Minolta Scanner Dual III vs Elite II

[mallik]

I would like to start printing my stuff myself, having been vexed

with inconsistencies of labs. I would like to use the scanner

primairly for print film - color and B&W. I am tempted with Minolta

Dimage Scan Dual III for reasons of price, specs and reviews. However

while this is at $280, the Elite version in Minolta is $720. I seem

to get additionally Digital ICE which appears to be an advantage to

clear dust, scratches etc. Does any one have experience with these

and can guide me through? The difference is a lot, and I want to

know, if I should need it.

 

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

 

Mallik.

[mark a hrefhttpwww]

Hi Mallik, I own the Scan Dual II, my advise: if you want to scan negative film you SHOULD have ICE to get rid of the dust. Scanning slide film with the Scan Dual II without ICE is not a problem. Together with Hamrick scan software (www.hamrick.com) the Scan Dual II (and I suppose also the III) is a good scanner. Mark.

[bishop_vc]

Hi Mallik,

 

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. 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.

 

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 by 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