Scanner suggestions for 400 & 1600 speed BW film

[steven_sherwin]

I am considering buying a dedicated film scanner and was wondering if anyone could offer advice. Most of my work

is done with 400 or 1600 speed BW film and I would prefer a scanner that worked well for this speed of film. The

Nikon Coolscans seem to produce excellent results for color (which I rarely do) but I was wondering if anyone had

any experience/advice re the faster speed B&W films.

Thank you

[leicaglow]

You'll want a good, dedicated film scanner to capture the beautiful grain, and really, Nikon is the only way to go right now. Unless you go used, in which case you can go with a Minolta Dual Scan or Canoscan. If you have the money, buy the Nikon. Flatbed scanners just can't capture the grain sharply enough to be very useful, and with B&W especially, you need a high DMax to capture the range of tone.

[godfrey]

For high speed, grainy films I often prefer the scans produced by the Epson V700 over the Nikon Coolscan IV ED. Testing

showed me that the V700 achieves slightly lower resolution with a little bit of defocus compared to the Nikon, but apply a

little sharpening and the resulting image looks nicer and is easier to work with in image processing, IMO. Grain aliasing is

less of a problem.

 

Godfrey