joe.baldwin

I've had the Scan Dual IV since July and like Neil was very dissapointed with it on three counts. 1) Dynamic Range: Slide scans in particular exhibited terrible blockiness. 2) color cast: again slide scans were the worst offenders with a default magenta hue for all slides. The negs were harder to determine, they seemed to be better in general, but since the only thing I had to compare them to were prints. I couln't say they were too bad. Certainly not as far off as the slides. 3) Sharpness: For a 3200 dpi scanner I was expecting incredible sharpness. Photo articles and the Minolta web site had talked about being able to see film grain. Not only was the grain not discernable, details that I could pick out with a 10x lupe on the slide were lost.

 

I ended up sending the unit back to Minolta for recalibration. The process took about 3 weeks including UPS shipping. The quality is now better, the slides have more accurate color, and slightly better sharpness. Overall I've concluded that I got what I paid for. A fair quality scanner at half the price of a Nikon V.

same subject as above dark slide, this time taken with an Olympus 5060 5MP digital camera. Note the dynamic range. When both images are examined at full size they are of comparable "actual" resolution. That is I can see about the same amount of fine detail on the aircraft. However, the slide actually has more detail than the slide scan shows and far more than the 5MP image.<div></div>

I bought the Scan Dual IV about 6 weeks ago and have been having exactly the same exeperience as Mike: dark slides with a magenta hue. I spent many many hours trying to get better results, even tried using VueScan. With either VueScan or the Minolta software I am able to adjust the color balance and lightness, but am frustrated with the final results. It seems to me that the dynamic range isn't the 4.8 that Konica Minolta claims. When I increase the levels to get shadow detail the highlights blow out and viceversa. In addition the sharpness is just not there. I can discern details on the slide with a 10x lupe, that are lost on the scan.

 

Most of my slides are Provia100F or Kodak E100VS and E100GX. My negative scans are more satisfactory. Apparently the Scan Dual IV doens't have as much of a challenge with the lower density of color negs.

 

I called Minolta support and they suggested I send it back to them for evaluation and/or repair. It's in the mail as I write this. I'll let you know how it works out.<div></div>