RE: filmscanners: Nikon 8000 ED or Polaroid Sprintscan 120 ??

["Hemingway, David J" <HEMINGD@POLAROID.COM>]

In researching for the SS120 we asked medium format users about features
including the various dust and scratch solutions. They said pretty much to
the person they took excellent care of their film and did not consider dust
to be a problem. They said they would rather address dust with localized
Photoshop work rather than a global system they perceive as softening the
entire image.
Polacolor Insight has software based dust removal. My personal testing has
shown if I take a tremendously dirty slide which I have made no attempt to
clean the Insight dust removal appears to be about 80% as effective as ICE.
If I take a more realistic slide which has be cared and cleaned the results
are much closer.
 I also polled several Imacon d
dealers to see if any of their customers have requested hardware dust
removal solution. They responded they have never had a single request. I
don't think Heidleburg has it on their drum scanners. I also noticed at PMA
that Imacon was  demo'ing dust removal in Photoshop using the history
palette. Pretty neat.
All that being said if we did have ICE it would be easier at the point of
sale but I don't know how much better a scanner it would be..David Hemingway
Polaroid Corporation

 -----Original Message-----
From:   Jack Phipps [mailto:JPhipps@asf.com] 
Sent:   Thursday, February 15, 2001 11:54 AM
To:     'filmscanners@halftone.co.uk'
Subject:        RE: filmscanners: Nikon 8000 ED or Polaroid Sprintscan 120
??

I wouldn't consider a scanner that didn't have Digital ICE. Not only that,
but the Nikon scanner has Digital ROC (Reconstruction of Color) that does an
incredible job of restoring color to faded images. It even works on certain
new over/under exposed images as well. It also includes Digital GEM (Grain
Equalization & Management). This reduces the grain when you have to enlarge
images and grain becomes apparent. This is one of the first scanners that
bundles all three of these important features into one scanner. You can find
more information on these features at:
www.asf.com

In my biased opinion, the Nikon is the clear choice between these two
scanners.

Jack Phipps 
Applied Science Fiction


-----Original Message-----
From: David Freedman [mailto:dpfreedman@worldnet.att.net]
Sent: Monday, February 12, 2001 4:43 PM
To: filmscanners@halftone.co.uk
Subject: filmscanners: Nikon 8000 ED or Polaroid Sprintscan 120 ??


Ah, isn't competition wonderful?  In advance of the aggrssively-priced Nikon
Coolscan 8000 ED, it appears that Polaroid has lopped approx. $1,200 off the
suggested list price of their Sprintscan 120. It's now priced at $2,795
rather than the original $3,995. This according to a Polaroid press release
coming out of PMA.

So, here's the question:  With prices now nearly equal, is there a
compelling reason to prefer one over the other?  I'm eager to get my order
in for one of these scanners and am leaning toward the Nikon (ED glass,
software bundle, etc) but I may have overlooked something significant that
could tilt the balance toward the Polaroid. Any thoughts?