Done.
I did some research and found that Minolta now has a $299 film scanner
called the Dimage Scan Dual II. I guess "Dimage" is a combination of
'digital' and 'image'. I bought it right here in town. No one rents film
scanners in my medium sized American city, metro Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.
Without yet reading the instructions, I was able to produce markedly better
scans on the first try than the brainless Picture CD.
I'll bet Picture CD is a little like printing. If one can find a pro lab
offering Picture CD, where someone who cares is doing the process manually,
the "brand" is capable of perfectly acceptable results. The danger to Kodak
that I see is that they are branding a premium priced product but they have
not put controls in place (as they did with "The Good Look") to assure that
everyone using the Kodak name returns quality good enough for the advanced
amateur.
While it's nice to daydream about chucking all of my OM stuff and go to a
Nikon D100, my budget for a bridge to digital was $400. The scanner is my
solution for the near term (although the warranty is frighteningly short).
The D100 and the equivalent Canon cost five times my budget without any
lenses. I sudder to think what my total cost would be to be able to capture
the equivailent of 7 rolls of high quality images, using lenses that range
from the equivalent of 24mm to 100mm as I did 2 weeks ago.
Back to the Dimage Scan Dual II. I had read a year ago that low end film
scanners don't do shadow detail well and that there's noise in the shadows.
That was a big concern for me, doing concert photos. My initial results
apear to show that a scanned image has MORE shadow detail than 4x6 prints of
correct density from a mini-lab, and just a little noise in the shadows.
While I'm sure that other papers have different characteristics, I'm not
going to set up a wet color darkroom to find out. EVER!
The scanner's film holder is hard to load but it takes 6 frames at a time
and focuses each one individually if you let it. Too bad almost everything
I've shot since 76 is strips of four!
My problem now is dust. (Yes I know if I was a pro, the better scanners can
help.) I'm off to buy a dusting brush, cotton gloves, and film cleaning
solution.
When the budget allows, I'm next getting a CD burner (CD-R) so I can scan,
correct, burn to CD-R, then have machine prints made.
Maybe eventually I'll write a macro for Photoshop to select the shadows,
apply a gaussian blur, and cut the contrast a hair. I'm thinking it would
really cut the slight amount of noise I now have. The noise is white,
rather than green as it was with my flatbed so it's less objectionable and
the total image is way better than we used to get from the first few years
of Kodacolor 400. Remember that stuff? I'm certainly NOT disappointed
with this solution though.
Further news: One of my photos was used as a design element in back cover
art for a Rykodisc 2-CD set, coming out next month. The CD is called
"PazFest: New Orleans Tribute to Singer/Songwriter Joni Mitchell at the
Howlin' Wolf".
I'm having a blast!
Take care, everyone.
Lama
From: "Tom Scales" <tscales@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Too bad they have been cut. I would have been happy to scanned them for
you
> on the Nikon, but they speedy way is a roll at a time. Unfortunately, you
> don't want to wait the length of time it would take me to do 4 at a time.
>
> Honestly, though, I'll bet renting is very expensive. By the time you
rent
> for a few days, you could buy a good scanner. I know it's pricey, but I'd
> consider it.
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