New MF-Film Scanner: Minolta Dimage Multi II - any experience

[werner boeckelen]

A long waited film-scanner seems coming along: Minolta Dimage Multi II

Whereas the predecessor Dimage had only 1128dpi in MF, it now

provides full 2820 dpi up to 6x9. Sounds good news.

See http://www.minolta.com/dp/multi2/index.html

Any experiences ?

 

Werner

[werner boeckelen]

oops, in fact the headline on the WEB-Site was misleading. It's not a full MF-Film- Scanner. Sorry for the confusion.

What those Minolta guys have done is mainly taking more advantage of combining existing hardware & software. A fullformat MF scanning is done thru stripes, which can be stitched together afterwards.

Even more interesting if that works! Any experience ?

 

Werner

[ken rockwell]

No experience, but read the data very carefully.

 

It's a hose job. (American slang for "Marteting Hoax" or "Fakery.")

 

It only scans MF at about 1,180 dpi.

 

You can set it to scan the middle 24mm of a MF image at the same resolution that you can scan the 24mm wide image of 35mm film, but who cares unless you want a hard crop.

 

You only can scan the full 56mm wide MF image at 1,180 DPI.

 

Good god and good luck! I'm still looking for somthing to scan 35 - 4x5 with good Dmax for less than $1,000 US

KR

[plewenthal]

I contacted Minolta via the FAQ section of their web site and asked them about medium format scans. Their response: "The Scan Multi II can scan an entire medium format slide or negative film at true optical resolution 1128dpi or interpolated resolution of 2820dpi. Using the optional UH-M1 Universal Holder, and the Scan Multi II software, you can scan portions of the medium format film at a true optical resolution of 2820dpi, but the images must then be stiched together."

 

I have called a number of Minolta vendors and been unable to find anyone who has actually done this. Minolta does not provide stitching software. Still, if it could be done seamlessly it seems a relatively inexpensive way to obtain pretty high resolution scans.

[jim_karczewski]

I just picked up the Multi II less than a week ago and Love it. Even at the Interpolated 2820DPI it doesn't look interpolated! It's nowhere as slow as I thought a High resolution scanner would be and the multi-sampling is a great feature to have (1,2,4,8 & 16x Sampling) I've mainly been working with scanning 645 chromes and the images are excellent, that is until I tried VueScan tonight.. Now I'm really Excited! The only thing I could kill Minolta for is NOT including digital ice with this scanner. Yeah they have Color Reconstruction for old faded negs and Grain Reduction enhancements, but those don't help me when I have to clean every negative religiously before scanning.

 

Jim

[eurico_melo]

Does anyone have information concerning the new MF scanner of Polaroid, the SprintScan 45 Ultra? It is said to be 2500ppi 14bit A/D converter and 3.8 OD max. Polaroid says that it has an "affordable price" but I could not find their definition of affordable anywhere.

 

If the specifications are correct it may be a better choice than the Minolta Dimage Multi II with the trick of sliced scanning and only 12 bit and 3.6 dynamic range, even if the 2830ppi resolution is higher.

 

Can anyone explain me how the dynamic range relates to the OD max and with the A/D bit resolution?

[don_feinberg2]

About the new Polaroid scanner... The following snippet is from their website. It is obviously "very affordable"!

 

The Polaroid SprintScan 45 Ultra Multi-Format Digital Film Scanner is currently available through authorized Polaroid dealers. The SprintScan 45 Ultra is compatible with Macintosh and Windows operating systems and connects via SCSI-2 interface. The suggested US list price of the new scanner is $7,495. International prices may vary, and can be determined by contacting the regional Polaroid office.

[doug_brightwell1]

A review of the Polaroid scanner can be found at:

 

http://www.creativepro.com/story/review/7122.html

 

One notable characteristic is that you get banding unless you

scan at the highest optical resolution. I would want to do that

anyway, and it wouldn't scare me away, but might be an issue for

some.

 

Doug

[eurico_melo]

Thanks for the information.

 

Price: That is what I suspected, it approaches the price of an Imacon Flextight. The important question is: Is the output of the Polaroid 45 ultra very similar in quality to that of the Imacon Flextight? In that price range a difference of 30% may not be significant.

 

Banding: I agree that the banding is harmless if you only want to scan at the highest resolution. However, be aware that if you need a simple scan for proofing or for the net you still have to scan at the 2571ppi and then resample. The banding may be very annoying when the image is sampled to adapt for screen resolution (this depends a lot on the program used for viewing the image).

[doug_brightwell1]

What is the price of the Imacon Flextight?

 

Regarding the Polaroid, I'm assuming that after downsampling a

full res scan in PhotoShop, there would be no banding. Anybody

know?

[william_burgund]

I'm new at digital. Is 1128 dpi enough to get good scans on medium format? I'm currently shooting 35mm but was thinking of buying the Dimage Scan Multi in case I move up to Med. Format.

[mike_rott]

Polaroid showed a semi working prototype of a MF scanner at photokina

which is supposed to be available early next year. It is called the

PrintScan 120 and will scan 35mm an MF up to 6x9 at 4000x4000 dpi. It

has an OD of 3.6 to 3.9 with multiscanning. Comes with SCSI-2 and

firewire (finally!) and will sell for less then the PrintScan 45. The

estimated price was about 8000 DM that would be about $3500. Might be

worth waiti