Advantages: A fine scanner at a budget price. Disadvantages: Yet anotherthing to plug into your PC!
...years ago I bought a Minolta Dimage Scan Dual II brand new. These can now be found on Ebay for £100 or so and offer a fine machine at a rather more affordable price. The results I've had are truly superb, with fine detail and subtlties of colour faithfully reproduced.
The Scan Dual II is a machine capable of scanning 35mm and APS (with optional adaptor) negatives with an output resolution of up to 2820dpi. This is more than enough to produce images ... ...slides.
The drivers and Minolta Scan Utility software are supplied on a CD on which you will also find a 109 page User Guide in PDF format. There is also a Quick Reference Guide in paper form to get you started. The software lets you control such things as scan resolution, final image size etc. It also lets you choose between colour negative, black and white negative and colour positive (slides).
OPERATION
If you buy secondhand the supplied copy ...
richkw 07.07.2005
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Minolta Dimage Scan Dual II
Advantages: High quality scans, aps capable Disadvantages: Slow compared to newer models, noisy
I've had a Scan Dual II for over a year now, in that time it has performed well without any hardware faults.
Its maximum resolution of 2820dpi (dots per inch) yields TIF files (Tagged Image Format - a file format which compresses only slightly but retains full image quality) of around 30mb. The scans it produces are generally very sharp with good colour. However I've found it does tend to exaggerate the grain of the film slightly. The scanner comes ... ...slot into the scanner with the film horizontal and so form a perfect platform for dust to settle on. This scanner has none of the Digital ICE technologies which are nowadays commonplace so invest in a blower brush if you want to avoid spending ages in Photoshop removing specks of dust!
The mounted slide holder takes 4 slides. The un-mounted film holder holds 6 frames of 35mm film (though I've also managed to scan 110 and various other smaller-than-35mm ...
querth 12.01.2004 (14.05.2004)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Minolta Dimage Scan Dual II
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