Review 2 of 6
Price Paid:
$650.00
from B&H Photo Summary: I used a $300 HP PhotoSmart C5100 to scan my films in the past three years.
Three months ago, I upgraded to the $650 Minolta Dimage Scan Elite mainly for its higher resolution and the ICE/dust-removal function.
My initial impression was very negative.
First of all, the colors of scans from 35mm negatives were poor, with a very strong green cast.
I spent many nights calibrating the scanner, but still cannot get natural-looking skintones from it.
I have to purchase a third-party software (VueScan by Ed Hamrick) in order to get acceptable color fidelity.
Secondly, the scans I get at 2820dpi were not even as sharp as what I got from my old scanner at 2400dpi.
Later I found out that if I place the negative with the emulsion side facing DOWN (which is oppositive of what the user manual stated), then the image is much sharper.
All my observations above are documented here:
http://albums.photopoint.com/j/AlbumIndex?u=14403&a=13840746
Eventually, I decided to keep the Minolta scanner (mainly because I have already sold my old scanner).
But I still can''t believe that this is the same scanner that everyone else gives a 5-star rating for... Strengths: Digital ICE works reasonably well (but it softens the images a bit).
Color fidelity is acceptable when used with third-party software (VueScan by Ed Hamrick) Weaknesses: Color fidelity from color negative is very poor when used with the Minolta DS Elite scan utility.
High-resolution scan (2820dpi with DICE enabled) takes about 4 minutes per frame.
The negative tray does no stay perfectly level for the two outer frames (1 and 6). Similar Products Used: HP Photosmart C5100 film scanner Customer Service: Next to useless. The email responses I got from Minolta
simply repeated info from the user manual.
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