Why film scanner and why not?

I think the application is mainly to use them to occasionally scan films b4 the true DSLR era comes and to scan very old memorable films and enjoy all the advantages of digital photography. But why not? My answer is simple, a secondary generation image has disadvantage of both media, i.e., grains and digital noise and one need to handle one more media, i.e. the film.

So, why this one - Minolta Scan Dual III (SD III)?

1. The specifications are unbelievably attractive with unbelievable price. This spec surpasses quite some other more expensive models of other manufacturers. Despite its low price, it is bundled with nearly all the necessary features - both hardware ones and software related;

2. Compactness and appearance - needless to say more for its small footprint and beautiful appearance..;

3. Outstanding scan quality - I ve just bought it for several days but all the negative film scan for different negatives never let me down. Moreover, manual adjustment is actually not needed for non-demanding situations;

4. Its scanning speed is very fast and it seems that it doesn't create any difficult workload for my PC (MSI Hermes P4 2.4G 512M DDR with USB 2.0 ports). Yes, the SD III support USB 2.0! A full 11M scan can be done as fast as in half a minute. However, I like to enable AF and AE for scanning, and this only increase some times required and scanning one frame still only require about one minute and using AF can surely produce better picture. The multi-scan option can be set up to 8X but I can only notice very subtle difference between basic scan. Nevertheless, the scanning of one frame can still be completed within four minutes even all the best possible settings are selected.

5. Very easy to use for both hardware and software: There is simply no need to read the manual even for using what is assumed to be "advanced utility" which indeed have plenty of advanced functions. The batch scanning function let the user to scan a maximum of 40 frames with a batch of 6 (negatives, 4 for slide, 40 for optional APS adaptor used) at a time. Despite the software version is V1.0, a bug has never been seen for these few days and the application has only crashed once when I enabled all the highest possible settings with all automatic software correction. Needless to mention, the driver and software setup is the simplest I have ever seen for camera products.

What's missing then?

I think there is only one thing:- No ICE option. But IMHO it cannot be regarded as a con for this price. BTW, ICE has its own problem such as degrading the picture sharpness and color saturation *and* increase the scanning time terribly, etc. Though there is no ICE, Minolta has offered an "Auto Dust Brush" function and this function can be engaged automatically during scanning such that time-consuming post processing will not be required. I enjoy this function much and it has shown its effect and without degrading the original picture information. After all, one can regard the Auto Dust Brush to be marginally effective but it is also quite moderate on the other hand and has no visible impact on picture quality and no loss of information observed.

The bottom line?

Purchase this excellent model if you think you really need a film scanner. IMHO, don't buy more expensive models if you don't plan to scan large number of films, especially, those films with poorer condition - with scratches and dust. My final words are to save the bucks for DSLRs when they become mature and cheap enough. Grains of films and the way needed to handle them are really great annoyance.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 327
Interface: USB