Scanner Comparison - Epson vs Imacon vs Howtek

http://www.timparkin.co.uk/blog/scannercomparison

Scanner Comparison - Epson vs Imacon vs Howtek

I've posted previously about a comparison between drum scanners and Epson flatbeds. The fact that the drum scanner trounced the Epson was not really in contention but recently I had the opportunity to get a scan from a modern Imacon scanner (owned by Joe Cornish) and from a Howtek 4000 drum scanner (re-badged Crosfield Magnascan 200i I believe, and owned by Dav Thomas) using Silverfast Ai v 6.6 & Kami SXL 2001 fluid both using the same transparency that I had previously had problems with using my Epson.

I knew that the drum scanner was going to provide a better resolution scan than the Imacon but I was more interested in how well it scanned shadows and was it immune to some of the artefacts that I'd seen from the Imacon and the Epson. These artefacts were halation and chromatic abberation.

Halation, a glow around high brightness areas that impinges into darker areas. I have seen a small version of this, a few pixels on a 2000dpi scan, and also a larger version that spreads 2-300 pixels. In photographic terms this is similar to flare and I imagine it occurs in a similar fashion. In the example scan you can see this in the area around the cliff edge and also at the top of the worms head island.

Interactive Example of Halation

Chromatic abberation is evinced as a red and blue borders at opposite sides of a high contrast edge. In the scan you can see this the worst around the white lichen hot spots at the bottom left of the picture but it can also be seen at the top right of the cliff top and also as a strange colouring in the sea where you have a highlight off the wave top right next to a shadow from that same wave. The image at the top of this post shows one of an example of this.

Interactive example of Chromatic Abberation

In comparing these results, it should be kept in mind that the drum scan took 5 mins of mounting and 1.5 hours of scanning wheras the Imacon took 5 minutes to do both.

Here is one of the clearer examples which shows what happens if you want to pull detail out of shadow areas..

Interactive Example of pulling shadow detail - look closeley at the twig bottom left

Click on the many links on the left hand side of the Interactive Example to see more crops.

In conclusion it seems that the best way to scan images is to get a drum scanner. However, there are many other factors at play here. Wet scanning is messy and a lot of people are uncomfortable exposing transparencies in this way. Also, the whole process is a lot more time consuming. Finally, the amount of room a drum scanner takes up can be 10x as much as an Imacon. Realistically, if you want to scan more than a couple of photos a month and you have the budget, an Imacon will always be a better choice. However, for those with limited budgets, excess time and who only process a few images a month, a drum scanner will produce stunning results.