I'm thinking of upgrading my scanner from the five year old 35 mm toy I now have and almost never use to the Heidelberg Linoscan 1450. The main reason I've been thinking of it rather than something less expensive like the Epson 1680 or 2450 is that it seems to be one of the few flat bed scanners that has an adapter for 8x10 negatives. I have a couple questions though. First, does anyone have any experience with this scanner that they'd care to share or know of any reviews of it anywhere? Second, am I right in thinking that it's important to be able to scan an 8x10 negative as opposed to an 8x10 contact print (I asume that even scanners like the Epson 1680 or 2450 that will scan negatives only up to 4x5 will still allows scans of larger prints)? In other words, is there likely to be a significant increase in quality from scanning the 8x10 negative rather than the 8x10 contact print? Third, the 1450 doesn't have SilverFast software. Instead it has something called "Newcolor 5000." Several people have told me that I should consider only a scanner with the Silverfast software. Is the lack of Silverfast software something with which I should be concerned? Finally, does anyone have any thoughts or suggestions for alternatives to the 1450 costing up to $1,000 or so? With anything I get I'd be scanning 6x7 and 4x5 negatives as well as the 8x10 negatives I've already mentioned. I know almost nothing about scanners so don't worry about being too basic with any responses, you almost certainly won't be. Thanks.

-- Brian Ellis (bellis60@earthlink.net), January 13, 2002

Answers

Go here,www.flatbed-scanner-review.org, they've got the whole 'Magilla', and then some.

-- Joanthan Brewer (lifestories@earthlink.net), January 13, 2002.

I should have mentioned that I'll be scanning black and white film only, no color.

-- Brian Ellis (bellis60@earthlink.net), January 13, 2002.

I have the linoscan 1400 with newcolor 4000 software. (little 0r no difference from the 1450 except for the firewire connection) I use it mainly to scan 4x5 negatives T-Max 100. The software is OK but not as versatile as Silverfast from the reports of others on the digital groups. Personally, I have not used this software. In conclusion, I get excellent scans with the scanner and it's bundled software. Furthermore, the Newcolor 5000 is supposed to be an upgrade. I hope this helps. Mo Kenny

-- mo kenny (mokenny74@hotmail.com), January 13, 2002.

The 1680 will scan 8x10 negatives.

-- Wayne DeWitt (wdewitt@snip.net), January 14, 2002.

I will not get into which scanner is better discussions except note that Linocolor Elite/Newcolor is not a scanner Twain like all the other programs I know of. It imports from scanners but is also a standalone graphics program-if you choose, you can open and work with files independently of a scanning operatio

-- David Stein (DFStein@mac.com), January 14, 2002.

I recently purchased a LinoColor 1450 for scanning 4x5 color transparencies. I bought it on ebay for $690 + $40 for shipping. Good deals can be found on this unit.

I am using it on a Mac, with the LinoColor Elite 6.0 software. This is the same software used for their high-end Tango drum scanner.

The scanner lives up to its specs: 1200 dpi and 3.4 dmax. (If you read the archives, you will learn that many scanner makers exagerate their specs - something to watch out for.)

I have been satisfied with the performance of the scanner. I use it primarily for proofing. From a 4x5 shot, it is sufficient for 11x14 prints at 400dpi. When I want a "final" high resolution scan, I send out for a drum scan on a Tango.

On one shot, I encountered some Newton's rings, even though I was using the 4x5 film holder. I have not experimented with wet mounting, which would eliminate the rings, and possibly wring out a little more dmax and color saturation.

The scanner comes with IT8 calibration targets (transmissive and reflective) and a profiling software (Scanopen). This allows you to build a profile for your scanner (it also comes with "generic" profiles).

-- Michael Chmilar (chmilar@acm.org), January 14, 2002.

When people are sending out 4x5 and/or 8x10 negatives/transparencies for drum scanning, what sort of resolutions and file sizes are you going for? (and what sort of costs?)

Thanks

tim a

-- Tim Atherton (tim@kairosphoto.com), January 16, 2002.

A drum scan yielding an approximately 300 MB TIFF file costs $80. I don't recall what resolution this is, but it should work out to around 100 Mega-pixels (300 MB / 3 channels per pixel).

-- Michael Chmilar (chmilar@acm.org), January 16, 2002.