On this page, you can find a Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400 scan example. The results on this page focus mainly on the Grain Dissolver (lightsource diffuser) and Digital ICE capabilities.
Crops of a distant building shot on 35mm Kodak Supra 100 film (now discontinued).
All scans (and one sharpened version) are from the same piece of film, with the only difference being the automatic exposure to compensate for the loss of lightsource brightness due to the diffuser plate. Remember that you are looking at an approximately 1.7x2.8mm piece of film, so on my monitor that represents an 78x enlargement. The Nikon LS-2000 and LS-4000 scans were only resized to match the three others, as explained below.
The above crop on the left was scanned on a Nikon LS-2000 (@2700 ppi), and the crop on the right was scanned on a Nikon LS-4000 (@4000 ppi).
To allow a comparison with the higher resolution Minolta scans, the Nikon scans were resized up, so they would match the Minolta scan size. To compensate for the upsampling, they were "stair-step" sampled at +10% for each step. This slightly enhances edge contrast, but potentially also the visibility of graininess.
The above crops were scanned on a Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400.
The first image on the left was scanned without Grain Dissolver and without ICE. The image on the right has only the Grain Dissolver enabled, the last one has both the Grain Dissolver and the Digital ICE dust and scratch removal activated. You will also notice that there is a slight color shift introduced by activating the diffuser and another shift by adding the ICE functionality. Remember you are viewing an enlargement of 78x the size on film. When printed at 300ppi, the full uncropped image would measure 26.0 x 17.4in or 66 x 44cm.
If you have left Javascript enabled in your browser, then you can switch here between the same images, superimposed on each other for a more accurate comparison.
The color shift in the SE-5400 scans may be due to the fact that the Blue channel is the noisiest of the three color channels, but it might also have to do with a slightly warm color of the diffuser plate and different (Auto) exposure time. The color balance between the SE-5400 scans was deliberately left unchanged so, removal of the Blue noise could explain (part of) the color shift. It also means that (color or noise) profiles should be based or the (de)activated states of the noise suppression in the Minolta Scan Utility. Future tests must show if similar shifts occur when VueScan is used to drive the scanner.
