35mm film scanners

[Nony Buz]

After looking at the spec's, it looks like the new Nikon Coolscan 5000
ED is the best scanner on the market. Is this true or is there a better
film scanner out there which can scan a whole roll? What I like the
most is that the dynamic range is 4.8 and everyone else seems to be 4.2
or less.

Please do not flame me about there being more to how something performs
then its specs. This I know, if I did not know this, would I be asking
this question or would I simply buy the unit and move on?

My two objectives with the scanner are as follows:

1: Scan in portraits (Senior Portraits) for retouching
2: Scan in sports to do some custom cropping.

All the printing will be done by my lab.

 

[degrub]

You may be better served hiring the images scanned on a PMT drum scanner
if you need first class results. The density range they quote is based
on the A/D conversion number of bits, ie 16 bits per RGB channel. It is
more an expression of how many different tones can be created than the
"Dmax-Dmin" for the scanner.

All of my comments are based on the CS4000. THe CS5000 appears to have
some improvements over the CS4000, but it is not that different as far
as i have read.

What are you scanning ? Negs or positives ? The CS4000/5000 will
generally do very well on positives. Negatives are more difficult
because of the mask, but not overly difficult to get quite excellent
results. Silver based B/W will be problematic (impossible ?) if you want
to use the ICE "cleaning" feature. If you will not be enlarging the
images more than 8-10x, the 5000 seems to have enough resolving power
(certainly no worse than the CS4000 i have, perhaps better). Whether or
not the CS5000 is the "best" really depends on your customer's
expectations and your own requirements of the hardware.

Then there is the software question. If you need a extensive control
over the scanning, consider using Silverfast or perhaps Vuescan. Ed
produces a very good product, Vuescan, that many here will swear by (and
very few seem to swear at it ). i use it and Silverfast and sometimes
NikonScan. But it does not give you the same level of control over the
scan process that Silverfast does. NikonScan can be a bear at times and
there have been some problems with it dropping tonal range at the low
end of the scan (dark end on positives).

Frank

 

[Nony Buz]

Hum, interesting. Like I said, my objective is to scan sports and
portraits. I do not expect the portraits to be larger then 8x10 and if
there is a situation where I need larger, I would opt to shot MF anyway.

Sports on the other hand... 99% of the time I will be scanning for the
web and for 5x7 and 8x10 prints. But I do plain to print posters, upto
30x40 of some of the images. It was my intent to use Genuine Fractals
to increase 35mm scan from a 20meg file size to that appropriate for a
30x40 image, if my math is correct that would be around a 105Meg image.

Would there really be that big of a difference between a drum scanner
and a scan from something like the Coolscan 5000 and Benuine Fractals.
My thought is that the 35mm neg just does not have enough info to make a
super sharp 30x40 and the Genuine Fractals would do a nice job of
smoothing out the edges when going that large.

Sam

 

[degrub]

Take one of your favorite images to a service bureau and have them do
the scan on a PMT drum scanner and output to the size poster you want.
FOr the rest of your applications, the CS5000 should be more than
adequate. You might consider spending the same money for a decent
digital camera and use the Macbeth color checker or something similar to
help manage your colors for the portraits. Have a look at this site for
some perspective on the issues you are facing.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com

Frank