The Minolta DiMAGE Scan
Elite 5400 film scanner

A readers review by Mike Nunan

Page 2.

After an initial shake-down it hasn't revealed any weaknesses in the key areas, but there is plenty more to do and I will get down to some really serious torture testing over the weekend, including the following:

Kodachrome scans (always a test, and I have some really dark and moody Kodachrome II transparencies from the early 80s that even a top Imacon would probably have spasms over)

Scans of high-speed monochrome film (Delta 3200 at 3200 and 1600 EIs always seems to cause problems for the LS-30)

Scans of dense negs, both B&W and colour. This is always the ultimate test because of the huge image range that gets packed into a tiny bit of the linear transmittance range at the dense (highlight) end of the scale.

Along the way I plan to do direct comparisons between the LS-30 and the Minolta, to see how far things have come in the last four or so years.

I've now spent a fair bit of time playing around with a couple of images, the Delta 100 frame of the view across London from Canary Wharf that I mentioned before, and a portrait shot on Delta 3200 (@3200).

WHARF VIEW (Ilford Delta 100 @ 100EI) - nice sharp neg of view across London from roof of 19-floor office at Canary Wharf. "No focus" file shows effect of failing to enable the auto-focus feature in scanner preferences! Contax RTS II w Planar 50/1.4 lens, tripod mounted.
AutoFocus OFF	AutoFocus ON

The first thing I will say is that for my initial scan of the Wharf view, the autofocus was not enabled. For some reason, DiMAGE scan defaults "AF off" mode when you first install it, and you have to go into the Preferences and turn it on. Weird. So, the upshot is that the scan that I did yesterday, which was already sharper than the LS-30 remember, wasn't even fully in focus.

Redoing the scan with AF enabled produced an image that is very significantly sharper. Whereas before I said that the grain structure was "clear but not exaggerated", it is now pretty prominent. Applying the Grain Dissolver feature produces mild softening of the grain, so this isn't a replacement for software noise filters such as Neat Image, but I like what it does. If the grain is still too harsh, then a touch of defocus is always a viable option.

Speaking of focusing, DiMAGE Scan lacks a way of specifying the focus point, which is unusual. I guess Minolta must have felt so with the design of their film holder that they didn't feel the need for this feature. There are two checkboxes in Preferences that control the focusing options: "Manual Focus Dial" and "Autofocus at scan". If you enable the MFD, the "AF at scan" is cleared and made unselectable. However, if you leave both options cleared, the MFD itself continues to work. (I was half expecting the MFD to be implemented in software, but it is most definitely a mechanical control: it actually rotates during AF operations.)

I've run out of time now as I'm due elsewhere for 3pm, so I'll have to save the results of the Delta 3200 image tests for later. Hopefully I'll be able to post some images then too.

© Mike Nunan 2003 www.photo-i.co.uk
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