price, reliability, ease of integration, relative speed, scan quality

No ICE, little noisy, not as quick as some on the market. Occaisional dust problem.

For the price, very good. Not found too many limitations that cannot be overcome. The Nikon was rated as the same quality but was nearly £200 more at the time. if asked for a recommendation, it would get one, with the caveat that if possible the Nikon is possibly worth it. Had one glitch setting up and since then nothing. If you are serious highend user go for the Nikon or the high end Minolta (Multi)

Customer Service

Fantastic. One phonecall, then they phoned me back to give me a full diagnosis and walk through check to make sure it was fully working.

Similar Products Used:

Original Scan Dual, Various flatbeds

Inexpensive

Lots, see "Bottomline"

I bought this scanner after reading a favorable review in a magazine (digifoto) and having had excellent experiences with the Minolta Multi I and II scanners. I´ve got a Mac G 3 & Photoshop 5.5.

I used the scanner for exactly two days and gave it back today in exchange for a Nikon Coolscan IV ED.

The scanner is just too cheap and mine was faulty, too.

The scans from slides were much too dark, i had to make a lot of adjustments in the driver and Photoshop and still didn´t get decent results. Lots of time just wasted. The scans weren´t particularely sharp and lacked this "smooth", noisefree look, that you get from better machines. The scanner is awfully loud. Mine had a defect: on every scan appeared a very thin stripe, i guess, the CCD was faulty.

So, this machine was just too time-consuming, results were far from what i´m used to. If the brightness and/or color fidelity of the scanner are no good, it´s money down the drain, if you ask me. It doesn´t help much, that it´s "only" 400,00 $ down the drain.

Customer Service

Not needed

Similar Products Used:

Minolta Multi
Nikon LS IV

Sharpness

Automatic mode, color constistency, Minolta quality control, serious banding, acoustic noise

Preview is very bad. You have to do a lot of corrections to get at least acceptable scan. It may look nice but what you see is not what was on the scene. Forget about color consistency. Each preview is different and has to be adjusted manually. Previews are generally too dark. This never happened to me even with cheapest S20 not to mention Elite or Nikons. What more the scanner is very heavily temperature affected. After 5 minutes of work you will get totally different scans compared to ones made just after switching on. TWO samples I worked with had serious banding problems visible on monochrome areas (sky, white wall etc.). Totally plastic, after 50 rols of film the film career was heavily worned out. Very noisy. The only good thing I found was resolution - really good (optics&chip) and very little shadow noise.
If you are low on budget go rather for S20 not to mention more modern ones. If you demand more then internet shots you will spent ammount of time to get the scans acceptable - if you are lucky and yours sample does not have banding problems.

Similar Products Used:

HP S20, Nikon LS 2000, Nikon Coolscan IV ED, Minolta Elite

Price, USB connectivity, quite good resolution.

Extremely inaccurate color, especially so with color negatives, slow scan, quality

My first film scanner and it's a total disappointment, USB interface is convenient, scanning is slow, the worst thing is with color negatives you can never get the color right. Operations of the scanner is full of bugs. Guess I'll give those Nikon film scanners a try.

Customer Service

None required, but my friend's broke down after a month.

Similar Products Used:

None

*Affordable
*The specification is the best at this price range: 3.2Dmax, 2820dpi, 12bit A/D conversion......
*Scanned image quality is good: I give 75 marks (100 for perfect)to the color accuracy and sharpness.
*Scanned image has much better details than the photos from the lab.

*No ICE, so dust, small particles and scratches shown on the image very clearly. Therefore, cleaning the film and the image before and after scanning is a critical task.
*USB is a convenient but not stable connection interface, even slow for an imaging device.
*The PC version driver is not well written.
*The color is terrible before calibration.

Don't compare this film scanner to the pro scanner with ICE, please. This is only a $488 film scanner. The film scanner with ICE cost you at least $750. Although the price of Nikon Coolscan III has dropped to about $500, the specification was outdated.
Certainly, if you have enough budget, go for the scanner with ICE. However, if your budget is limited and know how to clean the scanned image, like me, you won't regret for buying this scanner! Unfortunately, if your budget is limited and don't know how to clean the image, don't buy any film scanner, buy a better flatbed scanner instead. This is because scanning photo is much easier than scanning film/slide.
In fact, this scanner is only worth 3.5 stars in overall rating. The extra 0.5 stars is due to the very good service attitude and efficiency of the representatives and technicians of Hong Kong Minolta.

Customer Service

I've been using this scanner for 9 monhts. In this period of time, I needed to adjust the color and clean the scanned image for every roll and every frame of the films. Even worse, some of the scanned images were still unacceptable after a series of adjustment! So I felt frustrated and took it to HK Minolta Service Centre for calibration and check up on 10/7/01. The technicians there are very efficient and helpful. They've calibrated the color, adjusted the contact and cleaned the CCD for me at no charge. I got the scanner back on 13/7/01. Now, my Scan Dual II really rocks!

Similar Products Used:

This is my first film scanner.

Wonerfully sharp scans from slides.
Decent software.

To complain about lack of ICE is like complaining that your Ford Fiesta doesn't have a sun-roof.
If scans are grainy, it's because the film is grainy. If you don't want grain, try scanning from the transparency adapter on a flatbed. You won't get any grain, and you won't get a sharp scan. Humans are 80% water and film is made out of grain.
Sometimes I get an orange line on the scans that is probably caused by dust particles. It is easily removed in Photoshop.

This is my second review. Either all DualII are different and got I the only good one, or many of you don't know how to use a scanner. It can be a little tricky. I've had the scanner fo almost a year and I've been getting excellent results from slides. I add some green and some saturation in the default mode and all I have to do in photoshop is add unsharp mask, crop it, and spend some time cleaning it since it's so sharp it picks up everything. I'm thinking about sometime printing 12X18 prints for exhibition purposes and would thne probably step up to a Nikon 4000ED or 8000ED for a lot more money. First I would like to see this would work with the Dual II. At that size the maximum resolution would be around 220 dpi. It just might work. This is probably the best scanner you can buy for under $500.

Customer Service

Minolta has done a good job of making itself invicible, so as not provide any service except that contained in it's rather anemic web site. If you are willing to pay for the toll, you can probably find someone from Minolta to answer your questions.

Similar Products Used:

Epson 640

Great sharpness, nice warm skin tones, bold colours.

this is my third unit!
my first had awefull colour, my second the transport failed.
The warm, bold colours are great for portraits but not very accurate.

This scanner (now i have a working one)is great and giving me exceptional results, it is not 100% accurate but very flattering as far as colour is concerned. edges are razer sharp though, and a can of air means i dont miss 'ICE' as i look after negatives. I have serious doubts about Minolta's quality control though.

Customer Service

Jessops UK very ggod, swapped the units without question

Similar Products Used:

Canoscan 2700

Does everything I need in an entry-level scanner.

Software creates awful colors -- use Vuescan instead.
Also seems to catch more dust than I'd like (but maybe that's my fault).

This is my first scanner, and I really just wanted something pretty basic, with accurate colors. I was limited to USB connection, as I didn't feel like buying a SCSI adapter for my laptop.

At first I was convinced that I had a faulty unit like some people have described here, as the colors were horrible (to my eye, and I'm no expert). I compared a few scans to ones a friend had done for me on his CanoScan 2710 and his were SO much better. And as others have said, mine weren't consistently wrong, but differently wrong every time, requiring a lot of adjusting and re-scanning... then I tried Vuescan because of the recommendations from users here (www.hamrick.com).

I suppose I was skeptical that this shareware could change my mind that the thing was awful and probably faulty, but I tried it, and after a bit of tinkering, it works like a charm. Having re-scanned the pix, they stack up fine against the Canon (close enough that which is better is probably a matter of color settings and personal choice).

As far as the noise, yes it does sound as if it's thrashing its insides to bits when it focuses, but I really don't care.

Overall, I think that this is a good scanner for a beginner like me, but consider it $40 more expensive for the Vuescan software, which renders excellent colors, and in my opinion, is a necessity.

Customer Service

Haven't needed (but the user manual is pretty bad...)

Similar Products Used:

CanoScan 2710

Light weight, decent quality scans, sharp enough for 8x10" prints.

Quality control sucks. The framing has gone crazy on my scanner while scanning mounted slides. It doesnt scan slide#4 at all. Only does 1-3.

Quality control is lacking... I have serious doubts about this scanner. Scans from the Nikon Coolscan-IV are sharper. OTOH, with vuescan, the scans turn out d*** fine, and give me great 8x10" prints. Great for scanning for web pages. OK for an entry level scanner, but for serious work, forget it. Get a Nikon or a 4000dpi scanner.

Customer Service

OK. The darn thing worked properly at the service centre, so I brought it back. It behaves crazy now and then.

Similar Products Used:

HP S20, Nikon Coolscan-III, Coolscan-IV, Acer scanwit.