Minolta 5400 user question

H

HK

Hi,

To my disappointments I just discovered that walls that seem pretty
straight vertical when viewing the slide on a viewer become converged
when processed by a Minolta 5400. Is this caused by the lens in the
Minolta and normal?

The slide holder also seems to crop a bit, I would say 24 mm becomes
22.4 mm or something. I use pretty thin slide holders.

Do the top Nikon's also suffer in these matters?

Hans
 
M

Mac McDougald

Hi,

To my disappointments I just discovered that walls that seem pretty
straight vertical when viewing the slide on a viewer become converged
when processed by a Minolta 5400. Is this caused by the lens in the
Minolta and normal?

The slide holder also seems to crop a bit, I would say 24 mm becomes
22.4 mm or something. I use pretty thin slide holders.

Do the top Nikon's also suffer in these matters?

Hans
Click to expand...

Have no idea re the convergence (except to say "arrrggg!" if that is
true), but no commercial slide mount from mass film processors shows all
the slide, they all crop a couple of mm or so.
You'd have to get precision Wess mount or similar to show exactly
36x24mm..

Mac
 
H

HK

Maybe I was not clear. The slide shows ok in the slide mount and
projection but it is the Minolta slide holder that takes off a little
bit extra. My question was: do Nikon slide holders also crop some of
the slide?

Thanks for suggesting that precision mount, I will try a Gepe glass
mount to make sure that the slide is absolutely flat when in the
Minolta.
 
G

Gary L Hunt

HK said:
Maybe I was not clear. The slide shows ok in the slide mount and
projection but it is the Minolta slide holder that takes off a little
bit extra. My question was: do Nikon slide holders also crop some of
the slide?
Click to expand...
The simple (but maybe misleading) answer to your question is that the Nikon
scanners (at least the 4000 and 5000ED models) don't use "holders". For
single slides, you just stick them in a slot on the front of the scanner.
The auto feeder moves the slides in and out with a sort of "rail" arrangement,
but again, there is not a "holder" that would restrict the coverage of the
scanner.

HOWEVER, the specifications for the 5000ED say the maximum scan area with the
MA-21 "slide mount adapter" (single slides) is 25.1 x 36.8 mm. This is
slightly larger than the nominal size of a full 35 mm frame. For my
archiving project, I routinely scan a larger area than the slide mount opening,
because it saves having to set the cropping every time without worrying about
missing any of the image. (The size and location of the opening varies from
one mount type to the next, and even with successive samples of supposedly
identical mounts--or maybe the scanner doesn't position them in exactly the
same place every time.)

Gary Hunt
 
A

Alan Browne

HK said:
Maybe I was not clear. The slide shows ok in the slide mount and
projection but it is the Minolta slide holder that takes off a little
bit extra. My question was: do Nikon slide holders also crop some of
the slide?

Thanks for suggesting that precision mount, I will try a Gepe glass
mount to make sure that the slide is absolutely flat when in the
Minolta.
Click to expand...


The Minolta slide holders are slightly larger than 36x24.

Mounted slides are in holders that are slightly less than 36x24.

The Minolta manual states that one should not scan glass mounted slides.
I haven't tried it, but please tell us how you fare.
 
A

Alan Browne

HK said:
Hi,

To my disappointments I just discovered that walls that seem pretty
straight vertical when viewing the slide on a viewer become converged
when processed by a Minolta 5400. Is this caused by the lens in the
Minolta and normal?
Click to expand...

How do you know the projector or viewer is "straight". It could be the
distortion you are seeing is that made by the taking lens, or your PC
screen. There are a lot of sources of error so be sure you have
eliminated them.

There is no "lens" in the camera sense in a film scanner. There is a
strip of tiny lenses each of which only sees one focused pixel sample at
a time.
The slide holder also seems to crop a bit, I would say 24 mm becomes
22.4 mm or something. I use pretty thin slide holders.
Click to expand...

....my 5400 slide holder has apertures of 37x26mm and mounted slides are
well clear of those edges. Of course mounted slides do crop into the
image area.
Do the top Nikon's also suffer in these matters?
Click to expand...

Probably not, but I don't think your 5400 does either!
 
M

Mac McDougald

There is no "lens" in the camera sense in a film scanner. There is a
strip of tiny lenses each of which only sees one focused pixel sample at
a time.
Click to expand...

There is most certainly a lens in Nikon film scanners.
There is also a lens in my HP flatbed.

Mac
 
M

Mac McDougald

Define that more clearly...
Click to expand...

There are lenses in both these scanners. I can see them.
I have cleaned the lens in the Nikon and the HP.

As far as flatbeds go, AFAIK, ALL CCD models have to have a lens.

I'll let some of the more technically oriented regulars here chime in...I
modified the subject to get more attention :)

Mac
 
H

HK

Well thanks for your replies first of all. I use the slide holder
that can hold 4 slides that came with the Minolta 5400, which I bought
new. When I slide in a mounted slide, I see the white edges of that on
all 4 sides. I just wished I could see those after scanning with the
Minolta Diamge scanning utility. Or at least a little bit closer to
the edge of the slide mount. For now I am disappointed because it
seems to scan less than 24 mm height.

I will read the manual once more or call Minolta Europe.
 
A

Alan Browne

Mac said:
There are lenses in both these scanners. I can see them.
I have cleaned the lens in the Nikon and the HP.

As far as flatbeds go, AFAIK, ALL CCD models have to have a lens.
Click to expand...

Is the lens round or a bar? (As it is on my flatbed ... I can't see one
in the 5400 and I'm not willing to open it up to find out.)

Even so, a scan is along an axis of movement...so there can be no
distorion by the lens that would distort a line in that direction of
movement (eg, make a pincussion or barrel distortion of a line in the
direction of travel of the scan). And if it is a 'bar' lens, then the
same applies in the other axe.

Cheers,
Alan
 
M

Mac McDougald

Is the lens round or a bar? (As it is on my flatbed ... I can't see one
in the 5400 and I'm not willing to open it up to find out.)

Even so, a scan is along an axis of movement...so there can be no
distorion by the lens that would distort a line in that direction of
movement (eg, make a pincussion or barrel distortion of a line in the
direction of travel of the scan). And if it is a 'bar' lens, then the
same applies in the other axe.

Cheers,
Alan
Click to expand...

Both lenses are round barrels.
Just like camera lens, except of course fixed focus and aperature.

Mac
 
A

Alan Browne

Mac said:
Both lenses are round barrels.
Just like camera lens, except of course fixed focus and aperature.

Mac
Click to expand...

Ok. Now behind the lens there must be a linear array. Right? And the
film transport moves the film past the lens. Right? Now, how could this
movement produce distortion that the other poster mentioned?
 
A

Al

Ok. Now behind the lens there must be a linear array. Right? And the
film transport moves the film past the lens. Right? Now, how could this
movement produce distortion that the other poster mentioned?
Click to expand...


You're right - a film scanner is very much like a digital camera
except that it only has one line of CCDs.

People have reported problems with the film vibrating in the holder
because of the film transport motor. This could be helped by using
glass slide mounts, but that would require cutting negatives into
singles which is frowned upon. Also if the film is not flat enough the
edges can be out of focus.
 
H

HK

My cropping issue seems solved, by turning the manual focus button to
another position I was now able to have a more complete image scanned
rather than a cropped section. Counterclockwise rotation gave me more
real estate. I am not sure what should be the position of this knob,
all the way clockwise produces a pretty unsharp prescan even with
autofocus.


Is there some ideal position?


The slide I use for this is always the same and the position of the
film in the slidemount did not change. I have the film developed and
slidemounted via the Albert Heijn (Wallmart type shop). Those mounts
can not be opened without destroying them and the film is hold pretty
tight in them.
 
B

Bart van der Wolf

SNIP
Is there some ideal position?
Click to expand...

It depends on the position of the film. The more common positions of the
marker on the knob are roughly halfway its range for mounted slides, and a
bit more to the right (clockwise) for film in the film strip holder.

Bart
 
O

Olaf Ulrich

Hans said:
To my disappointments I just discovered that
walls that seem pretty straight vertical when
viewing the slide on a viewer become converged
when processed by a Minolta 5400. Is this
caused by the lens in the Minolta and normal?
Click to expand...

This is not normal. Most likely, it isn't even true. Most likely,
the lines in your images *are* converged but your viewer
displays them distorted in a way so the two distortions cancel
each other out. For example, when tilting the camera up to
capture a building's image and then tilting the slide projector
up by roughly the same amount for viewing the images, the
converging verticals in the image will appear straight again.

Or your scanner is defective in some weird way (which how-
ever is very unlikely).


Hans said:
The slide holder also seems to crop a bit ...
Click to expand...

No, it doesn't. It's the slide frame that crops a little. If the
scanner doesn't scan the full frame then adjust the area to
be scanned in the pre-view scan window. Maybe you
activated the auto-crop feature in the scan software? If
you don't know then RTFM! (Read The F...ing Manual ;-)

Olaf
 
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