Chosing a Scanner and Win7

[rui_lebreiro]

<p>Hi,</p>

<p>I shoot exclusively 35mm b&w and i'm thinking what scanner to get to start procesing my own film at home.</p>

<p>Maybe I will be interested in Medium Format in the future, but as my main concern is size (that i don't have) I'm, leaning to a dedicated film scanner.</p>

<p>Of course a 35mm+MF dedicated would be the best, but I haven't find a suitable (in terms of cost) scanner so far.</p>

<p>In my head there is a Plustek 7300i, or maybe find a used Minolta.</p>

<p>About Minolta's... (Scan Dual, Scan Elite, let's see what comes along) will I be able to put it to work on win7? Any experience on that? I've read problems in getting them to work on Vista.</p>

<p>Maybe I could buy an alternative scanner driver, if possible.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance,<br>

Rui</p>

[andylynn]

<p>I don't know a lot of specifics about Plustek, but for the Minoltas, the Minolta software has not been updated for a long time and does not run on Windows 7... unless the newest software for the newest models is new enough to, but I wouldn't count on it... but Vuescan does. I have a Win7 64 machine that uses a Minolta Dual III perfectly. I installed Vuescan on it, and did not install the Minolta scanner software. <a href="http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/vuescan.htm#supported">See the Vuescan supported scanner list here</a> .</p>

[john_shriver]

<p>You really have to stick with scanners someone is supporting.<br>

The current manufacturers (Nikon, Imacon, Epson, et. al.) have ported their drivers to Windows Vista, and thus Windows 7. But don't assume that theyalso chose to support 64-bit, for instance Nikon hasn't.<br>

Or you can go with third-party software vendors, SilverFast and VueScan. See what they support, and check the footnotes. (Some scanner vendors never told these vendors how to talk to directly to the scanner, so they are dependent on the vendor's device driver.)<br>

Of course, it's the height of arrogance of the scanner vendors to sell scanners without publishing the specifications on how to talk to them. When IBM lost an antitrust judgment around 1960, they had to publish the full interface specifications for everything they sold. The rise of "unpublished interfaces" is really a ghastly trend of the last 30 years.</p>

[bjscharp]

I have a Minolta scanner (Scan Elite II, I believe), and the Minolta software doesn't work under Windows 7 64 bit.

 

Luckily I use Vuescan, which works fine, and which I heartily recommend.

[mjferron]

<p>Vuescan will run Minolta scanners on the latest windows systems. Minolta gave up support shortly after they went out of business. The Vuescan interface does take some getting use to.</p>

[bjscharp]

Indeed. I preferred the interface of the Minolta software. Vuescan does give much better pictures though, especially for B&W, worth learning the interface for.

[lovcom_photo]

<p>

<p>There is no need for the supporting software to support 64 bit OS's. 32 bit code can run in emulation mode and I know this for sure with Windows 7 64-bit OS. Now this software might run faster if it were compiled to native 64 bit executable, but the increase in speed is not really required for the purpose of this application.<br>

As to compatibility, it is far more important that the software play ball with an OS then whether the software is 32 or 64 bit code. Often incompatibility issues are much more about other anomalies then bit depth of the executables.<br>

I have the Nikon CoolScan 5000 ED, and the software runs fine in Vista 32 bit, and Windows 7 64 bit. Now I've not yet tried to find any new Nikon Windows 7 software updates yet, but as is, the older software seems to work.<br>

I purchased the Nikon CoolScan 5000 ED last year, after doing hours of research and analysis on the web, and I love this solution very much....the scanning quality is fantastic...for 35mm negatives, I would steer clear of all flat bed scanners...they are of more benefit for larger negatives, medium, large format on up, but not so good for 35mm; this has been my experience.</p>

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