[mikemchugh]

Prompted by Macified's question re. DV editing on a cube, I'd like to know about using a dedicated film/slide scanner with a cube; I'm thinking of investing in one of these scanners to digitize my slide collection (the new Minolta 5400 appeals, since it's a FW connection).

I know that these scanners generate large files, and that the scans can take a while, depending upon your system, and so I wonder if the 450 cube would be too slow ... does anyone here have any experience in this area ?

Thanks,

Mike McHugh

 

[MacDoc]

Not likely the Cube will the slowdown - the scanners take a long time at high rez.
Depends on what you do after the scan.

 

[mikemchugh]

Thanks MacDoc - post-processing will probably be colour-correcting older, faded slides and minor touch-ups on some others. The majority of them will be untouched, I think - I'm pretty hard-nosed about keeping only those slides I deem worthy

Mike

 

[swift]

I actually have a slide scanner I use with my cube and don't have any trouble with editing. If you're looking for some good scanning software, not the stuff that comes with the scanner, check out Vuescan. It really improves the quality of output.

 

[mikemchugh]

That's good to know, Swift - thanks. The scanner I am considering comes with PS Elements, which I actually already have, and like ...

I've coveted a Cube for ages, but was worried that if I did get one it wouldn't be fast enough for slide scanning/editing, the most processor-intensive thing it would be used for ...

Mike

 

[swift]

The actual scanning process isn't processor intestive at all really, only the editing. The Vuescan software I was referring to isn't for the editing process, it's the software that operates the scanner. You'll find that there is a wide range of results that can be achieved from the same scanner but different software operating it. For example, when I first got my scanner I was really disappointed with the output it was providing. That was with the bundled software, which if I recall operated through photoshop (full or elements). I ended up doing some research and found the Vuescan program was highly recommended. I would say it easily doubled, if not more, the quality of the output the scanner was able to provide (things like grainyness (is that a word?), proper colour detection, etc.) and really made me happy with my hardware choice.
I guess the author of the software increased the price by about ten dollars and now is only a one year update period free (Hurray for me buying before that and getting all the updates I want ). Either way, it's still the best piece of software you can have for film scanners, in my opinion, even above the editor (photoshop). Anyways, enjoy your scanner, which ever you pick up. It's lots of fun being able to have such control over the final look of your photos.

 

[mikemchugh]

Swift,

I didn't realise that you could get such different results using different scanning s/w - thanks for the tip. I may have actually tried VueScan in the past, I think they had OS X drivers out before many of the scanner manufacturers themselves ...

Mike