costas_lymbouris

Peter<p>

Contrary to what Epson and other printer manufacturers might lead you to believe, the resolution of your printer in terms of image definition, is related to the second lower figure rather than the first ie the 720 of a quoted 2880 x 720. The first figure relates to "interpolated" resolution and is about the printer being able to produce fine graduations in colour change rather than image definition (a bit like resolutions quoted for scanners!). Most Epson printers have an equivalent image definition of less than 200 pixels per inch on the paper output.<p>

There is a lot more information in this thread if you want to try and understand what the figures mean.<br>

<a href="http://groups.google.com/groups?q=INTERPOLATION+IN+THE+PRINTER+DRIVER&hl=en&lr=lang_en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&newwindow=1&safe=off&scoring=d&selm=3EBF1EC7.569BAB28%40qwest.net&rnum=2">INTERPOLATION IN THE PRINTER DRIVER</a><br>

As has already been said Neil, you need to experiment to find what is right for you and for your images.

As a starting point, I recommend reading the information at this link, which explains why sharpening is necessary and why you should think about sharpening at least twice. (see how this is done in same of the examples at the second link).<br>

<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/digitalphotography/learnmore/fixit/sharpening.asp"> http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/digitalphotography/learnmore/fixit/sharpening.asp</a> <p>

To see some examples of sharpening techniques used by others, have a look at these contest results at outbackphoto. The contestants explain the steps and settings used in producing a digital image, including settings for sharpening. There is a specific sharpening contest towards the bottom of the list, but all the contests contain something on sharpening. As can be seen many different approaches can work for the same image so expermiment.<br>

<a href="http://www.outbackphoto.com/contest/index.html"> http://www.outbackphoto.com/contest/index.html</a><br>

From a hardware perspective, you might consider the Canon 9900F flatbed scanner. This has a film strip holder which holds four strips of upto six frames. Scan speed is on the slow side although new drivers are now available from Canon that are supposed to address some of the speed issues. If you are only scanning at 400dpi, this might not be a big issue.

Best option is to find a local stockist, and ask for a demo scanning 24 negatives.

Not familiar with your camera, but it is never easy to use a new camera without a manual and get the most out of it. You can download manuals for the 3Xi for free from this Minolta site link

http://www.minoltausa.com/eprise/main/MinoltaUSA/MUSAContent/CPG/CPG_SupportCenter/ManualResults

Yes would be great to have a photo.net Minolta forum.

The problem with Yahoo is, everytime I register to join a group, I get blasted with a new lot of SPAM.

There is an offer courtesy of photo-interactive www.photo-i.co.uk for monitor calibration

Pantone ColorVision Spyder (CRT only) with PhotoCAL £115

Pantone ColorVision Spyder (CRT/LCD) with PhotoCAL £157.50

details here

http://www.typemaker.co.uk/photo-i/

Price is better but because this stuff is not mass market, but has to be very high quality, it tends to be expensive. If someone were to bring to market a product for under £99 to calibrate monitor, printer and scanner then I suspect they would shift enough to product to be profitable.

For an unbiased view on the capabilities of this scanner have a look at photo-i. http://www.photo-i.co.uk/index.html

The Canon 9900F review is here

http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Scanners/Canon%209900F/page_1.htm

To summarise the review, in general the Canon 9900F is an excellent scanner that would benefit from some improved software. For 35mm film scans, the quality is less than that which could be obtained from a dedicated film scanner but as you point out there is the possibility of scanning 24 negatives at a time.

As with all things in life, pros and cons; decide by what capabilities are the most important to you.

Release date seems to be mid June

Not sure how useful a resolution of 5400 will be compared to 4000 but some of the material I have read here and there tends to indicate that there is some benefit in scanning 35mm film upto about 6000 dpi. Some examples here but also similar stuff on other sites (can't remeber at the moment)

http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/scandetail.html#testarea3

I suspect few of my negatives contain that level of detail, but this might inspire me to use a tripod more often and get a printer that does A3. Biggest problem I see is that 16 bit scans are going to be about 200 Mbytes - thats 3 images per CD!

Thanks for that, found the article on the news page. Apart from the pricing, just a repeat of the news announcement. Did a search on Google but only the above stuff was found. Looking forward to seeing some reviews shortly, with the press release any NDA's would have been lifted.

Regards

Found a pointer to this news release on the Minolta site at dcviews.com. I must be blind, I was on that site yesterday.

Seems we have an awesome new product from Minolta available to us. Not been able to find a price yet but since I am looking for a new scanner this could be the one for me. Would like to see something similar from canon to provide a bit of choice but Minolta seem to be the ones breaking new ground with film scanners. BTW I have no connections with Minolta or anyone selling their products.

http://www.minoltaeurope.com/cgi-bin/db4web_c/db/minoeu/press/article.d4w?ID=1485424&BusinessArea=pe

Mark,

Try searching the microsoft website for issues relating to Windows2000 and USB. There are also some general guides on the site like this one titled "General USB Troubleshooting in Windows 2000"

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;242062

If you want to get a cheap firewire or USB2 IO card in the UK, try

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/

Look under I/O cards. I see they have a "3 Port D-Link DRF-A3 FireWire card Retail inc. cable + software" for £11.15 including tax. I have D-link network cards and routers and they seem reliable.

I think that Carl is probably right and you do not have USB2.

To check whether your motherboard supports USB2 check the motherboard specs to see which IO chip it uses. If you have ICH4 then you probably have USB2 support, if you have the ICH2 chipset then your motherboard supports USB1.1 only and you will have to buy a USB2 IO card.

More info on the Intel site here:

http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/linecard.htm

Nico,

I have had a good look at the 2 images and prefer the image labelled Optical. This image has darker, perhaps more saturated colours that "bring out" more of the detail in the image. The image labelled Adobe Gama is lighter and a little washed out in comparison. Either image on its own would be acceptable but side by side I prefer the Optical version.

I should say that my monitor was calibrated using Adobe Gama and the images on

http://www.normankoren.com/makingfineprints1B.html

so my comments may not be worth much!.