Minolta Scan of IC1396
Nikon Scan of IC1396Medium Format Scanner experience- October 2002
I decided to sell my visual astronomy equipment and buy a medium format scanner<g> My first pick was the Minolta Dimage Multi Pro. My first scans were very challenging. A dimly exposed IC1396 with barely anything visible on the positive with a loupe. I noticed a very strange rainbow like streamer coming off of every bright star. These streamers radiated toward the edge of the slide the further the culprit star was from the center line. I decided not to test the patience of the retailer after a quick call to Minolta proved fruitless ( How many astrophotographers call Minolta for help with a scanner? ), so I returned the Minolta in exchange for a Nikon 8000. Why not a Polaroid? I basically chickened out on the "future support" of the troubled company. The Polaroid is a tested astrophotography scanner and at the time was selling with a rebate for $2200. A very good deal. I had some experience with the Nikon 8000 and had good results The scanner, so far, has proven to be very powerful. I have noticed on some dimly exposed positives that if you push the processing real hard you will reveal what looks to be blooms from brighter stars from the CCD. That is my guess anyway. My thoughts are that the CCD chip is blooming in response to the exposure to the bright stars on the slide. Nikon software does have a provision for reducing the exposure and I have found that to help somewhat. I am far from an expert on scanning and I plead ignorance to the power of the Nikon scanning software. This is my experience so far. Here are some links and examples of the scanners. I only had the Minolta for one weekend, so I was far from an expert on how to use the unit. I just thought the prism like artifacts were more than just a blooming CCD problem; which may be inherent in many scanners in this price range. If you are going to scan positives, I suggest you look at a high res example of one scanned and significantly stretched to determine the capability of the scanner in this area. The color is a bit different in the Nikon, but again, that is probably do to the fact that I don't know what I am doing with regard to color profiles and such. Most of the stretching for the Minolta scan was done with the Minolta sofware. I had to stretch the Nikon scan in Photoshop to match the Minolta scan. Yeah, the image had some trailing.
Minolta Scan of IC1396
Nikon Scan of IC1396
Here are some quick links to finished images scanned on the Nikon: