Scanning slides on a Minolta Dimage Multi Pro

[steven_dowell]

Hi,

I have a Minolta Multi Pro, and I am trying to scan slide film. I am

scanning primarily MF slides, but sometimes 35mm as well. I've had

the scanner for almost a year, but I mostly do B&W in the darkroom,

so I don't use the scanner very much at all.

 

The quality of the scans is terrible. Color is not great at all and

the scans are in general way too dark to show any shadow detail.

Honestly, I think I'm going to have to send it in to be serviced,

but I thought I'd ask if anyone has had similar quality issues with

slide film (honestly, I haven't tried color negative film, since I

mostly use Velvia 50 slide film).

 

All of the settings in the preferences section are correct (I've

tried many different things, with no change in quality of scans).

All of the exposure control sliders are set at zero or neutral.

Again, I've tried several different exposure adjustments, to no

avail.

Also, I downloaded the latest software. No change. And I calibrated

the scanner (ctrl-shift-I). I run Windows XP.

 

No matter what I try, I'm getting bad scans.

I'm sure everyone is going to tell me to send it in, it's broke!

But has anyone had a similar situation? Will a bad lamp cause these

problems? Noise?

 

Thanks,

Steve

[bobmichaels]

To try to isolate the problem between h/w and s/w or settings, while not download the free trial of Vuescan www.hamrick.com and see if your scanner works better with a different driver and it's default settings?

 

It would take ten minutes and, at a minimum, confirm your thought that your problem is hardware related.

[joe_tait1]

To have any idea what the problem is, an example file posted on this thread and _some specifics_ on your settings would go a long way in helping people help you....

 

Is this your first scanner and are you new to film scanning? Is your monitor calibrated? What ICC profile are you assigning to your files? What program are you looking at your file in? Are these 8-bit scans, 16-bit Linear?

 

You mentioned Velvia as the film you mostly use. Velvia happens to be the hardest slide film to scan in most Prosumer CCD scanners (which is what you own). It scans well for me in some situations (I have a Multi Pro), but I am ususally dissapointed. You should try multi-sampling (8x) and see if there is any improvement. The reality is that really dense slides are a job for a higher quality scanner if you want the best results. An accurate ICC profile for your scanner from an IT8 target really will help this situation, however.

 

I assume you're using the Minolta software. Trying out Silverfast or Vuescan is the first thing you should do. The Minolta software fails miserably in terms of sharpness and shadow detail. Why Nikon/Mintolta/etc. make such crap software for their scanners I couldn't tell you.

 

If I had to guess, there is nothing wrong with the scanner. I would try Vuescan (www.hamrick.com) and familiarize myself more with the concepts/techniques used in scanning film.

[chris_chow]

Velvia is difficult to scan, but after more than a year (I'm a amateur) I can now get good results from my Multi-Pro. In my experience, the learning curve for scanning is steep and you just have to try and try and try. The Multi-Pro is my fourth scanner and so far it is the best. No problem with Provia, Astia or 100G.

 

Try Vuescan. It has lots of controls and it has certainly helped me.

[pascal_b.]

Hi there

 

I guess I'm gonna get myself hammered over this but what is so cool about vuescan after all?

 

Joe, you are saying that among other things sharpness improves with Vuescan. How?

 

I too own a Minolta multi pro and I must confess I'm not overly impressed by the sharpness of the scans. If you leave the sharpening off you get a pretty soft scan, if you sharpen at 200% you get too much noise. The only decent way to sharpen an image is still to do it in Photoshop. I have tried Vuescan, spent ages doing a scan at 48bit, checked the manual focus and then unchecked it, and did not get anything better.

 

I would be very curious to see a test where Vuescan scans sharper than Minolta software. Can you elaborate?

 

Re colour and shadow detail: I am quite happy with multi pro and its software. Take a decent slide, I mean a slide that is not 1/2 stop under or over exposed, and you will get what you see.

 

(I'm talking velvia 50, 35 mm or MF and landscape).

 

Thanks for your time

 

P.

[prashanteju]

I'm having a very similar problems with dimageMutli I. It is the oldest version of the scanner. The software provided is good for the 'colorful' slides such as flowers etc. But if the density range is varying then it produces nasty color cast and dark shadows. I downloaded vuescan and it does the best job with such slides...but not the 'flower-colorful' slides! :(