MINOLTA DIMAGE SCAN ELITE 5400 REVIEW

Last Updated August 24, 2003

As a few people have pointed out with reason that I was using a lens (Nikon 200mm/4 dated 1973), which may not be able to fully take advantage of the resolving capability of the Fujifilm Velvia 50 film. This could explain my difficulty in finding visible improvement in scanning at 5400 DPI versus 2700 DPI, I have decided to run another series of tests, this time using a picture taken with a much better lens, the Micro-Nikkor 55mm/3.5 (1975), which is still considered today as one of the better lenses for 35mm cameras.

The test picture was taken a last year, handheld, but I don't see that there was any shake when I pressed the shutter release button. As to my manual focusing job, I think that I might have been a little bit off focus on the left side of the picture, but as I use the central portion of the slide to make the comparison this should not have any negative impact in my analysis.

The PROCESS:

1) I scanned the Velvia 50 slide in 5400 DPI, 2700 DPI and 1800 DPI in TIFF format, without using ICE so that the image is not altered artificially.

2) I generated two cropped TIFF images from each full-size image (see the purple and yellow rectangles in the picture below) and saved them in TIFF format.

3) I then converted these cropped TIFF files to JPEG files for displaying on this web page.

File size in 5400 DPI TIFF: 200 MB File size in 2700 DPI TIFF: 50 MB File size in 1800 DPI TIFF: 22 MB
UNALTERED TIFF IMAGES WERE CONVERTED TO JPEG FOR DISPLAYING ON WEB PAGE. It would have been more accurate to show TIFF images, but because of the enormous file size, I had to convert them to JPEG for displaying purposes.	TIFF IMAGES ENHANCED WITH PHOTOHOP THEN CONVERTED TO JPEG FOR DISPLAYING ON WEB PAGE (Unsharp Mask, Auto Levels, Auto Contrast and Auto Color)
5400 DPI	5400 DPI
2700 DPI	2700 DPI
1800 DPI	1800 DPI
5400 DPI To me it looks less sharp than the 2700 DPI scan	5400 DPI
2700 DPI	2700 DPI
1800 DPI	1800 DPI

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You can also read about my Digital (Canon G5) versus Film (Nikon FTn) tests at http://www.photo-direct.net/cameras/Canon_G5.htm

You are encouraged to join this forum ( http://www.forums.photo-direct.net/photographer/ ) to further exchange info and opinions on this scanner.