Scanning setup for 35/67 B&W

[Harry]

@Mark_Segal

Interesting - I didn’t know that about the 9000 for 35mm. Makes it less versatile than one may have been led to think without knowing that detail.

Yes Mark, I was surprised. I supppose I imagined that inside that large expensive casing there was some means of moving the lens closer to the negative. Probably unfair of me though because 4000 ppi from 120 is outstanding and 4000 ppi from 35mm was really something of a universal standard as well. Some modern scanners claim to get more than that but fail to make the grade when tested. I think only the Minolta 5400 with its legendary lens gave more.

That would give 21.5 MP, equivalent to 60MB uncompressed and I think picture libraries of the day asked for 50MB uncompressed. It’s actually more or less the same as what Magnum seem to scan their archive to now.

My Imacon’s maximum is 6300 ppi when fed short side first but I tended to put 35mm long side first which was quicker (though far from quick) and gave 5000 ppi.

[Mark_Segal]

When I did the review article for Luminous-Landscape on the Epson V850 I tested a number of scanners for comparison; a colleague who has an Imacon 848 (rated technically at 8000 PPI) and I tested that scanner with the SilverFast USAF target. We couldn’t get a tested output resolution higher than Group/Element 6/6 out of it, which translates to 5793 PPI (so within your 5000-6300 range). The next best was the Minolta Scan Elite 5400, 1st version, at effective resolution of 5161 PPI, so yes, over a thousand more than 4000. For resolution and robust build quality that Minolta, especially when combined with SilverFast software, was the best value for money of the whole lot, albeit quite slow.