Full review posted for Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite II film scanner!
By
Dave Etchells
(Wednesday, April 3, 2002 - 21:19 EST)
Dave looks at Minolta's $700 film scanner - see how it fares in our standardised tests...
If you were wondering what was holding up the flow of reviews onto the site lately, here it is! (These @#! scanner reviews just seem to take forever!) In any event, I've (finally) completed my review of the Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite II film scanner. Price-wise, this is a "low end" unit, with street prices of under $700. Performance-wise though, it's quite otherwise, quickly producing very sharp scans with good color. It sports a 16-bit A/D, as well as the full suite of Applied Science Fiction's image-enhancement technologies, namely Digital ICE, ROC, and GEM.
About the only criticism I could make of it was that there was some streaking in the deepest shadows of the Train I slide, but considering how hard I push the scanners with that particular sample of film pathology, I'd say the DSEII did very well. (Even the nearly-as-difficult Train2 slide didn't show the behavior.) All in all, this is a pretty amazing piece of scanner technology, especially when you consider that it's a good $100-200 cheaper than its closest competitor. Very impressive, a neat little scanner. Check it out!
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