Re: filmscanners: RE: filmscanners: New Nikon performance

[Julian Robinson <julian@austarmetro.com.au>]

Art wrote:

>To bring this into a slightly different realm...
>
>Let's say you had a choice between a car which has a bit of vibration in 
>the steering column, and tends to require just a bit of steering 
>adjustment to keep it going perfectly straight, but handles over steering 
>and other human aspects of imprecise driving without creating any real danger.
>
>Then, on the other hand you had a choice of a car that had hardly any 
>vibration in the steering and tended to handle somewhat better on the road 
>as long as you used perfect driving habits, but if you over steered, for 
>instance -(hey, your fault, right?) it skidded right off the road.
>
>Which would you prefer to drive?
>
>Being human, I'll take car number 1, thanks.
>
>Art


Boy if ever there was a poor analogy, this is it!  The difference between 
cars and scans is that with one you risk you life, so safety kind of 
outweighs other concerns.  With the other, the beauty of the result is what 
counts, so analogous "wheel vibration" would be a nasty problem.

I can say that I have owned a Nikon scanner with ICE and LEDs, and another 
scanner with similar resolution but no ICE and no LEDs and an obvious 
difference in sharpness.  I have absolutely no difficulty in deciding which 
I prefer, and it is original sharpness, slightly degraded by ICE.  1000x I 
would prefer that combination, simply because it results in fine usable 
scans with virtually no retouching at all.  Saves countless hours, and the 
result is at least as sharp as my film/skill can support.  Maybe there are 
people with less dust problems than me in which case - go for it!

As an aside I wonder how the non-LED scanners with ICE perform?  It would 
seem to be softness upon softness?

Art, you accuse Nikon owners of being defensive - it is the persistence of 
your opposite stance that surprises me!

And I wonder how many people there are who have tried ICE who elect to go 
to a non-ICE scanner?  This would be a very interesting statistic.



Julian

Julian Robinson
in usually sunny, smog free Canberra, Australia