Minolta Scanners

[BigDick]

I am interested in scanning 35mm negs. for home use.
How important is Ditigal Ice?
I found a new Minolta Dimage Scan Elite II, 2820 dpi that uses Ice for $499.
A new Minolta Dimage Scan Dual IV, 3200 dpi w/o ICE for $299.

Both scanners appear to be about the same otherwise.
Both have USB connection.
Does anyone use either of these scanners and are you satisfied with them?
Please post any other scanner opinions.

Thanks,
BD.

 

[JMooreTS]

I am interested in scanning 35mm negs. for home use.
How important is Ditigal Ice?
I found a new Minolta Dimage Scan Elite II, 2820 dpi that uses Ice for $499.

BD,

I've had a factory refurbished Scan Elite II for about 5 months. I am
completely satisfied. I recommend getting something with digital ICE. It is
certainly a timesaver.

I bought mine on Ebay for about $370. There always seems to be several
refurbished models (6 month factory warranty) up for bid (although, I haven't
checked that recently).

BTW, I like the Minolta software better than Vuescan (which I use for my
flatbed scanning).

John

 

[Mendel Leisk]

I am interested in scanning 35mm negs. for home use.
How important is Ditigal Ice?
I found a new Minolta Dimage Scan Elite II, 2820 dpi that uses Ice for $499.
A new Minolta Dimage Scan Dual IV, 3200 dpi w/o ICE for $299.

Both scanners appear to be about the same otherwise.
Both have USB connection.
Does anyone use either of these scanners and are you satisfied with them?
Please post any other scanner opinions.

Thanks,
BD.

If you're JUST scanning silver based black and white, and/or have LOTS
of time and patience, go for the non-ice. If you go that route,
believe me, you will come close to memorizing your collection.

Otherwise, tough call...

FWIW, I'm scanning a lot of old Tri-X with Scan Dual II (predecessor
to Scan Dual IV), and it's quite satisfactory for that purpose. The
Dual IV is an incremental step up, bit more res, and more dynamic
range, I believe. Though, I spend almost all my spare time cleaning
the results (about 2 years of farting around over 1800 images, long
learning curve). I do my cleaning directly on Vuescan raw files to
give myself the most options regarding outputting finished files with
variety of gamma, contrast, etc.

Cheers and good luck!

 

[David R]

My vote is that you go for the Digital Ice. Really this depends on
the quality of your slides or film and the purity of the air arround
you.
Digital Ice is amazing to say it litely. It really does remove dust,
repair scratches, and does a fairly good job on mold. It's not
perfect but jut amazing.

I have the Scan Elite F-2900 with Digital Ice.

 

[Dave Williams]

It's interesting that you like Minolta S/W better than VueScan. I just
acquired a Scan Dual III and the S/W that came with it leaves a lot to be
desired. I'm scanning some old 35mm color slides with a strong red cast. I
suspect that the cast is due to fading of one of the color layers. The
slides are from 1961. With the Minolta S/W, Pixel Polish shows a very good
color correction, but when the slide is scanned, the red cast is back. With
or without pixel polish, the final scans look the same. I have been working
with Minolta Tech Support on this. They have been very helpful, even sent
me a new CD just in case, but the problem remains. Then I tried VueScan. I
enabled restore colors and restore fading. The results were great. I also
found that, with VueScan, I had more efficient work flow. I can set it for
automatic save, automatic scan (scan begins as soon as the holder is
inserted), automatic eject, and to scan all the slides in the holder without
stopping. I ordered extra holders so that I could be loading a holder and
cleaning the slides while the previous load was being scanned. The only way
I could automate the process with Minolta was to use the Scan Wizard, but
that left me with less control over the results and I couldn't figure out
how to automate everything so that I could just keep scanning without having
to setup the wizard every time I started a new holder of slides.

I guess you can see that I like VueScan. However, I do wish I had ICE
because some of the dirt on my slides appears to be imbedded in the slide.
I can't brush or blow it off, even with compressed air. I've been told that
a plug-in is available for Photoshop which works like ICE. However, PS is
out of my league price-wise. So I'm stuck with the dirt or with removing it
all manually in an editor. No way, with over 1000 slides to scan, some
going back to 1953. Also, my budget was nearly busted at $299 for the Dual
III. Scanners with ICE were all more money which I could not afford.

Dave

 

[Preston Earle]

"Dave Williams" wrote: "[snip] I also found that, with VueScan, I had
more efficient work flow. I can set it for automatic save, automatic
scan (scan begins as soon as the holder is inserted), automatic eject,
and to scan all the slides in the holder without stopping. I ordered
extra holders so that I could be loading a holder and cleaning the
slides while the previous load was being scanned. . . ."
---------------------------

One big drawback to Vuescan's "automatic" workflow is that many
important settings cannot be done individually for each frame in a
group. The cropping can be set for each image, but the color settings
and the filter settings are common to all images in a group. This may
not be a big issue if all images are similar, as they often are with
negatives, but for slides, I find it a distinct disadvantage. I haven't
used the Minolta software enough to see if its color settings apply to
each image (I'm thinking they do) as I prefer Vuescan's images. (I find
the flatness of the Vuescans easier to work with in Photoshop than the
more contrasty Minolta scans.)

Dust, spots, etc., are a BIG problem with Scan Dual scanners. The
Polaroid D&SR filter helps some, but it isn't the full answer. I spend
several minutes per image "spotting" scans, and most of the spots are
from imperfections in the film surface, not dust and stuff on the film.
I think it becomes an economic question: if you can afford IR-cleaning,
go for it. If not, join the rest of us in the back of the bus doing the
grunt-work by hand <G>.

Preston Earle
(e-mail address removed)

 

[David R]

I purchased a Minolta Scan Elite for it's price and IR. I find that
Digital ICE in the Minolta Software does a much better job using the
IR than Vuescan IR filter.
The colors in Vuescan are much better than the Minolta software