I am new to digital imaging/scanning and would like to know how much difference there is between a scanner that has 2700dpi and a 3.6 dynamic range and a scanner that has 4000dpi and a 3.4 dynamic range. I will be making a variety of prints in terms of size (13" x 22" to 6" x 4") on a variety of papers for photorealistic and art usage. The art stuff will be on papers that inherently degrade the image somewhatand phot stuff will probably go 11" x 14". Any thoug

-- John A. Miller (jamphoto@hotmail.com), June 11, 1999

Answers

I wrote a fairly lengthy answer about the 4000 to another person on this site. You might be able to find it. Suffice it to say that I have had a lot of problems with it. The resolution is great. Watch out for low res scans that you might use for the web, anything under 1000 ppi picks up a lot of noise. As far as 3.4 vs 3.6, I have heard that these standards are fuzzier than the numbers might imply. A polaroid 3.4 might equal or exceed a nikon 3.6. Or it might not. I made a test scan with the nikon 2000. On the transparency, there were tons of detail in the shadow values that the scanner didn't pick up. These were shadows that still had some color to them. I didn't use the 16x oversampling feature on the nikon, because that can take forever to finish. That might have increased the detail in the shadows, but who knows.

If you can steer away from deep shadows in your work, you probably can live with a smaller dynamic range.

-- Lorenzo (Lorenzo46@hotmail.com), June 22, 1999.