Minolta Dimage Scan Dual II

Author's product rating:   

Speed	Average
Colour sensitivity	Excellent
Resolution	Good
Ease of Installation	Excellent - very quick and easy
Value For Money	Excellent

Advantages:	A fine scanner at a budget price .
Disadvantages:	Yet anotherthing to plug into your PC !

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

How do you get your old pre-digi camera family snaps onto your PC? You can pay to have it done by the likes of Jessops, or you can do it yourself. You can either use a flatbed scanner to scan the prints or, if it has a film adaptor, you can scan the negatives or colour slides. However, if you want the best quality images for printing at A4 or even A3, the only answer is to get hold of a dedicated film scanner.

Film scanners are available from several of the major camera manufacturers such as Canon, Nikon and Minolta. Brand new, a decent one will set you back £300+ - rather a lot to pay to scan a photo of Granny making a fool of herself you may think, and I agree. So, that leaves you with buying secondhand on, say, Ebay. This route will cost you around £100 - £120 for a good example.

Now, I'm a serious amateur/semi-pro photographer and three 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 on your PC which, after re-sizing will print at exhibition quality at A4. At A3, which few people would want to print, the quality still remains excellent with only a minor fall off in image quality.

The unit measures 150x100x320mm and weighs in at 1.5kg., so it takes up little room on the desk top. Although it connects to your PC via a USB port, it needs to be powered via an AC adaptor which is supplied. There are 2 buttons on the front, one for power and the other to eject the film after scanning. A sliding door on the front keeps dust out of the guts of the machine when not in use. A two piece plastic film carrier is supplied which accommodates a strip of up to 6 negatives. A second carrier is supplied which holds up to 4 mounted colour 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 of Adobe Photoshop LE is likely to be missing unless you're particularly lucky. With all scanners you need a host application such as Photoshop, Paintshop Pro or similar. From this application the first thing to do is to instruct it to you import the images from the scanner. When the canner software starts, you insert the film carrier, in which you've previously placed your strip of film, into the slot on the front of the scanner. From the scanner software, you set your desired output quality, film type etc. and then perform an Index Scan. This will bring up thumbnails of the pictures on the screen as small positives. From this you can choose which frames you want to scan. You then perform a pre-scan which will bring up the pictures at a much larger size. If you're happy with the pe-scans, you hit the Scan button and off you go. At its highest resolution, a scan of a 35mm negative or slide takes about 2 minutes. At the end of the scan(s), the scanner software will close automatically and the pictures will be imported into your host software ready for manipulation, resizing and printing.

I appreciate that the above seems rather complicated, but really it isn't. You'll get used to the procedure very quickly.

The Dual Scan II really is a superb piece of kit if you want really good results. With a good photo-quality printer, output should be far better than the original prints you got from your processor. I think you'll find it money well spent and will enable you to share those older snaps with friends and family.

Tech Spec

Type: Fixed sensor, film transport, single pass.
Usable film: 35mm - negative/positive, colour or black & white.
APS cassette (with optional adaptor)
Scanning Dimensions: 35mm - 24,2 x 36.3mm (2688 x 4032 pixels)
APS - 17.28 x 29.95mm (1920 x 3328 pixels)
Optical input resolution: 2820 dpi
A/D Conversion: 12 bit
Image Sensor: RGB 3-line CCD (2700 pixels)
Interface: USB
Light Source: 3 Wavelength Cold Cathode Flourescent
Power Source: AC Power Adaptor
Power Consumption: Max 30W