phil_gunderson

<p>All I have is the service manual for it, but lot of good that does when it just tells you to replace boards. Hard to do when parts aren't readily available.</p> <p>How are the DSLR conversions? I have a 100mm f2.8 Sigma Macro that I've used for a lot of macro shots. It's very sharp. Unfortunately, I only have a 20D at the moment; however, I can borrow my dad's Rebel T5i. I'm considering picking up a 70D or 7DII, but I haven't decided which yet.</p> <p>Can the DSLR resolve the grain such that you can feel confident that the majority of what was on the film has been captured? I'm totally with you on the noise. The Minolta has been great in regard to noise. Most of the time when I have trouble with "noise" it's due to grain in underexposed areas of the negatives I've been scanning. With multisampling on positives, the noise hasn't been an issue.</p>

<p>Thanks for your response. The Minolta 5400 is apparently only around 3.8 as measured too, though with VueScan and multi exposure, I can eek a little more out of it (apparently). Most of my scanning involves negatives scanned as raw from VueScan and converted in Photoshop using ColorPerfect or inverting manually depending upon how well ColorPerfect converted the photograph.</p> <p>How is the Pacific Image for focus? With the Minolta, if the film has too much curvature, I have to decide where I want the most focus to be and let the rest fall to being slightly soft. That works okay with the older negatives I've been scanning for my father from many years past, but the newer negatives I've been shooting with Canon L glass, sometimes details do get muddled. </p> <p>Additionally, I have some 110 negatives from my childhood I've tried scanning, but even with the mask I made the film just doesn't lay flat enough in the Minolta to achieve a sharp focus, sometimes so bad that the already not terribly sharp 110 negatives are blurred so much that they're not even close to the prints as far as detail. For the OpticFilm I found a 110 negative holder that a third party made and was considering using that for those negatives.</p> <p>If it would be worth it, I'd even considering spending on the OpticFilm 120 even if I don't have medium format film to scan just to gain batch scanning and a higher overall resolution, provided it can actually achieve higher than nominal of 3250ppi like the 8200i supposedly can. The Minolta does really well with resolution where even at 100% crops, the detail levels are amazing.</p> <p>What bothers me so much is that the Minolta scans beautifully, just that it's become temperamental in it's age. It used to just be where I could pop the scanner on, let it warm up for a few minutes (tube light and such) and get to scanning. Now, it could get to scanning right away (rarely) or I could spend up to an hour doing the dance of restart scanner, restart computer, close film door, etc until it decides it's going to work. Once working, it usually stays working the rest of the day which means I end up spending my day scanning instead of scanning a roll or two each day when I have time.</p>

<p>Good afternoon everyone. I have a Minolta 5400 scanner (first gen version) that I've used for years. Unfortunately, it's becoming more temperamental to run. With a cold start, it can sometimes take an hour of power off the scanner and computer/killing vuescan, etc before it stops locking up during the focusing process.</p> <p>Usually it will start to focus and achieve about 80 - 90% and hang on the first frame preview attempt. Then after a while, it will do the first frame fine and then hang on the second one. After a couple more attempts, it finally will start scanning. After this dance, the scanner usually keeps going for the duration of time I'm doing my scanning with an occasional hang (not every time I'm using it but maybe 1 out of 10 times).</p> <p>I've tried different USB cables and different ports on my MacBook and MacMini with different versions of VueScan. For a scanner that used to work flawlessly with VueScan in the past (but that was with IEEE1394 on Windows), I'm beginning to think that this scanner is just telling me that it's electronics are old and tired (maybe power regulator?).</p> <p>I know that was a long winded preface to my question, but here it is. Will I be happy with an OpticFilm 8200i in comparison with the scans I've been obtaining from the Minolta scanner? </p> <p>I know the OpticFilm does not have batch mode, but then again, the Minolta will only do, at max, 6 frames at a time and has a razor thin depth of field. The Minolta will resolve grain in it's sharpest focused areas, and depending upon how flat the film is, across the whole image. Will the OpticFilm give me at least comparable resolution from the negatives and slides I've been scanning?</p> <p>I've been looking for full resolution samples, but I haven't found any available with which I can compare against the Minolta.</p> <p>Thanks in advance!</p>