Minolta 5400 - scans appear not very sharp

[bruce_kerns1]

It looks to me like you are hitting the film grain. I get the same results with Tmax

400. The high res sample I provided is from Provia 100, one of the finest grain slide

films. I also used VR on that shot.

[nathan_cohen]

Yes, these are grain issues, not scanner problems.

[karl_shuffler]

This is not a scanner problem, but indeed having something to do with grain. If your film is indeed underexposed, there will be compensation that will take place to try to correct the exposure problem, but with the cost of showing more grain than usual. This is more true with positive film, than negative film. And being able to produce a file size that exceeds 100Mb, there is no digital camera that can produce such a file at this time. It is for this reason, film is better. To do better would mean to have a digital back for a medium format camera like for example the Hasselblad system. But then we are also speaking about the use of the Carl Zeiss lens; which is a class by itself. Period! Also if you crop your negative or positive film, ( the more cropped area, or getting close) will magnifiy the results to where you will see more grain. At any rate, Minolta has done great improvemnets with the 5400 film scanner, including the use of the solfware, so much I feel I was cheated when buying the Minolta Dimage Scan Multi at over $2000.00 just a few years ago. I fell perhaps I should of waited. I just question how good is the new version, the Multi Pro at 4800 dpi vs. 2800 dpi? See pic with the use of the Olympus Epic, it too came out sharp.<div></div>

[melmann]

I also have just started working with this scanner on both slides and negatives. Being new

to film scanning I'm trying to learn how to make the sharpest scans first, and then figure

out the color adjustments. Here's a scan of a resolution target (I believe it's an old military

standard). Settings were - 5400 dpi scan, 8bit color depth, manual focus, 4x scans. The

image was scanned from a Kodachrome 64 slide shot in full sunlight using an Olympus

OM-1 with 35-70mm Zuiko zoom lens set at 70mm, 1/250, f8, from 40" away. Does

anyone have suggestions on how to make this sharper? Using a 10x loupe on the slide I

see much clearer images with higher contrasts.<div></div>