Minolta Scan Dual IV questions

[Bakechad]

I think I am ready to purchase a Scan Dual IV, but have a slight
hesitation because of the software problems that I have read about.
That aside, here is a list of the things I would like to do with this
scanner. Any experience or feedback would be appreciated.

1.Scan color astrophotography slides. Mostly stuff without a
telescope. Lots of star fields, nebulae, etc.

2.Scan color negatives for panoramic stitching. Both daylight and
night shots.

3.Scan black and white negatives (both C-41 & traditional).


The system I plan to hook it up to is a 1.7 ghz Celeron with 512 megs
of ram and a 30 gig hard drive. I also have an 80 gig networked
hard drive as well.

Thanks

Chad

 

[Jerry C.]

I think I am ready to purchase a Scan Dual IV, but have a slight
hesitation because of the software problems that I have read about.
That aside, here is a list of the things I would like to do with this
scanner. Any experience or feedback would be appreciated.

1.Scan color astrophotography slides. Mostly stuff without a
telescope. Lots of star fields, nebulae, etc.

2.Scan color negatives for panoramic stitching. Both daylight and
night shots.

3.Scan black and white negatives (both C-41 & traditional).


The system I plan to hook it up to is a 1.7 ghz Celeron with 512 megs
of ram and a 30 gig hard drive. I also have an 80 gig networked
hard drive as well.

Thanks

Chad

====================================================
Chad, I had a Scan Dual IV for two weeks but then returned it. I
returned it because I had a large number of years old negatives and
slides that had a significant amount of dust and I oiginally thought
that they were relatively clean. I thought the Scan Dual IV did
acceptable scans on clean film. The Minolta software was intuitive and
easy enough to start being productive right away.

If you have a large number of possibly dusty film though, you would want
to get a scanner bundled with ICE or a dust removal program. It can
take a very great amount of time to clean that stuff up in Photoshop or
an equivalent.

Also, scanning at 3200 dpi and 8 bits resulted in 39mb to 42mb scans.
This will fill up your 30 gig HD quickly. Be prepared to back up to
CDs, DVDs, your 80 gig HD, or other storage option. When you fill up
your primary HD, MS Windows (if that's your OS) will suddenly become a
recalcitrant sludge.

Jerry Cipriano