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I Love My Scanner


Rolo

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Maybe stretching a point with this title, but nevertheless am conforming to the pattern here.

 

Our scanners have started to become a key point of discussion, so let's share some views of this under-sung equipment.

 

Somebody else can do tripods and meters. :-)

 

Here's mine, an 848. No matter which film camera format, or film used, this baby delivers fine scans. The Flexcolor software is amazing.

 

Can I see yours, please ? :)

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Edited by Rolo
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Guest Ron (Netherlands)
Maybe stretching a point with this title, but nevertheless am conforming to the pattern here.

 

Our scanners have started to become a key point of discussion, so let's share some views of this under-sung equipment.

 

Somebody else can do tripods and meters. :-)

 

Here's mine, an 848. No matter which film camera format, or film used, this baby delivers fine scans. The Flexcolor software is amazing.

 

Can I see yours, please ? :)

 

Nice.... USD 9000? No offence but I suppose one must really shoot medium and large format FILM to make this an 'economic' buy.

Edited by Ron (Netherlands)
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No offence but I suppose one must really shoot medium and large format FILM to make this an 'economic' buy.

 

That's down to the numbers and I had a good buy on eBay.

 

Let's put it this way, if I was to offer it to you at the same price I paid, but it had to be collected before midnight, you'd be here and that's just six hours from now. :D

 

There was only 1,000 scans recorded on it. Magnum Paris add that many on each of their two in a week.

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9,000 USD. Isn't that the price, more or less, of an M9?

Thousands of people seem to be able to justify that cost to themselves. I don't see the difference, to be honest.

 

Andy, there is a big difference. The scanner will retain its value and any digital camera will suffer depreciation to much higher degree. The M9 maybe less so than Canons and Nikons, but time will tell.

 

After purchasing my Imacon, I sold my Coolscan 8000 for substantially more than I paid for it. The glass carrier I imported from B&H because it was half the price here and I recovered 50% more than I paid.

 

I consider the scanner, any good scanner, to be key to film processing. It's more important than 'another' lens, or a third body..... etc. Hence this thread.

 

Let's see some scanners. :D

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If you doubt the value retention of a scanner, check the recent ebay listings. Used Imacon scanners are still quite expensive. Some of it is due to unrealistic sellers, but the starting prices of some of the ones I've seen lately is similar to the original new price. And this even holds true for the old scsi models.

 

The LS 9000, used, also sells for about what I paid new a few years ago.

 

Try that with a digital camera. There are digital backs that originally cost $20k or more on Ebay for hundreds of dollars. Or to go back further, the original Nikon/Kodak digital SLRs can probably be had for less than the cost of shipping the thing...

 

That said, if you're a hobbyist doing 8x10 prints on a consumer printer, an Imacon may be overkill. But it's not hard to justify the cost for a serious amateur or working pro.

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Well, I'm using a Coolscan 9000 with Silverfast Ai Studio. It's a decent enough scanner for 35mm and MF and Negafix works extremely well. For 4x5 I use the V750M to make preview scans. For serious gallery printing and publication purposes, I either have the work drum scanned on a Heidelberg Tango or a Creo iQ3 pre-press flatbed. It all depends on whether or not the image will suffer from halation and/or fringing as a result of the CCD and just how much shadow detail needs to be pulled out of the chrome/neg. Whats interesting though is that I had an art director ask for a drum scan of one of my 4x5 chromes from an image I'd taken in Yosemite to be used as a double page spread, because she "wanted all the shadow detail". I provided a perfect scan only to discover when the image appeared in the magazine that most of the shadow detail had been clipped. WTF :mad: Stuff like that just pisses me off. I could have saved some $$$ and just had a CCD scan. I've used an Imacon 949 in the past. Its a decent scanner but the problem is that the dimensions of the CCD only allows a 2040 spi scan resolution for 4x5, and I like to print at 360 ppi image resolution which means I am limited to ~ 22x28 inch prints. No point shooting LF for prints this small.

Edited by jplomley
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  • 2 weeks later...

My Epson V700.

Pete

 

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