Nikon Coolscan 8000 vs. Epson 2450 comparison

[andreas_carl]

Wim: I am very impressed by the prints I am getting. For small print sizes (probably 12x12 inches, but certainly 8x8 inches) they are just as good in terms of resolution, detail and sharpness as my best cibachromes. For subtle tonalities the traditional wet-process is still better, and I am struggling with occasional "banding problems" on my Epson. Nevertheless, I have zero desire to do any traditional color printing anymore. For the first time, I can control contrast, color balance and color saturation selectively and independently of each other, something I could never do in my darkroom. This opens a whole creative world!!!

 

Black&White is another matter, to me silver gelatine prints still have a beauty unmatched by digital printing (but I haven't tried quadtones yet...)

[andreas_carl]

Just came across this one on Michael Reichmann's site:

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/smart_sharp.htm

 

This is a smart method of unsharp-masking using an edge-detection method. I tried it with the above sample and it is quite impressive!

[andrew l. booth]

Hi Andreas - this is really interesting.

 

Do you have any problems with Newton rings in your scans? I have a previous generation of Epson flatbed, and this is the main gripe I have with it. The flimsy 120 film carrier won't deal with film curvature, and either allows the film to curl up out of focus, or down causing interference patterns. Is this improved with the 2450, or do you have some scheme for avoiding the problem?

[irving_greines]

I've read this thread with great interest.

 

The bottom line seems to be that the Epson 2450, for its price, does a nice job on medium format and larger scans. However, there is a suggestion that it won't do a good job on 35mm. Please explain why 35mm comes out a loser on the Epson 2450.

 

Does the Epson perform acceptable work for 35mm? What if I only want to do very small 3" x 4" prints from 35mm scans? I want to do prints on the OlympusP-200 printer, which prints small; then, I want to hand the images out to subjects I'm now shooting in a b&w 35mm street shooting project. Will the Epson do the job?

 

By the way, I'm primarily a medium format shooter and I want the Epson to be able to scan 2-1/4 transparencies and send them via e-mail to clients.

 

Thanks for your input.

 

Irving

 

Thanks.

[glen_johnson]

The Epson 2450 is the first flatbed scanner that has really received acceptable reviews for handling 35mm. This is what pushed me to actually try one. I bought mine a couple of months ago. I have been very pleased at the way it handles the 135 format, including both color negative and transparancy films(emulsions ranging from earliest Kodachrome, through the current Fuji 800 speed print films, with most stuff in between). I'm sure that the Minolta Dimage Scan Multi Pro would do even better, but at 8 times the price, it hardly seems like a fair comparison. I suppose it depends on what you want to do - but if you're intent is to make enlargements no larger than say 10x, I think the Epson 2450 holds up very well for 35mm.

[andreas_carl]

Andrew: The 120 film strip holder of the Epson is not great, it allows only one image to be scanned at a time, not the entire film strip. I don't think that curl is a problem however. I have tested scanning the slide both, in it's holder and placing it directly onto the glass plate, and didn't detect any difference in sharpness whatsoever, so I believe that it's within the depth of focus of the Epson optics. (I have read some posts on photo.net were there was an improvement by putting it right onto the glass plate, so there may be differences among devices).

Film curls seems to be much more of a problem with the Nikon 8000 - the 6x9 slide pictured above was markedly out of focus with the Nikon scan along the edges, significantly softer than the Epson scan in fact! David has since bought a glass carrier for his Nikon scanner.

 

Irving: To scan 6x6 slides for web presentation or e-mails, the 2450 is more than adequate. If you want to make only small prints from 135 slides, it also will work well. Why is it so great for MF, but not so great for 15 film? Here is my speculation: the Epson optics are a bit soft (certainly when compared to the Nikon). With MF scans, you have enough pixels to play with, to perform significant "unsharp masking" without making the image look artificial (on 8x8 or 12x12) prints. With scans from 135 film you hit the unsharpen-limit much earlier.

[nghi_hoang]

Came upon this article while surfing today: <a href="http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/Epson_flatbeds.html">Epson flatbed scanners

1640SU Photo and 2450 (mostly):

comments on image sharpness (not a full review)

by Norman Koren</a>

[pphaneuf]

This looks like the 2450's little brother, notably cheaper (even with the optional transparency unit). I am interested in something like "digital proofing", for monitor output only (web, e-mail), and maybe printing medium format to Lambda (apparently, such flatbeds, even the 2450, don't have enough resolution and quality for 35mm scanning of that quality).

 

Any comments on that? Comparison between that combination and the 2450 would be welcome!

[rob loxley]

Surely you are overlooking the fact that the Nikon is a 4000dpi scanner compared to the 2400dpi of the Epson, and that's where a fair chunk of the price differential comes in?