[sane-devel] Scanner Question

[Giuseppe Sacco]

Il giorno mar, 07-06-2005 alle 18:59 +0200, Spiro Angeli ha scritto:
> Hi,
>=20
> I need an advice - if possible, please.
>=20
> I have to scann 15000 35mm frames and 350 slides.
> I wish to purchase a NIKON scanner which will be connected via USB and wi=
ll=20
> work on Linux "hopefully"
>=20
> Here couple of models available:=20
> - Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED series
> - Nikon Coolscan V ED

On Linux you may use SANE, that is free software and is packaged for
almost every GNU/Linux distribution. The list of supported scanner is
http://www.sane-project.org/sane-supported-devices.html

I have a nikon Coolscan LS 50ED. It is actually not supported by SANE
and I use it, with Nikon software, on Mac OSX.

I heard about a non free software, running on GNU/Linux, that support
this scanner. It is called VueScan, if I remeber right; but I never
tried it.

I permitted to use my scanner to Andr=E1s Major, the SANE coolscan2 driver
author, but he said that this scanner is enough different from Coolscan
LS 40, so probably a new SANE backend will not be available very
shortly. Archives of this list includes some recent messages about
peoples actually working on it.

I think the 5000 is similar to the 50 I have. I like it very much for
color film, but ICE4 isn't working on b/w because it uses an infrared
light to remove noise. The infrared light will not pass the b/w film and
ICE4 will not 'clean' your film.

The only problem I see is that this scanner, while really good, isn't
fast. I do not have other scanners to compare it, but I wait 3.5 minutes
for each 35mm image, at 4000dpi 24bit. This is on a powerbook that only
have USB1.1. It may be different with USB2.0, but I don't think so since
powerbook CPU goes to 100% during the whole scan.

Bye,
Giuseppe