Re: filmscanners: film flatness in Nikon 4000

[Arthur Entlich <artistic@ampsc.com>]

PAUL GRAHAM wrote:

> Art,
> 
> well... I've got a liquid gate for my DeVere's, and I've got carriers with
> no glass, regular glass, anti newton glass, and vacuum coated anti newton
> glass (best)
> I use $2500 Apo-El-Nikkor lenses imported from Japan, (unavailable here)
> (none of the others are really Apo's) and I would *never* make a serious
> print without glass of some sort holding the film flat. (35mm or 10x8")
> sorry but all my tests show the opposite of yours, and any tiniest
> intereference from the glass is vastly more than compensated for by the
> *dramatic* improvement in sharpness over the whole film plane, but
> especially the corners/edges.
> keeping the glass clean is not such a problem, and I replace it once every
> few months anyway.
> 

Hi Paul,

I often speak about the "last 20%, 10% and the last 1%" in attempting to 
approach perfection.  The concept is that one can accomplish the first 
90% (of whatever) for a certain cost, the next 9% or so then costs 
double or more of the first 90%, and then the last 1% becomes almost 
unaffordable to most mere mortals.

What you are doing in your work is something approaching 99.5%, which I 
consider a very admirable, (and very costly), but also a relatively 
unique place in the market.  And, if Nikon was hoping to market its ED 
4000 to people like yourself, they would sell somewhat under 100 units 
in North America, if that and would be wise to sell it for about $40K 
per unit.  In fact, if that were the case, I'd say they were throwing 
"pearls before swine" if they were marketing it to people like myself.

But, I suspect you are not particularly the only market they were hoping 
to target in the design of this model. My point is that most people do 
not use glass carriers on there 35mm film enlarger or scanner, most 
wouldn't want to bother with it, pay for it (assuming the use of quality 
optical glass) and most wouldn't be willing to change the glass 
regularly to avoid scratches.  I agree with you that sometimes a 
specialty piece of equipment needs to be optimized for very special 
usage, which might require a glass carrier (for instance), and that that 
same piece of equipment might actually degrade an image without making 
use of that option.

But, if this piece of equipment is going to perform worse than the 
"average" product if something like a glass carrier is not used, then it 
should probably be sold mainly to people who require the extra it 
supplies with the glass carrier, and are willing to take the extra time 
and expense to use it principally in that manner.

To me, this is saying that the Nikon ED4000 is not a good choice for 
most people needing a film scanner, but might be a good alternative for 
those requiring a scanner, which, with a high quality glass carrier, can 
exceed most non-glass carrier film scanners, for large reproductions.

Art

> But then I work very large (40x50" colour prints are average), so things do
> get hyper-critical.  Then again, that's why I'm interested in a 4000 dpi m/f
> scanner!
>