imagination_celebration

Some people are complaining about saturaition issues. You can use the Minolta software or the Adobe photoshop to increase saturation to your liking.The minolta software remembers your settings from your last scan and applies them to the next. You have to reset the software settings if the next negative was taken under different conditions. Furthermore, you need to go to the advanced menus and set up.

The most important part is the amount of information collected by the scanner.It collects 5400 dpi! More than any film scanner to date, other than drum. You can make 24inch poster prints from its resolution. That's why I bought mine. Bye, Bye, over priced drum scans!

 

All the issues with noise, grain, are also problems with drum scans. You have to know how to use the software once you've aquired the scan.

You can do almost anything with Photoshop if you have the time.

Some people are complaining about saturaition issues. You can use the Minolta software or the Adobe photoshop to increase saturation to your liking.The minolta software remembers your settings from your last scan and applies them to the next. You have to reset the software settings if the next negative was taken under different conditions. Furthermore, you need to go to the advanced menus and set up.

The most important part is the amount of information collected by the scanner.It collects 5400 dpi! More than any film scanner to date, other than drum. You can make 24inch poster prints from its resolution. That's why I bought mine. Bye, Bye, over priced drum scans!

 

All the issues with noise, grain, are also problems with drum scans. You have to know how to use the software once you've aquired the scan.

You can do almost anything with Photoshop if you have the time.

The 5400 is so good, that it picks up every piece of grain on the emulsion. Drum scans are the same way, if the photo store doesn't have software to soften out the grain, then they look extremely grainy. That's been my experience with two drum scans I had made. Make sure you've pressed the buttons on pixel polish, grain disolver, and Digital ICE.

Yes, the monolta Dimage 5400 will cause banding when you multisample. That is a flaw with it. But if you don't multisample, it won't appear.

Plus, I don't even think its multisampling improves the image. I didn't see any percievable improvement when I multisampled a slide 4x I had taken from Santorini. It took an incredible amount of time. And upon close examination, there was a redish line that cut through the picture. I could have probably cloned it out in photoshop. It's not perfect, but my images look a heck of a lot better than those grainy drum scans I had made. The 5400 pixel polish, grain disolver, and digital ice smoothe the grain out and produce a superior image than the drum scans I had done in Fort Worth.

There was an article in Ephoto magazine last month about a professional photographer who uses the 5400 for his 24inch prints in the gallery. He raves about how good it is.

 

One other thing, I failed to mention. If you use Windows 98 or ME, the system will slow down, because Windows 98 & ME only use 512mb of Ram. As where Windows 2000 and Windows XP use the complete amount of ram you place in your system (1gig, 2gig, 3gig! etc.). There are fixes for Win 98, but they don't work very well and make your system very unstable. That's why I don't have problems with Minolta's software, and others on here might.

 

You'll probably want to ungrade to Windows 2000 or XP for handling large files that the 5400 produces.

 

Minolta lets you set the imput @5400dpi, but there are fixed outputs.

16x20@360dpi, 20x30@ 240 dpi, and 24x36 @ 200dpi.

 

I had originally thought, I could specify output dpi by typing it into the box, but you can't. they're all preset.

 

But the quality is very good. Use photoshop to increase sharpness, hue, brightness contrast, saturation. Get a mouse pen to further edit.

Find a friend or someone who has a filmscanner. I have a minolta dimage 5400 and my scans look far better, than those grainy drum scans I had done last year.

I recently bought the Dimage 5400 and it is wonderful! No banding issues like one guy who complained on here earlier. I bought a canonscan 2710 back in 2000 that has 2720dpi. Let me tell you, the Dimage is far superior. I scanned a picture of a restaurant slide from Catalina Island. With the Dimage, set at 5400dpi, I could read the menu on a distant signpost way in the background. Not possible with the canonscan. It was absolutely stunning.

 

It comes with pixel polish, grain dissolver, and Digital Ice. A slide I had drum scanned 24x36"inch @ 200 dpi from Santorini was not as good as the scan I had done with my dimage. The drum scanning service I used didn't do anything to get rid of the grain that the drum scanner picked up. With the Dimage, you can remove it with ease.

 

And don't worry about the Dimage software slowing down your system. I have a 1gig Amd Anthalon computer with 1gig of Ram memory, and it does just fine. With newer systems, if you have 512Gig of DDR and a 2 gig AMD or Pentium processor, you'll do just fine. I'm not complaining. I plan to use Portland Color to print my 24x36inch on their Light Jet. They have the most inexpensive Light Jet prints I've found. You can check them out at portlandcolor.com. Now I also have the new Adobe Creative Suite, so I can work with the monstrous 16bit color images which are 200mb or larger from the Dimage 5400.

 

Plus, if I ever have a problem with my equipment not working, I added a personal articles floater and a computer insurance policy to cover loss or damage to all of my photo equipment. So if the scanner stops working, I can call my insurance company, and they'll replace it.

 

Again, it's a wonderful scanner. I can't say enough about what a better job it does compaired to my 2 drum scans. I bought mine at Dbuys.com. Just use bizrate.com to find the cheapest 5400.