Any news on the new Plustek 120 scanner?

[david.elliott]

The notion that because somebody does medium format photography, they must also be able to afford and desire a scanner in the $3000 range is absurd.

All those holga users out there and the people using any of the various inexpensive medium format systems available at keh must have thousands in discretionary cash lying around.

One can put together a medium format system for thousands less than a 35mm system. The reverse also holds true. Either system is as (in)expensive as one makes it.

[karlori]

Originally Posted by david.elliott

The notion that because somebody does medium format photography, they must also be able to afford and desire a scanner in the $3000 range is absurd.

All those holga users out there and the people using any of the various inexpensive medium format systems available at keh must have thousands in discretionary cash lying around.

One can put together a medium format system for thousands less than a 35mm system. The reverse also holds true. Either system is as (in)expensive as one makes it.

I was aiming at the crowd that does not want something low end but won't spend 1/5th of yearly income for an Imacon. Didn't want to put anyone down or exclude gear and people using them.

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Originally Posted by karlori

I was aiming at the crowd that does not want something low end but won't spend 1/5th of yearly income for an Imacon. Didn't want to put anyone down or exclude gear and people using them.

David wasn't responding to you, he was responding to mani, who said that it is 'absurd' that there are not many scanners costing more than $700, and that people who are complaining about the price of the Plustek should shut up and buy an M9. As David pointed out, that is absurd. I can't afford an M9, probably never will be able to buy a $7000 camera, but I have a Nikon scanner. I think guys like mani who think photographers are made of money should put their money where their big mouths are and buy M9s for us 'complainers'. Or shut up.

[rawhead]

If the new scanner turns out to be leaps and bounds better than a 9000ED and were priced accordingly, there would be nothing to complain about (though I may not be able to afford it). However, if the best that they can do is match the quality, and then price gauge it so that it's just below the current, heavily inflated going prices of the 9000ED, then I don't care what anyone says, Imma gonna complain

[david.elliott]

Originally Posted by karlori

I was aiming at the crowd that does not want something low end but won't spend 1/5th of yearly income for an Imacon. Didn't want to put anyone down or exclude gear and people using them.

As Chris said, I was responding to Mani, not you.

[wblynch]

Mamiya M645 kit with lens and prism finders... $200

Minolta TLR in exc+ condition... $85

Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash... $1

Diana F+ with flash .. thrift shop for $2

120 Film... $3-5 per roll (self developed add about $1 for processing)

Now, do you really think I'm interested in a $7,000 digital crap camera or a $3,000 scanner?




Be real. I am not alone.

[axiom]

Not bundling with any scanning software may help lower the cost.

[david.elliott]

Originally Posted by axiom

Not bundling with any scanning software may help lower the cost.

The option to have the software bundled would be nice. I'm sure some people like it.

I just use vuescan.

[XFer]

I still have heavy doubts it can match (or exceed!) 9000ED's scanning quality without adjustable focus, with real-world film.

Some quick&dirty math:

- Assume a 50mm lens (scanner lenses are usually 30mm-100mm)
- Assume 100mm focus distance (reasonable optical path)
- Assume a target resolving power of "true" 5000 points per inch, leading to a circle of confusion of 5 um for DOF calculation
- Assume the need of +/- 0.2 mm DOF because of varying film thickness, residual curling, mechanical play, assembling tolerance (I'm not even counting gears wearing, but it's important too). That's 0.4 mm of total DOF. Not really much.

Using adequate formulae (not online calculators: their math is not precise enough at this level) we find that an aperture of F/20 is needed to get the desided DOF.
But such a narrow aperture would KILL resolving power because of diffraction: diffraction disc would be about 30 um, or 6x the target CoC!

Actually, to get a diffraction disc of around 5 um (5000 dpi) we should stick to a F/3.5 aperture (in fact, Nikon scanner are believed to adopt a F/4.5 lens, OK for 4000 dpi); but this way we would only get about +/- 0.035 mm of DOF, not nearly enough for any practical application even with adjustable focus, let alone fixed focus.

You can sacrifice MTF by allowing for a more relaxed CoC (say 6-7 um instead of 5) and then counting on some sharpening, but we're still far from getting enough DOF.

Of course Plustek may have adopted a longer optical path (longer focus distance -> more DOF with same aperture), but anyway there are phisycal restraints as to how long an optical path you can design (your projected image size must exactly cover the sensor with the desired reproduction ratio; so if the focus distance is too long your focal length must be longer and again your DOF shrinkes).

So, I still hope Plustek would think again about designing a fixed-focus scanner.

[mani]

I'm gonna work with an analogy, just to clarify my position a bit.

Let's say that tomorrow every car manufacturer in the world decided to discontinue their models, except for the Smart FourTwo Pure and Ferrari Enzo. Now as most of us can't afford a Ferrari, the only option would be the Smart. You may want more space than that, or something faster - a BMW 6 Series, maybe, or even just a Volvo V60 - but the way things would be, you'd have to settle for the Smart, just like pretty much everyone else.

The sort of scanner market I'm hoping for, is one that includes both the Smart FourTwo AND the chance to buy a BMW Z4 - if that's what you want or need.

I think it's sad that not everyone can afford the Z4 (I can't), but if I really needed to I could scrape together the money to buy one. I can't ever see myself affording the Enzo - but that doesn't mean I want to settle for a Nissan Versa.

The M9 thing was obviously a joke

[Chriscrawfordphoto]

Originally Posted by mani

I'm gonna work with an analogy, just to clarify my position a bit.

Let's say that tomorrow every car manufacturer in the world decided to discontinue their models, except for the Smart FourTwo Pure and Ferrari Enzo. Now as most of us can't afford a Ferrari, the only option would be the Smart. You may want more space than that, or something faster - a BMW 6 Series, maybe, or even just a Volvo V60 - but the way things would be, you'd have to settle for the Smart, just like pretty much everyone else.

The sort of scanner market I'm hoping for, is one that includes both the Smart FourTwo AND the chance to buy a BMW Z4 - if that's what you want or need.

I think it's sad that not everyone can afford the Z4 (I can't), but if I really needed to I could scrape together the money to buy one. I can't ever see myself affording the Enzo - but that doesn't mean I want to settle for a Nissan Versa.

The M9 thing was obviously a joke

Some of us set our sights a little higher. Its nicer to have a market where you can buy a tin-can like the Smart car, nice midpriced car like a Camry or Taurus, and higher end but still not horridly expensive cars like Lincolns or Luxus and then really expensive ones like Ferraris. Having the choice between "crap" and "extreme cost for the rich only" sucks and has no appeal to anyone but those rich enough for the expensive stuff and disdainful enough of the rest of humanity to want to deny them access to anything but the low-end crap.

[mani]

Originally Posted by Chriscrawfordphoto

Some of us set our sights a little higher. Its nicer to have a market where you can buy a tin-can like the Smart car, nice midpriced car like a Camry or Taurus, and higher end but still not horridly expensive cars like Lincolns or Luxus and then really expensive ones like Ferraris. Having the choice between "crap" and "extreme cost for the rich only" sucks and has no appeal to anyone but those rich enough for the expensive stuff and disdainful enough of the rest of humanity to want to deny them access to anything but the low-end crap.

I don't understand your point?? That's exactly what I'm saying. Seems like you're too angry about the issue to understand what people are actually saying.

Right now there are plenty of Nissan Versas and Smart FourTwos in the scanner market, and then there's the Ferrari Enzo (the Imacon Flextights).

I'd like there to be something in the middle that aspires to better quality rather than just cheaper price. If the price does turn out to be lower, then great. But sacrificing quality for mass-market sales would just give us more of what's already available.

PS: I object quite strongly to this sort of low-blow, populist type of personal attack: "disdainful enough of the rest of humanity". Spare me the self-righteous bullsh.

[varjag]

Originally Posted by wblynch

Mamiya M645 kit with lens and prism finders... $200

Minolta TLR in exc+ condition... $85

Kodak Brownie Hawkeye Flash... $1

Diana F+ with flash .. thrift shop for $2

120 Film... $3-5 per roll (self developed add about $1 for processing)

Now, do you really think I'm interested in a $7,000 digital crap camera or a $3,000 scanner?




Be real. I am not alone.

You can wait until the scanners start popping up in thrift shops, too.

[XFer]

We already have cheap scanners for 120.
The V700/750 at about 2300x3000 dpi actual resolution is quite cheap.
The MF5000 at about 3000x3200 dpi actual resolution is still somehow affordable.
Now we need a scanner in the $2000-2500 ballpark with really good image quality; say 4500-5000 dpi actual resolution, good uniformity etc. And reliable too.
Let's hope the Plustek 120 will cut the cake.

[mdruziak]

Let's not get too hung up on the $3000 price. The question was will the price be less than $3000. The answer is YES.

[david.elliott]

Here's hoping it is dramatically lower.

[Jamie123]

What people seem to forget is how much the market for film scanners has changed in the last couple of decades. (Mind you, what follows is hearsay as I am too young to speak from experience on this)

Neither the regular consumer nor the enthusiast amateur used to scan their own negs. The consumer got prints at the minilab (or scans later on) and the enthusiast amateur printed in the darkroom. Nobody needed their images on the computer. The only ones who needed scans were pros, magazines and agencies. Professional drum scanners were the domain of pro labs and some of them cost around $100k. There were all sorts of drum scanners, both large and relatively small, aswell as high-end flatbeds. There probably was something in every price range between $10k and $100k. In that kind of market environment an Imacon wasn't terribly expensive. It actually was at the affordable level and I imagine if you were a pro it made some sense to buy one instead of paying top dollar for scans at the lab.

Only in the last 10 years with the rise of 'Web 2.0'/social media did the desire arise in most regular people to get their images onto the computer and the internet. And it's exactly at that time (early 00's) that most of the good consumer scanners like the Nikon Coolscans and the Minoltas (and Canon made some 35mm scanners, too) started appearing. But the time period where both the use of film and the desire to digitize was quite big didn't last too long and soon most of the computer savvy consumers (those that would bother with a scanner) switched to digital cameras. So it is no surprise that the large companies like Nikon, Canon etc., i.e. those who could produce high-end products in vast numbers at affordable prices, abandoned the project of developing better and cheaper scanners and focused on digital instead.

So what we're left with now is the lower priced end of pro filmscanners (Flextight) and a whole bunch of consumer scanners that have film scanning as an added capability. No one really wants to use drum scans at home. They're large, incredibly time-consuming and somewhat messy. What used to be the low-end in price is now the high end because the Imacons/Flextights are made so that anyone can use them at home. To stay with the car analogy, the Imacons/Flextights aren't the Ferraris of scanners, they are the small compact car. But now we're all wondering why nobody makes a compact car for the price of a cheap bicycle.

[wblynch]

Well it should be less than $1,500

If I can buy the 7600 35mm scanner for less than $700 how can a slightly bigger one cost 4 or 5 times more?

[rayfoxlee]

It seems a bit strange to me to have to pay the sort of money quoted on a MF scanner, but then I only go to A4. I have an aged Epson Perfection 2450 and the scans from my Rollei and Fuji GS 645 negs are terrific. I would expect that an A3 print would be just as good - provided that I was not tempted to view with my nose 6 inches from the print! Larger print, greater viewing distance, surely?

There seem to be some really decent flatbeds, such as the V600/700/750 that offer plenty of performance without breaking the bank. Unless the Plustek can sell thousands, the price will be relatively high. Surely better to go with the flatbed??

Have I got this completely wrong?

Ray

[XFer]

I really don't understand your post.

If you are OK with the prints you get by scanning 120 with an Epson 2450, more power to you.
It has very low dynamic range, can't resolve more than 25 line pairs/mm (I know, I also have a 2450: I use it to scan prints) and it's not really capable of delivering good micro-contrast; that's why people opt to pay $2500+ for 2nd-hand dedicated 120 filmscanner.

But hey, to each his own.
I drive a lowly Ford Fusion (EU model) and am quite satisfied; but, I am very much aware of its limits; and I know many people here would not touch it with a pole!

[david.elliott]

I hope, one day, for a scanner that has built in ANR glass. I'd love to have a (removable?) glass insert which was lowered onto the film to hold it in place. Or the film could be raised up to the glass to hold it in place and eliminate curling. I like the results I get using the better scanning holders with my v500, but sometimes it doesnt get rid of all the curling and the solution is kind of fiddly due to the nature of flatbed setup.

Not that this comment has any particular relevance to the more recent posts, but I thought I would post it anyway.

[axiom]

I would want a roll film feeder that automates the scanning process

[Matus]

Originally Posted by axiom

I would want a roll film feeder that automates the scanning process

According to Plustek Facebook it is not being developed (I have asked about that). However - the scanner would become much more interesting for smaller labs that offer reasonable quality for reasonable price scans (like they do today with the Coolscan 5000) as the roll feeder makes the process faster and cheaper.

Or did you mean roll fill feeder for 120/220 films?

[axiom]

Originally Posted by Matus

According to Plustek Facebook it is not being developed (I have asked about that). However - the scanner would become much more interesting for smaller labs that offer reasonable quality for reasonable price scans (like they do today with the Coolscan 5000) as the roll feeder makes the process faster and cheaper.

Or did you mean roll fill feeder for 120/220 films?

Roll feeding 120/220 without sprocket holes would be challenging.
Scanning an entire roll of 135 is quite time consuming, if it can be automated, that would be quite nice.

[JayM]

I like car analogies. Which scanner should I buy if I drive a rotary engine truck?