LaserSoft Imaging

Can commercial grade scans of colour negative film be obtained by scanner such as a plustek 7600 scanner? I had some negatives scanned progessionally and there were no visible defects. With the plustek at 48 bit colour, Q factor 1.5, 7200 dpi, every scratch/defect was beautifully recorded. The iSRD and then photoshopping took care of the defects. Do commercial scanners have a more sophisticated automated defect correction hardware/software? It would be impossible for them to spend time individually on each scan to correct defects. Do you get what you pay for ie a $30 000 scanner producing fast clean images versus a relative cheap scanner that takes a lot of post production to achieve a similar outcome?
Opinions appreciated.
eamonnbl

Dear eamonnbi,

Professional image scanning is not cheap. The main reason for that is because defects correction is not a completely automated task (as you believe), there is always people behind the whole process, first cleaning the film to be scanned, then correcting images with expensive software afterwards.

eamonnbl wrote:Do commercial scanners have a more sophisticated automated defect correction hardware/software?

Professional drum and film scanners have a much more sophisticated hardware, the scanning process is done by operators who first take care of cleaning the film and the scanner, then wet mount the clean material and proceed with the scanning. Such scanners (no all) can have a better implementation of infrared technologies for dust and scratches detection, but generally there is a person who in the end checks and corrects the images using any photography program.

eamonnbl wrote:It would be impossible for them to spend time individually on each scan to correct defects.

Not really, that is exactly the reason why the scanning service is so expensive.

eamonnbl wrote:Do you get what you pay for ie a $30 000 scanner producing fast clean images versus a relative cheap scanner that takes a lot of post production to achieve a similar outcome?

Is it the same to travel with 4 friends in a € 500 volkswagen beetle from the 70's and make the same trip in a brand new 150.000 Mercedes limousine?

I don't really think so

Thank you for insights into commercial scanning. If one were prepared to spend the time, could a home scanner (eg plustek) still produce very good/professional level or is it neccessary to use more expensive scanners eg nikon coolscan 9000 ED?

Thanks for your comments.

Dear eamonnbi,

It is exactly the very same question you posted at first. The Nikon 9000 is a professional film scanner it cost around 10 times or more than the other scanner in question. Do you actually think it is a fancy thing to put such a price?
No, the nikon scanner will give you better results. Of course, if you have the time you still can produce very good scans, but I would not go that far as to put it to a professional level like those produced with a drum scanner.
The components, the optical resolution, the light source, etc. Those are things which have huge quality differences between the scanners. Regularly expensive scanner manufacturers also spend more time designing, developing and enhancing their devices than mass production scanners.

All that has a tremendous influence on the outcome.

Cheers

I use a hasselblad X5 Flexo scanner. From what I can tell it has all the benefits of a drum scanner with out all the b.s. and maintenance requirements. Drum scanners are dinosaurs that are soon to be extinct, as their workflow is a p.i.t.a.