Minolta Scan Dual III vs. Minolta Scan Elite II vs. Canon FS 4000

As between the

 

Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III ($280)

 

Minolta Dimage Scan Elite II ($720)

 

Canon FS4000 ($800)

 

Does anyone have strong opinions?

Dealing with dust is a major hassle. I'd consider paying extra $$$ for a scanner with the IR channel and support software (e.g., Digital ICE) to take care of dust and scratches.

I have the Minolta Scan Duall III, if I had $500 I'd get it over the Elite II, as it is a better value. If I had $800, I would definately spend the money on the Canon, as the resolution is significantly greater, and it does have the IR channel to get rid of dust.

Check out http://www.steves-digicams.com/scanners.html for reviews of various scanners.

Good luck, and enjoy!

Mauro

To be honest, given the falling cost of the Canon FS4000, the Dimage Scan Dual II is going to lose out if people are wise. For little more money you can produce files twice as large. If you have $800, get the Canon. If you have between $500 and $800 save more to get the Canon and if you don't want to spend more than $500 get the Dimage scan Dual III. Make sense?

 

The Canon is the best deal for 35mm scanning. Quality can match the Nikon 4000 at half the cost. You'd be a fool to ignore it if you can afford it.

Hi Naji,

 

Here's a slightly edited post I made in response to a similar question in the Leica forum last week:

 

 

If you're going to be scanning chromes or colour negs then ICE is indispensible. The newer scanners with digital ICE^3 (cubed) have some extra features including a "recovery of colour" feature (ROC) for faded negs and chromes and a grain size management feature (GEM) to help correct grain aliasing effects. I have a Nikon Coolscan IV and the ROC feature is amazing. I'm scanning in my parents 35 year old Europe chromes and ICE makes them look like new. The colour recovery feature is far better than Vuescan btw. Keep in mind that ICE does not work with most B&W films (chromogenic B&W films like Kodak T400CN and Ilford XP2 are the exception). So if you're going to be scanning T-Max or Tri-X you'll be out of luck using ICE for dust and scratch.

 

I recently went through the same exercise as you (considered the Scan Dual II, Scan Dual III, Elite, Elite II, Sprintscan 4000, Canoscan FS4000 and the Coolscan IV) and I chose the Coolscan IV.

 

Why? Here are some of my thoughts:

 

1. My inkjet won't print larger than 8x10 (Canon S900). No need for 4000dpi although 4000dpi supposedly will help with grain aliasing effects. The Coolscan IV has GEM to mitigate this, however. On the other hand, if price is no object, more is better as far as resolution is concerned (this makes the Canoscan FS4000 attractive - more on this later).

 

2. I ultimately decided that I wanted ICE cubed with the ROC feature to help with my parents old chromes (ruling out the Scan Dual II/III, Elite - no colour recovery - and the Sprintscan 4000). There are thousands of them - I can't imagine correcting them all in Photoshop. It wouldn't have been as important for my own work because my non-digital stuff is mostly B&W and of course it's "new" and thus less likely to be scratched. On the other hand have you looked at the scratches on a newly processed negative lately! You will if you scan without ICE.

 

3. The Minolta Scanners all showed strange banding artefacts in the tests on the Imaging Resource website. See the scanner reviews and www.imaging-resource.com. Look at the dark areas of the train chrome scan in particular. Although I was very interested in the Minolta scanners, these artefacts were so disturbing I completely ruled them out.

 

4. The Canoscan FS4000 looks very good. The price is attractive, especially for 4000 dpi, but it's apparently horribly slow especially using USB. It can also use SCSI, with which it's apparently faster, but I didn't really want to buy a SCSI card and with thousands of old slides to scan I couldn't spend 4 minutes per scan. The Coolscan IV is very fast and uses good old fashioned USB 1.1.

 

5. Multiscanning can be important for both chromes and negs. I chose the Coolscan IV despite this. Vuescan implements multiscanning for this scanner so I can use it for troublesome scans with a lot of dark areas. Time will tell if this was a mistake or not.

 

Keep in mind that the digital darkroom is no panacea. It's lots of work!

 

Good luck.

 

Regards,

 

Steve

I am in a similar situation and I'm thinking of buying a Dual III. But how good is it? Compared to more expensive scanners I understand that the Dual III is a bit poorer, but indeed it seems to be a pretty good scanner.

 

In my case I will use it, not for printings (I don't have a printer) but for scanning my slides and send them to magazines, (instead of sending the original slides) and for my homepage on the web. I only use Fujichrome Velvia.

 

Does anyone have experienses about using the Dual III and is the scanner good enough for what I'm planning to use it for?

Do you use Kodachrome or B&W? Canon has a note on their FS4000 page about the dust removal not working with these films. I don't know if Minolta can do any better however. Just an angle to consider.