Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400 II

Despite being in the digital age i still have slides and negatives that need 'digitising'. After careful consideration i decided on the 5400. Its tech spec and reviews said it all.

After the first install i encountered a problem. The second install was fine. But the software has a few glitches. With my Apple (running OSx 10.4) and Windows XP machines i decided to use the software with Adobe Photoshop elements. This came with the scanner. ...
...with an error - and i'd have to restart the computer. This happened a few times. Once reloaded it worked fine.

The scanner software, coupled with Elements, had plenty of features for tuning up the photographs. Although the scanner does a very good job with colours and contrast, its not perfect. You will almost certainly need to edit them afterwards. Depending on your editing skills the end result was, usually, pleasing. Though, for ... more

Despite being in the digital age i still have slides and negatives that need 'digitising'. After careful consideration i decided on the 5400. Its tech spec and reviews said it all.

After the first install i encountered a problem. The second install was fine. But the software has a few glitches. With my Apple (running OSx 10.4) and Windows XP machines i decided to use the software with Adobe Photoshop elements. This came with the scanner. Sometimes the scanner software wouldn't load - it came up with an error - and i'd have to restart the computer. This happened a few times. Once reloaded it worked fine.

The scanner software, coupled with Elements, had plenty of features for tuning up the photographs. Although the scanner does a very good job with colours and contrast, its not perfect. You will almost certainly need to edit them afterwards. Depending on your editing skills the end result was, usually, pleasing. Though, for the price i paid (the price of a very good digital camera), it was hard to know what to expect.

After a lot of scanning i found that my 35mm slides and negatives looked sharper when scanned in at 1800 dpi (dots per inch) as opposed to 5400dpi. Confused? Well, its all down to the 'resolution' of the slide/negative itself. At 5400 dpi the scanner was scanning detail that wasn't actually there. When i blew up the photos to 100% they looked overdone (!). At 1800 dpi they were just right and printed well up to A4. If you need A3 then you'll have to scan higher than 1800dpi.

If you use the ICE software to automatically remove dust, the scan takes many minutes. I could boil the kettle and make a cup of tea - with brewing time! - and come back and it would be in its final stages! But it did the job well and, in all fairness, does save a lot of time afterwards trying to remove dust manually. Scanning at lower resolutions was quicker.

If you've got hundreds, or thousands, of slides/negatives i'd pay to get them done at a photographers (they can print them and put them onto CD. Though i don't know what the quality is like) - unless you want to spend hundreds of hours scanning and tweaking them. If, however, you've got time and are keen that you want full control over the scanned images this is a great product. I've certainly been happy with mine.

So, really its for an enthusiast - with time on their hands! I now shoot mostly digital. I don't miss scanning.

A note: if you use an Apple computer use the firewire cable. A PC user should use the USB. 

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