Digital BW, The Print

Hi Randy,

We looked at the same things a few months ago and bought the Minolta 
Scan Multi Pro. This does MF up to 6x9 at 3200ppi and 35mm at 4800ppi.

In a lot of searching on the Web we found less moaning about the Minolta 
than the Nikon apart from the software, which has now been improved, and 
I never intended to use anything but Vuescan anyway. The main advantages 
of the Minolta are better depth of field and better film carriers as 
standard. The claimed Dmax figures are as daft as everyone else's and 
hardly relevant for B&W anyway. We have found that the Scanhancer 
diffuser gives an improvement in apparent grain with fine grain film (eg 
Pan F) but not quite so much on Delta 3200 (which we use for pinholes).

Whichever scanner you choose, you should use 16 bit files as far as 
possible for B&W, which means you need lots of computing power, memory 
and storage space. A 120 film scanned at 3200ppi comes to about 1.5GB!

HTH,

Colin

http://www.travelling-light.net/

randyrancier wrote:
> Well, from what I have been able to gather from those of you that 
> work with MF film, is that there is a clear advantage to using a 
> 4000 dpi scanner over others.  Sounds like most of you prefer the 
> Nikon (8000) scanners.  Are there any other contenders or is there a 
> clear advantage that the Nikon has over the others?  Does Nikon make 
> any other MF 4000 dpi scanners or is the 8000 & 9000 it?
> Thanks again,
> Randy