Still Exceeds Expectations, Update

Author's Rating:

Pros: Image processing, intuitive software, image quality

Cons: Batch mode is of little use (see text). Clumsy carrier loading.

The Bottom Line: 
I recommend the Minolta 5400, for its excellent image quality and image control.

Author's Review
Scanner History on my system:

I've had a number of flatbed scanners and the first HP S20/S30 PhotoSmart scanner. The flatbeds with the slide attachments did not give the results I wanted, and the HP was, at the time I bought it, OK. I have hundreds of very old Kodachrome slides that I wanted to scan and the HP was giving me some problems:

1. Dark parts of the pictures would degrade and leave streaks on the scan
2. A halo that looks like lens flare was cutting down on the contrast.
3. It was slow.

I decided to research and buy an updated, dedicated film/slide scanner.

Options:
I was comparing the Minolta 5400 with the Nikon CoolScan V ED. I chose the Minolta because it had a carrier that I could load 4 slides into and batch scan.

My main purpose was to scan all of my old slides and archive them to eliminate any more deterioration.

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Unpacking and Installation:

I had a hard time finding the carriers. They were inside a cardboard rectangle that appeared to be just part of the packing. I was annoyed and was going to send it back, but as I took apart all of the packing I found them.

Installation easy and I was up an running in a short time.

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OPERATION:

The software is intuitive and works better than I expected. Particularly with old slides the software does a great job on:

A. Dusty slides
B. Kodacolor or Ektachrome slides that fade and color shift.

Kodachromes:
The scans look like the slide projected on the screen. There is no halo or flare as in the HP. Dark part of the image can be brought up by either increasing the brightness or adjusting the Tone Curves(this works best for me).

My Kodachromes are over 45 years old and there is no color shift or fade. The slides have accumulated some dust. I used the software to elimiate it, and 95% was cleaned up with no discernable degradation in picture quality. I was amazed. When this option is chosen, however, the scanning time increases quite a bit, but the time is worth it. I have cleaned up dirty slides by hand and the time that it takes is MUCH longer than the increase in scanning time. This option works great.

Kodachromes are have much more contrast than other kinds of slides, but the color stability is much better. The Minolta has a number of options for image correction that can bring up the detail in a dark part of the slide without destroying the crystal sharpness of a Kodachrome.

I scanned some of my slides at the maximum resolution: 5400 dpi. That yielded a BMP of 110 megabytes, 7920x5328. I was surprised, as the scan was not as slow as I expected it to be. I used this super high resolution to blow up a picture of a person that I tried to identify in the past, and lo and behold, the result was very acceptable.

Kodacolors, Ektachromes:
These films have exhibited considerable shift in color (to magenta) and fading. When I had scanned these with the HP, I used PhotoShop to bring back the color balance and saturation. This process had yielded results that I would call less than satisfactory. With the Minolta, I used the option to recover old, faded slides. The result was so amazing that I cannot stop praising the software. From these old, faded, very bad slides came the original color, resolution (to the grain detail) balance and saturation.

Speed:
The 5400 is a quite a bit faster than the HP with no corrections or dust removal. With other options, the speed decreases significantly, but the results are worth the wait.

Some results:
4 slides in batch mode, no options chosen:
1800 DPI 2400x1600 pixels, 2-3 MB file, 3min 25sec
2700 DPI 3600x2400 pixels, 4-6 MB file, 4min 30sec
5400 DPI 7200x4800 pixels, 16-20MB file, 5min

4 slides in batch mode with dust removal option:
2700 DPI 6min 45sec
5400 DPI 11min 20sec

For archive purposes, and with the Kodachromes, I chose the 5400 DPI mode. This captures all of the detail of those great slides without a great penalty in time.

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BIG NEGATIVE:

The batch mode has a serious limitation. Color balancing scans is very important, and this can be done a number of ways in the DiImage Scan Utility. There are a number of different options to correct color shifts, brightness and contrast. When you have decided on a setting that fits a series of slides, you can save these by naming a master file or some other options. The intent is to make these choices available in Batch Mode.

Batch Mode has no preview capability, so the idea was to have options set up in the Utility and then transfer them to Batch Mode. Good idea, but the transfer does not work. I downloaded a new version of the software and it does not work either.

With this limitation, Batch Mode is just about useless, because the adjustments needed for a good scan are not available.

All is not lost, however.

I found that in the Utility Mode, the scans are actually faster, as the slides are easily loaded one by one and a lot of wasted motion is eliminated as the carrier is never ejected. You also have the advantage of checking each slide and deciding if you want to use the dust eliminator or make other adjustments.

It works just fine, but Batch Mode is of little use.

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CAUTION:

Scanning slides to get to the "real" color can be very trying. With the number of options that are available, there are opportunities to spend a lot of time to get a slide "just right". After some experience, you will learn what works best for you. My personal preference is to used the Tone Curves to correct color, brightness and contrast. You may find that other options work better for you. It takes some patience and time to learn what to use and how to make the adjustments, as in all image processing software.

This is for sure: If a slide is way off, correcting it at the time of scanning will always give the best results. With big color shifts, attempting to correct a scan after the fact will reveal that the color you want to bring up has been scanned at such a low level it is about impossible to restore. So, take the time when you are scanning and don't fall into the trap of thinking you can "fix them up later".

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OTHER OPERATIONAL DETAILS:

Manual Focus. There is a knob on the front panel that allows manual focusing. The software option activates this. I found that the autofocusing works very well, and I could find no use for this control.

Loading the carrier:
This operation is annoying. Insertion of the carrier is a little tricky and takes some practice. Also, if the carrier has been ejected in some modes, the unit will not accept it until you shut down the application. An inconvenience, but works fine in batch mode since the application shuts down after each carrier has been scanned. In Utility Mode, the carrier is never ejected, and this annoyance is eliminated.

Overall, this scanner was well worth the money, and I am looking forward to archiving all of my slides.


Larry Brunetti