Minolta Elite 5400 or Nikon Coolscan V ??!!

raphael · Jan 5, 2005

Hi all!

I have a Minolta Scan Dual III, I think it is a good scanner but I need more resolution for Lambda prints 20*30", I also miss details in the Shadows ... This is the reason why I would like to change and buy a new Scanner.

I know the minolta 5400 is Great but quite slow with the 14 passes... I heard that the Coolsan V has only 1 pass?? wiered...

BTW do you think you could help me to choose and maybe you know better the results whith these 2 scanners,

Cheers and happy new year!

Raph.

http://www.3dluvr.com/elrafo

Bob_McBob · Jan 6, 2005

Whichever scanner you choose, it's worth noting that neither Nikon nor Minolta in Canada will honour a warranty unless the scanner is purchased from an authorized Canadian retailer. This doesn't leave Canadians with many choices when it comes to purchasing photography equipment, and is basically a scam to control individual markets, IMO.

I would suggest Simon's Cameras (which you probably already know about) if you do decide go buy in Canada. When I was buying my Coolscan V, the difference between B&H and Simon's after taking into account shipping and customs fees was small enough that it wasn't worth getting it from B&H (no PST when ordering from Quebec did make a difference, however).

In my experience with Nikon and Minolta film scanners (Coolscan V and Scan Dual III), I've found the Minolta to be better for scanning black and white film (more diffused light source), but the Nikon can do a pretty good job, too. The resolution difference between the two models you're considering isn't *really* significant, so I wouldn't weight that too heavily when deciding which one to buy. The Coolscan can't do single-pass multi-sampling, but Vuescan can do this with multiple passes (which is much slower). I doubt you have any film that can seriously benefit from 14 passes, but sometimes being able to do multi-sampling is certainly useful.

One of the biggest deciding factors for me was the speed difference between the two models. The Nikon is significantly faster at performing almost all scanning operations I can think of, and that was very important to me (I'm currently scanning approximately 1200 slides). It can't hold more than one slide at a time, but the speed difference more than makes up for having to change slides all the time, especially as I'm often sitting at the computer anyway.