Vuescan/Minolta 5400 testing

[Rob Landry]

Okay, after reading all the hoopla surrounding the 5400 and Vuescan, I
went ahead and purchased a 5400 anyway. I'm currently in the testing
phase and have been evaluating the Minolta Scan Utility (MSU),
Silverfast and Vuescan.

MSU 1.1.5 seems to be giving excellent results, however, the program
is a little sparse and I don't like the fact that I don't know what is
happening behind the scenes. Silverfast is powerful and is producing
excellent scans (although with a slight color cast), but the interface
has way too many small buttons and it lacks in the documentation
department.

Vuescan I have always liked and I currently use it with my two other
scanners. I have been able to get acceptable scans by initializing the
5400 first with MSU and then starting Vuescan, however, the shadows
are still not up to the level of Silverfast or MSU. Does this slight
lack of shadow detail relate to the whole Vuescan banding/lines issue?

In my limited testing, I have noticed that during initialization, both
MSU and Silverfast sound the same and write the calibration files as
..BIN files in a calibration folder. When initializing with Vuescan,
the sounds coming from the 5400 are completely different and the
initialization process seems shorter. Has anyone else noticed this?
I've also noticed that during preview and final scans, the stepper
motor sounds different when scanning with Vuescan versus MSU or
Silverfast and Vuescan seems faster (and louder). Could this be an
indication of anything? I seem to recall reports that Vuescan does
scan faster than some manufacturer's software.

Thoughts, comments, ideas?

 

[Chris Birkett]

In my limited testing, I have noticed that during initialization, both
MSU and Silverfast sound the same and write the calibration files as
.BIN files in a calibration folder. When initializing with Vuescan,
the sounds coming from the 5400 are completely different and the
initialization process seems shorter. Has anyone else noticed this?
I've also noticed that during preview and final scans, the stepper
motor sounds different when scanning with Vuescan versus MSU or
Silverfast and Vuescan seems faster (and louder). Could this be an
indication of anything? I seem to recall reports that Vuescan does
scan faster than some manufacturer's software.

Thoughts, comments, ideas?

I've noticed the same sort of thing with my Scan Dual III. Everything the
scanner does (initialization, autofocus, scanning, etc.) sounds completely
different in Vuescan, and is significantly faster.

- Chris

 

[Wilfred]

In my limited testing, I have noticed that during initialization, both
MSU and Silverfast sound the same and write the calibration files as
.BIN files in a calibration folder. When initializing with Vuescan,
the sounds coming from the 5400 are completely different and the
initialization process seems shorter.

Ed Hamrick recommends calibrating the scanner from the 'scanner'
drop-down menu each time you start up VueScan (after having initialized
the scanner with the MDSU). IMO this is extra initialization time and
from that point of view, VueScan takes longer. I do have the impression
that this procedure brings back the shadow detail in VueScan but I
haven't done extensive testing.

Has anyone else noticed this?
I've also noticed that during preview and final scans, the stepper
motor sounds different when scanning with Vuescan versus MSU or
Silverfast and Vuescan seems faster (and louder). Could this be an
indication of anything?

AFAIK, VueScan writes the raw scan data to RAM (or virtual memory) first
and processes the data after scanning, then writes it to disk, whereas
the MDSU (and perhaps Silverfast too) immediately processes and writes
the final image data to disk during the scanning process.
If you have a slow CPU, like me, you will have to wait a long time after
scanning until VueScan has written the file to disk. With the MDSU this
is not the case.

 

[Bart van der Wolf]

SNIP

Does this slight lack of shadow detail relate to the whole
Vuescan banding/lines issue?

If you are scanning slides, yes it is probably related. For Negatives
it would manifest itself in the highlights.

Bart