worked) or a good scan (Newton's rings) but a decent example of how the Nikon 9000 easily resolves every bit of detail in the 6x7 slide. No sharpening so give it at least a 1-pixel radius smart sharpen in photoshop before judging. Focus was on the boat...the background is slightly out of focus and thus soft. The $100 lens was the limiting factor here, though for $100 I'm pleased with its performance.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Matt,

Thanks for posting that, it shows a lot. Seems the Nikon does a good job. The rings are indeed ugly, but should be something that can be managed or even fixed if necessary. That lens looks pretty good for $100.

As for what Oliver posted about AGFA scanners being made by Microtek, I didn't look at the link, but I'm sure many of their desktop units, maybe all of them, probably were. Would not surprise me one bit. Microtek manufactured scanners for many others.

I think the difference between a good scanner and a not so good one is more an issue of the quality control and the software used to drive it. That is the biggest shortcoming I see with current scanners. It's not the hardware, it's the software. Take Silverfast for example. It's poorly written bloat-ware that spends more time focusing on several different application feature levels and pricing tiers. You have to spend over $400 separately from a scanner just to get all the features and it feels as if several versions of the software are intentionally crippled in one way or another for this reason. At the core of the application, it may support many different scanners on the market, but the actual control ability is lacking. The software for the AGFA unit I have was simple, but effective. And IMO more powerful than anything I've seen from Silverfast at this point. It was so basic, had a scan preview button obviously. But it also had lamp intensity control, ability to make up to three scan passes on an image with different lamp settings and that took forever and a day. It had level controls for in and out as well as a histogram for luma or I could view each R,G or B channel individually. Option for removing halftone patterns from scanned images -- also took forever. Then two check boxes for film or transparency scanning -- film/trans mode on and another check for if you were scanning negs and wanted the image inverted. The transparency lamp was in the lid in the scanner and it had its own manual switch -- a three position deal that was Low, off and High.

I'm rather appalled that after spending over $500 on a "pro" scanner, the best software solution Epson can give us is a crippled version of a crappy third-party solution, which isn't even a native Intel binary on the Mac platform. Then again, it's better than the software Canon bundles with theirs.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Update...

After working for 2 days with the new V700 scanner. I have to say the scanner itself is great. Doesn't have the issues the previous one had.

The software... Meh. The included Epson software actually isn't too bad, but it's lacking a few things like multi-pass. And it won't let me scan larger negs (like 4x5 sheet) at the resolution I would like, it imposes artificial limits. Silverfast SE6 is just a tease. I have to pay $$$ to get a version that actually has all the features I would like, and yet it's still crippled -- as I said before, it's not even an Intel binary on the Mac yet. And their "multi-pass" is just two passes. But that's one more than the Epson software gives.

All in all, the scan quality is great and the 48bit color output is accurate and consistent. Epson has been selling this Scanner for over 3 years, near 4 years now. One would think they could actually have some real software for it by now. Oh well...

 

[rod bradley]

Hi Jeff, glad you got a good working unit. Vuescan Pro is worth checking out. Very reasonable. And it works with many scanners, ie it's not locked in to a version like Silverfast -- which I agree is a tease. Better to just use the Epson software.