Minolta 5400 I or II for B/W negs: Cold cathode fluorescent vs. White LEDs

Anyone have any thoughts about the quality of the different light sources used in the

Minolta 5400/5400 II for scanning B/W negs?

 

I'm ready to purchase one or the other of these two scanners, to be used about 90% of the

time on B/W negs. I wonder why they changed light source? I had read that the cold

cathode light of the 5400 made it better for scanning B/W than LEDs, but I didn't see any

evidence.

 

The speed increase would be much welcomed, but my 'puter doesn't have USB2 so I

probably wouldn't gain as much.

 

Could be a good time to get the first version, as the prices will start to drop.

 

Here are links to the specifications for both scanners:

 

5400:

 

http://tinyurl.com/5l7lt

 

5400 II:

 

http://tinyurl.com/5y5mz

 

Thanks.

I think we'll have to wait until the 5400 II becomes broadly available. You just can't tell that much from the specs.

 

Robert

Especially the Grain Dissolver (Minolta's imitation of my

Scanhancer 5LE) made B&W scans a lot better. Since the Grain

Dissolver is missing from the Elite 5400 II I am quite concerned

about the scan quality of B&W silverbased negs. Let's just hope

they diffused the LED light more than we have seen from the

competition. Tests have shown that a Scanhancer in the Nikon

LS-5000ED made a big difference to B&W scans of silverbased

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Erik: Are you developing a version for nikonscan V?. It'll be very welcome:-)

"Tests have shown that a Scanhancer in the Nikon LS-5000ED made a big difference to B&W scans of silverbased negs."

 

Absolutely! No questions about it. The Scanhancer soften the image so much that it looks so blurry! There are better ways to deal with noise/grain. The Scanhancer in a LS-5000 is not the solution.

 

People have been scanning silver halide negative with Nikon Coolscan without this kind of noise with lots of examples shown on Photo.net!

On my 5400, I use the Grain Dissolver routinely (except for Astia 100f, which has almost

no grain), but I do not scan B&W negs. I find that image softening is trivial. This, of

course, does not address the question of how well the 5400 II will do with B&W. I believe

that the new scanner will have GEM for dealing with grain.

Jack: The scanhancer IS NOT for grain/noise. It is most appropriated for scratches or less than perfect b&w film (dust, blemishes, etc) were ICE is not useful and, like always, there is a trade off.

 

Rafael

Look at this thread for info regarding light source affecting b & w scanning http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=00AKZC

 

The "old" Minolta may be the best choice for B & W film scanning due to fluorescent light source?

Is the difference perhaps something like the difference between a cold head or a condenser head in an enlarger? The cold head (flourescent lamp) creates a softer light/soft image, and the condenser head (LEDs) creates a harder light/image?

http://www.photozone.de/2Equipment/reviews/elitecoolscan.htm

 

I will be interesting to get confirmation that LED or fluo is best on B&W and especially Kodachrome..

If the "white LED" in Minolta's 5400 II is similar to the LED light sources in Nikon Coolscans, then it's a bad omen for scanning silver b&w film.

 

I have tested the Minolta 5400 I, Minolta Scan Dual IV, Epson 4870 flatbed, and Nikon Coolscan V using the same b&w negative, which I also printed in my darkroom with a cold-light enlarger. The Nikon scans were horrific -- very dusty, and revealing scratches invisible in the other prints, including the darkroom print. I believe this is because the Coolscan LED is like a point-light-source enlarger. The current Minolta scanners are more like diffusion enlargers.

 

The Nikon scans were sharper, though this impression is partly because of the higher local contrast. On balance, I would avoid the Nikon scanners for silver b&w film because of the dust-and-scratch problems. (Remember, Digital ICE doesn't work with silver b&w.)

 

Few people bother to make this kind of comparison test, but you can't judge a scanner in isolation. You have to scan the same negative with different scanners to see the differences, and you have to make a darkroom print for reference. I am eager to see how the new Minolta 5400 II performs in this regard. The new "white LED" worries me.

Methinks KM did this largely in the name of matching Nikon 's

scanning speed specs. Since absolute scanning speed is a

relative issue to me versus output quality (ever wait for a drum

scan to finish?), I won't be in much of a hurry to ditch my 5400/I,

which I'm quite happy with for both conventional b/w as well as

chromogenic b/w and, of course, color.

 

I do find it intriguing that they would make this sort of major

change-up in the newer model. I'd like to think that, a' la Nikon's

F and F2, that there will be an overlap in production of both

models, offering a choice no one else does. (Of course, if they

want to be truly evil, they could specify that the original 5400

would reamain in production "for an unspecified period of time",

just to get people off their butts about deciding to buy one. At

least, that's what I would do, in my darker moments;-)

 

- Barrett

Hello Tom,

 

Did you also test dual scan IV and 5400 vs coolscan V on E6 and kodachrome slides ?

 

On the photozone.de test, it seems also the nikon scans look a bit sharper but when i took the picture from the site and applied USM on the 5400 it really looks like the coolscan V..

 

Is the Nikon really sharper optically or is it just because the scanner/driver maybe applies more USM ?

 

Regards

Tom: Can you post your results?, That will be great.

 

Thanks Rafael

I'd like to comment on several poster's input.

 

Rafael - It might be possible to use a Scanhancer with the Nikon

V, but I am not currently testing that. Have a look at the

Scanhancer website > Other Scanners > link to Scanhancer in

MA-21 film holder. Maybe it would work in a V as well. Does it

use the same film holder?

 

Jack - "The Scanhancer soften the image so much that it looks

so blurry!". What you call "blurry" is in fact just the lack of

peppergrain and grain grittyness in this scan. There is no

resolution lost! Gritty grain works like a randomized raster which

happens to suggest more sharpness. Apply some USM and you

will get the same impression of sharpness, but then without the

white spots and the scratch. I am not advocating a Scanhancer

for the Nikon 5000 by the way. These scans were made by

someone who wanted to experiment with my Scanhancer, which

is originally developed for the Minolta Dimage Scan Multi Pro. I

was very surprised to see the results though. If I were the owner

of a Nikon scanner I would certainly not be happy with the LED

source when I had to scan B&W siverbased film. That is the

point I was trying to illustrate here, since the new Minolta seems

to have a similar light source now. The fact that we don't get to

see these kind of results on Photo.net usually is because when

you downsample an image the single grain particles and

specks are sampled away anyway. The sample shown here is a

crop from a 4000 ppi scan at 100% viewing size. It would look

like this on anyone's Nikon LS-5000ED scanner. No cheat.

 

Robert - I agree with your softening remark, as explained above.

With regards to GEM: I have it on my Minolta Multi Pro. Well,

speaking about "blurry", GEM is just worthless with B&W. Makes

grain look like some melted plastic in close-up. Highly irritating

in big enlargements of B&W pics. Applications like NeatImage

can do an interesting job in this field too, but they all affect the

grain identity as it is represented by the film. In case you want to

look B&W like true film, you should avoid to use them IMHO.

 

Jim - You are right in your analogy between different enlarger

systems and light sources. However, the Minolta Multi Pro has a

reflector combined with a cold cathode light, which makes it far

too collimated too. Hence I developed the Scanhancer. But

generally speaking cold cathode light is softer than LED

sources, because in order to emit enough light for the CCD to

see through the darkest areas of the film the LEDs are highly

concentrated. The cold cathode simply produces a lot more light.

At this point I highly agree with the Imacon designs: they have

used a very fat (=soft) tubelight as a light source. I don't

understand why the other tabletop scanner makers always try to

use the thinnest lamp possible. To save a few Watts of energy?

Highly unlikely.

 

Tom - I completely concur with your findings and subsequent

worries. The usual scream from Nikoners that they get "perfect"

B&W scans from their scanners just cannot be substantiated by

side-by-side tests. And softening the light source of the Nikons

mostly results in LED error warnings. There really is a problem

here.

 

Barrett - I strongly feel that this is a "me too"-action from KM in

order to gain the same selling points that makes Nikon their big

brother. I surely hope that KM tried their best to not only match

the same (or better) specs in writing, but also used their brains

to make the beast scan really better than any of its

predecessors. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Jean: I did not test any color films with these scanners. I was interested only in their performance with silver b&w.

 

It's possible that Nikon b&w scans appear sharper partly because of sharper optics. However, I believe it's mostly because of their dramatically higher local contrast. If you crank up the contrast of any image, it will always look sharper. Note that my Nikon scan looks sharper than my darkroom reference print, which was made using a cold-light enlarger with a Schneider Companon lens. It is a very sharp print. The Nikon scan of the same negative LOOKS sharper, but close examination reveals no additional detail. That's why I think it's an effect of local contrast.

 

Rafael: I would like to post the results of my tests, but I'm just too busy right now. The scanned files will have to be drastically downsized, and I'll have to scan the darkroom print I made for reference. Maybe this weekend I can find the time.

Local contrast and USM are the same for me, not for you ?

I'm not sure Nikon optics are superior than minolta's one...

>Barrett Benton , mar 01, 2005; 12:07 a.m.

 

> (Of course, if they want to be truly evil, they could specify that the original 5400 would

reamain in production "for an unspecified period of time", just to get people off their butts

about deciding to buy one. At least, that's what I would do, in my darker moments;-)

 

Barrett, you nailed it. I just talked to Minolta, and the 5400 II is in addition to the 5400 I.

And, if you look on their website they are shown next to oneanother:

 

http://tinyurl.com/65zz4

 

So, looks like it isn't a replacment after all. I think I'm going to get the 5400 I...

I have been wondering if the change in scanning technolgy of the II has anything to do with the banding/lines that appear on some models of the I when scanning. In my case I get lines when the scanner is set to multi sampling.

Geoff,

 

I used to run into this problem too now and then, but since I am

using the Dimage Scan driver 1.1.5 I have not seen any

microbanding anymore. With each new driver the firmware gets

automatically updated too. I don't know if this firmware will

remain in the EPROM, but assuming it does, it would be very

wise to run the newest Dimage Scan driver every now and then

in order to keep the firmware updated. Even when you would be

using Vuescan only.