Entered CNET Catalog: 03/07/2005
SKU: 0043325996986
Manufacturer: Konica Minolta
Manufacturer description
Worried about how to store old slides and films? With the DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400 II, scanning is fast and easy. Crop, edit, and manipulate your images as much as you like. Produce stunningly beautiful prints, photo gallery art, and CD / DVD archives and share your images with others via the web or e-mail!Product summary
The good: Excellent performance for a consumer model; first-rate, easy-to-use software; fast scanning at all resolutions; relatively high resolution.
The bad: Scans 35mm-format originals only; no batch-feeder option.
The bottom line: The Dimage Scan Elite 5400 II is a good choice for photographers who need to generate high-quality digital images from 35mm slides and negatives.
Editors' review
- Editors' Choice: No
- Reviewed on: 09/07/2005
Konica Minolta's Dimage Scan Elite 5400 II film scanner offers performance and specs that at one time were available only with considerably higher-priced professional film scanners, including a maximum optical resolution of 5,400dpi and a rated optical density of 4.8D. Its ease of use makes it a good choice for consumers or photographers with libraries of old slides and negatives, as well as for pros who still shoot film but at times need to go digital. Unfortunately, the lack of a high-capacity slide-feeder option limits its usefulness for higher-volume work.
The off-white scanner is housed in a sleek, durable plastic case measuring 2.8 by 6.6 by 13.6 inches and weighing 3.3 pounds. It accepts carriers for 35mm film and slides through its highly polished black front panel, which is also made of durable plastic. You can connect to either a Mac or a PC via an included USB 2.0 cable.
Two carriers are available; one accepts four slides, and the other accepts six-frame filmstrips. Loading originals into the carriers is easy; they fit snugly and snap shut to prevent any movement during scanning. Though most film scanners accept film facing either direction, the 5400 II requires that the film face emulsion-side down. You push the carrier in just far enough for the scanner to recognize it's there; the scanner then pulls it in. The spring-loaded dust door keeps dust and grime from settling on the scanner's mirrors and lenses when the scanner is idle. Accumulated dust may never become a problem with the Scan Elite 5400 II, but from our experience, it's helpful to be able to periodically clean a scanner's mirrors and lenses, especially in dusty, smoggy environments. The Scan Elite's inner workings aren't accessible to users.
For the simplest operation, you can either press the Scan button on the front panel (which starts the Scan Elite's Launcher application) or run the Launcher from the computer. The company overhauled the bundled software, which we complained about in our review of the 5400 II's predecessor, the Dimage Scan Elite 5400, and added Kodak's Digital ICE4 technology. The software will fit the needs of most photographers, whether beginners or experienced pros. The Easy option, meant for first-time users, is a remarkably good choice for all but the most difficult slides and negatives. It doesn't require users to tweak any of the optimization settings, but it does let them select the kinds of optimization they want. That includes the Pixel Polish option, which automates the basic brightness, contrast, and saturation settings, and Kodak's Digital ICE4, a quartet of technologies that remove dust and scratches, restore faded colors, adjust highlights and shadows, and reduce grain. All four Kodak applications work very well, especially the dust-and-scratch removal. Though the manual says it won't work with Kodachrome, we turned the feature on, ran some Kodachrome slides through the unit, and came up with good results. Despite the warning, we turned the feature on, ran some Kodachrome slides through the unit, and came up with good results.
For serious users, the Utility scanning mode offers the same capabilities as the Easy option but with nothing automated--you have to do all the tweaking. While not overwhelming, the comprehensive list of options meets or beats what we've seen elsewhere with similarly priced models. Its Jobs and Batch scanning utilities, for example, automate the scanning of multiple similar originals, while several interactive histograms make very precise color or brightness/contrast adjustments a snap. Each setting worked as expected. In addition to scanning options, Utility also offers some of the tools of an image-editing application. These take time to master, even for photographers who have experience with scanners; however, the manual does a good job explaining all the scanner's software options, which makes the process a little easier.
We did, however, find that some tools automatically updated the proxy window (a screen-resolution preview of image adjustments), while others required users to press a button. That's not a big deal, but it lengthened the scanning process for some of the more complex effects.
As with most scanners, the 5400 II's speed decreases as the scan resolution and the number of optimization tweaks increases. The 5400 II makes three kinds of scans: index, prescan, and final scan. Index scans took around seven or eight seconds, no matter how many images were in the film/slide carriers. Prescans apply specific adjustments to approximate the effects on the final scan; times vary depending on the scan resolution and the adjustment type and intensity.
For this review, we scanned images at 1,350dpi, 1,800dpi, 2,700dpi, and 5,400dpi but didn't apply the tweaks until the final scan. That increased scanning time a bit but only by the amount of time the prescans would have taken. With minimal adjustments, times ranged from 17 seconds at 1,350dpi to about a minute for 5,400dpi. That's what you can expect for the majority of jobs that don't require a lot of enhancement. Scanning times lengthen with additional optimization, especially at 5,400dpi. When we added Digital ROC (restoration of color), an unsharp filter, and Pixel Polish to the mix, the scanning time jumped to 4 minutes, 50 seconds; it climbed to more than 10 minutes with grain enhancement and scratch removal included. Fortunately, most slides or negatives won't need all the options turned on, so scanning usually won't take that long. On a fairly low-power system, the scanner worked flawlessly, without hiccups or pauses, even when burdened with multiple tweaks at the maximum resolution.
As you would imagine, final scan quality depended upon the quality of the original slide or negative. If correctly exposed with accurate colors (no distracting tints), the scans ranged from very good to excellent. Flesh tones, greenery, and the sky all matched the originals. Poorly exposed originals with noticeable color casts or obvious fading needed a lot of tweaking, but the final results usually matched. We had a bit of trouble getting the maximum densities from underexposed black-and-white negatives; admittedly, these are the hardest originals for any scanner to handle, but we were still disappointed, given the scanner's relatively high optical-density rating.
If you have tons of slides to scan, you're probably better off with a comparable model that supports a batch feeder, such as the Nikon Coolscan V; otherwise, the Konica Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400 II is a fine choice.
User opinions
Select a User Opinion to view: 1 2 3 4out of 4 user reviews
Eventually Goes Belly-Up In Very Big Way
Pros: Lots of good service
Cons: When it breaks, it breaks bad
The scanner has been okay until now, though not spectacular. I feel that I have actually spent $500 on a toy when I thought I was buying a piece of professional equipment. I won't be purchasing another Konica Minolta product again.
out of 4 user reviews
works but problematic
Pros: lots of options, large file possibility, high quality
Cons: many small and annoying problems . problematic software with a mac. sloooowww at high scanning. very poor at black and white scanning, and few options available for that
-every time it begins a scan of a new shot, a little window pops up over whatever other program you're using while waiting indefinitely for the thing to finish. really annoying, and in order to remove the window, you have to go to the dimage scan program's icon, click on that, wait for it to show up, and then click back on the program's icon that you were already using. in the time it's taken me to finish this little essay, it's happened about four times. (five times, now) (six)
-i've already had to uninstall and reinstall the included software twice (in one week). when the scanner gets confused (which it does often), the program says that there is software running, and it needs to be shut off, which i try repeatedly to do, force quitting, restarting the computer, unplugging and replugging... which does nothing... arrggh.
-there are prongs that extend vertically in the film holder to hold the negatives flat, but they overlap the space in between the shots, so there's big black bars on the scan that cut off the edges of the shot. plus, in order to line up the pictures, the first shot never synchronizes with the last (there is generally a big line through the bottom quarter of the sixth image from the prong). so it says that you can scan in six at a time, but really you can only scan in three or four, if you're lucky.
-i'm very impressed at the high level of quality when scanning in at large quality levels, but it literally takes between twenty minutes to an hour a picture, depending on how many scans you want, and bit rate, and all that. no fooling. that's ONE picture. i don't know where cNet got those scan times, but that has NOT been my experience.
-and black and white scanning is TERRIBLE. for instance, i've been trying to scan in a headshot of someone with five o'clock shadow, and it comes in looking like he has a silver rash across his chin. doesn't matter what level of quality or what format, they don't look good. exposures are flat, and the image cleaning programs are not programmed to work for black and white negatives. so that's fun.
-on some pics, the autofocus, and even manual focus, works, and on others, it just distorts the image.
-at this point, i've given up in the interest in time of trying to scan everything in at high quality. i'm using the easy scan settings to bring it all in at a passable level, and i'll wait another year or two to get something better and probably rescan it all then. there are a lot of positive things, but most of those were covered in the other reviews, so i just wanted to point out some of the problems i've already had in such a short amount of use.
out of 4 user reviews
As close to perfection as you can get!
Pros: very fast scanning, simple 3-step scanning, great resolution!
Cons: manual-control of software complicated, but gives control over every little facet of the scanner
This is a much-improved scanner over the previous-generation 5400. It's much faster and the latest ICE implementation works better. Multiple passes does a very good job off evening out noise and artifacts. This is probably the last scanner I'll ever buy as I'll be using digital from now on, just wish I can get 40mp images as cheaply as with this scanner and slides.
out of 4 user reviews
Great scanner right out of the box!
Pros: True colors, Digital GEM to remove grain works great. Pretty quick scans even with ICE and GEM. Compact construction and easy installation.
Cons: Digital ICE only removes the smallest of dust. Hi-pitched whining when scanning, but not too loud.
My setup: HP Pavillion P4 2.6Ghz with 1GB ram; Win XP home - for reference
Installation: No problems what so ever; quick and easy.
Software: Have no experience with Vuescan or Silverfast... but unlikely I will buy them because the included SW suits my needs. I have Vistascan for UMAX flatbed and the Dimage sw is far superior. It did take a few minutes and practice scans to learn the SW, but it's fairly intuitive. Have to read the manual to learn things like some functions only work on 8bit and not 16bit scans. Manual could be more detailed, but sufficient.
Operation: Prescans are fast! Scanner sounds mechanically solid, but again, a slightly hi-pitched whine from motors. Not too loud and doesn't bother me. 35mm slide holder works well - holds slides secure and captures 100%.
Scanning:
Index scan with 4 slides - 40sec.
Prescan, default settings, 1slide - 8sec.
Scan, default settings, 2700 dpi 1 slide - 38sec.
Scan, ICE, GEM(50), 2700dpi - ~3min.
Scan, ICE only - 1min 12s.
Scan, GEM only - 2min.
Features: I like the auto-crop feature and the Point autofocus. Both autofocus modes work great and I don't think I'll mess with manual focus. Digital GEM works great to take out the grain/noise in those blank areas like sky. There's a very, very, slight softening to the image only noticed at 200% in Photoshop. Small amount of unsharp mask in post-processing works.
Levels and curves nice to look at before scan, but I'll do all my adjustments in Photoshopt. Doing levels in Dimage SW causes gaps in the histagram when opened in Photoshop. Bottom line is that the color and exposure is great and any tweaks will be done later.
Haven't played with batch utility yet nor with Dig ROC or SHO (shadow detail).
Biggest eye opener was how much microscopic crap is on my slides! Again, Digital ICE only works on the smallest stuff and still requires dust removal methods in PhotoShop.
Overall, I'm very happy with this purchase, operation and results of this scanner.
Forgot to mention the dynamic range. So far, I've found good detail in the shadows with no noise. But haven't scanned a lot of slides so far and will also try the multi-pass feature to reduce noise in the shadows.
Lastly, the max dpi of 5400 is a key feature allowing large prints from little ole 35mm slides. For most purposes - and disk space, I'll probably use 2700dpi. But when I need it, I'll have it!
