DiMage Scan Elite 5400

Scanning

Scans can be executed in several ways. The easiest way is by pressing the Scan button, this starts the Launcher, from here you can select to start the DS Elite 5400 Utility, DS Elite 5400 Easy or Batch Scan Utility. These options can also be selected via Start > All Programs > DiMAGE Scan Elite V 2. For most users scans will be made via an imaging application and Twain Acquire.


DS Elite 5400 Launcher	Insert film holder

Click on a frame to see the large preview	A brief appearance of the Auto Focus box

Once the scanner software has been activated and finished its setup routine, you are prompted to insert a film holder. Placing the holder just inside the flap is enough for the scanner to pull it all the way in and produce the previews, this took 13.17 seconds for four mounted slides and 13.97 seconds for a strip of six 35mm frames. The previews appear as small thumbnails (four or six), click on any thumbnail and the larger picture is displayed in the main window. The display is very clear and once you get used to the layout it is very easy to find all the necessary controls.

Perhaps this is a good time to have a closer look at the interface before moving on to the actual scans.

The DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400 II interface

The controls are very comprehensive, on the top left hand side you can select the film type; Colour Negative, Colour Positive, B/W Negative and B/W Positive. The Master Setup button is for saving or loading your custom settings. The blue buttons are for Index scan, Prescan and Scan. Moving on there is a collection of filters, Digital ICE (dust removal), Digital ROC (restore colour), Digital GEM (reduce effect of film grain), Digital SHO (improve shadow and highlight details) and Pixel Polish to apply an automatic or custom image correction. The other buttons are for locking auto exposure, Eject holder, Help and preferences. A window on the right hand side gives details on the button the cursor is currently over.

Easy to follow interface

The next row of tabs are for Prescan( the main window), Exposure settings, Digital ICE4 (only active when Digital ICE is selected), Pixel Polish and Image correction


Exposure settings	Digital ICE options

Pixel Polish settings	Image Adjustments

The Exposure settings tab displays four Histogram, Master, Red, Green and Blue. Each of the Histograms has a slider with values from -2 to +2, alter a value and then click on the apply button to see the effect. The updated images displays almost instantly, but only after an initial setup which can take several seconds, not the ideal solution, I would prefer to see the preview image updated in real time. The Digital ICE tab has all the settings for ROC, GEM and SHO. The Pixel Polish tab has two options; Auto and Custom. The custom setting has a series of presets such as Slight Colour Cast, Heavy Colour Cast etc. Not my ideal choice but never the less an useful addition. The final tab has a series of buttons which will open up Curves, Levels, Hue-Saturation-Lightness, Unsharp Masking, Variations and selective colour corrections. These image controls also have an auto setting which works very well, the manual controls are very responsive and should ensure you get the best quality out of your scans. You can also select the before and after display - just to see if you have really improved the image (or mucked it up in my case).


Comprehensive levels and curves adjustments	HSL corrections

Variations	Selective colours

The image adjustments available should satisfy the beginner through to the most demanding of users, although some may prefer to make some tweaks within Photoshop.

The next line down has the Rotate - left and right, Mirror, Flip, Auto Focus, Manual Focus, Auto crop, Prescan cropped area, Zoom, Hand tool and Display entire image buttons. I will come back to focusing later in the review. Moving down, on the left side are the resolution input and output settings. The resolution settings are 540, 675, 900, 1350, 1800, 2700 and 5400. At 5400dpi a 35mm slide will produce a file size of 102mb, this may be OK if you need to crop in on a small area, but in my experience I can't see the need for a 100mb file - I guess someone will prove me wrong by coming up with 101 uses for a mega image.

The scanner software on the whole is very good, I like the layout of the interface everything was easy to find and I didn't have to refer to the instruction manual to see where a particular function was. So far so good. The overture is good now lets hear the fat lady sing and see what this scanner is capable of producing.