Customer Reviews

Konica Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400 Scanner

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

I purchased this unit in Dec 2003. Scanned a few slides, then came back to in a month later. The unit would not load or unload slides. It made all sorts of grinding noises. Minolta fixed it under warranty. When they shipped it back, it had a damaged face plate. I stupidly did not bother to call them back and demand it to be fixed again. I did not care about minor cosmetic damage to the face plate. I subsequently scanned over 500 slides with it with good results. I did not use if for several months, and now the unit is dead. Won't load or eject the film holder. Now Minotla claims it is damaged and not under warranty. Before you buy this unit, look for others will similar repair problems. I wish I did before I bought this scanner. Not recommened do to the poor workmanship and faulty design that requires frequent trips to the repair shop.

This is a wonderful machine. Software installed first time, not common for scanners, and worked first time. I have a ton of stuff on my machine (XP/Pro) and found no conflicts.
Best film/slide holders I've seen.
3 scanning modes available.
Easy which does a quite good job, but with little ability to change settings and full which lets you adjust everything. The third mode is batch which lets you set up to scan all negs or slides in the holder.
The full mode can be used within Photoshop (or Photoshop Elements 2 which is included).
Shadow detail is stunning.
All film scanners are slower than flatbeds and this is no exception. An ultimate negative scan (Maximum input resolution, Maximum output resolution, 48bit color, Digital Ice) takes just under 4 minutes and produces a 233Meg Tif file. But you seldem need quite that quality. Most scans would be about 1.2 minutes to 3 minutes. Negatives take longer than slides.
You must have USB 2 or Firewire! You could connect this to USB 1.1, but speeds, especially at the high end would be terrible.
My only complaint is that you can't tell the software the length of the film strip. My of my film is in 4 negative strips and the software always scans the whole holder which is 6 long.
Highly recommended.

I've tested this scanner for two weeks now, and I must admit that despite it doing excellent slide scans, I am worried
about numerous items that may force me to return it.

I'll start with the good: It does excellent slide scans
at 2700 dpi and these come through in about 4 minutes,
pretty consistently and beautifully sharp. The saturation seems only very slightly lacking and I've
been noticing some deficiency in the yellow end of the color balance, but I also have to admit they are very sharp and
perfectly acceptable for a scanner at this price. The Elite also does excellent scans of very dark images, for
instance night shots, which exceeded the capacity
of my last slide scanner.

There remain other problems, however. Top of the list is the results from color negatives. Granted, the results from
my Nikon Coolscan III also suffered the same deficiency in
saturation but I bought that scanner in 1999 and figured
this would be a solved problem. When you scan a negative
in this unit, expect to have to readjust it, a hassle with
negatives for which there may be no real reference
(ie prints, etc) I've gotten beautiful rich prints from
Kodak negative film and these scans just do not come
anywhere near that richness of color. You'll do much better
to scan prints from a flatbed.

Of equal or more concern is the slapdash look of the software included. There was little or no attention paid
to the look of the user interface, which leads me to distrust the value of many of the suppposedly automated functions, such as noise reduction and dust and scratch removal.
The prescans seems to be superfluous. Nikon's
software left this in the dust. I know for a fact that the color adjust is basically for show only. It doesnt appear to
update as you adjust it. Anyway, it's advertised as some
remarkable support ware for scanning which it is not.

The most serious concern is the occasionally wild
variations in scan times that occur when scanning
negatives, however, and the varying times of setup
when you leave it unattended after scanning.
I've seen this unit take from 6- 20 minutes(!) per image at the 2700dpi negative setting
and why it should take so much longer than the slide scan
is a mystery. What's worrisome is the variation in
function. In all fairness, the loaders allow you to load
and leave 4 slides or a strip of six negatives. While the scanner works, you can take a break or snack. I really
appreciate this function and you won't find it elsewhere
at this price. The unit has a thin long profile, and the firewire
makes transfer much faster than any USB scanner will muster.

However, the variation in function and motor noise, cheap appearance of the software, and online rumors make me wonder about the long-term durability of this item, so
proceed with caution. Buy an extended warranty, I guess. So far so good on the slides, though, and that's what really counts, since my experience until now has shown me that negative scans are not gonig to be great at the sub-$1000
price point. They're certainly sharp enough, but Minolta,
where's the color saturation? Telling me to adjust
it in the crappy interface is not a sufficentt answer. And
what in golly's name is the focussing button for?
How am I going to accurately focus a laser on a
small piece of emulsion? Does this mean that this
thing goes out of focus easily? GREAT. That's YOUR
job, Minolta. Mine is to focus the camera.
I'll be looking to another company from now on.
I expect to see a software update if you want to keep the
business of a PRO photographer.

Please, check out postings on serious digital photography forums before even considering this scanner. I would suggest the Digital Darkroom forum at www.photo.net (you can search for DSE 5400 related threads) and especially the Film Scanners forum at www.photo-i.co.uk.

Regarding my personal experience with this scanner, my unit was faulty right out of the box (the "green lines" problem, see forums for more). As of now my (less than one month "old") scanner has been at Minolta repairs service once where it was cleaned. NOTHING was actually done to repair the problem despite the truckload of info (including my original slides and their scans) that I'd assembled for the repairs service. In the next few days the scanner will be shipped out for repairs again but I have a big suspicion that my problem will be ignored just as the first time.

This is what I think about this. Yes, if you are lucky to get a perfectly operational unit, it would produce excellent scans for you. However, my feeling is that Minolta is pushing a poorly designed and tested product that is inherently faulty and susceptible to various quality problems. Currently the risk of getting such faulty unit is fairly high, and if you read this post then you know how you will be treated by Minolta repairs. Minolta appears not to be an honorable company. There is a big chance that if your unit is not operating as it should it will not be repaired but you will not get a refund for it either.

I bought a Konica Minolta DiMAGE Scan 5400 II three months ago. I've not produced a single usable scan yet. Most of the time my scanner has been in transit between my house and Minolta's Technical Service. The scans have fine parallel streaks that show up on large prints. After I posted the resulting scans on a photographer's discussion list I got e-mail from many other people who had problems with Minolta scanners. It looks like this product has a very poor quality control. After three repair attempts Minolta agreed to replace my scanner. Today they went back on their word. Someone from their service department called and told me my scanner is "as per factory specifications" and that the streaks "can only be seen at high magnifications" - as if that was not the whole point of buying a dedicated film scanner. My advice: get a Nikon. You don't want to deal with jerks.

Unfortunately the scanner was defective. I have sent it to Minolta for repair.

I have scanned family slides that are 45 years old and they come out perfect. I have scanned negatives that come with picture orders and the pictures come out great. I also use Jasc Paint shop pro 9 along with it to enhance the pictures a little bit more. I save them in the tif format then work with them with the Jasc and then save them in Jpg format.
Great scanner. Happy with my purchase

Let's clarify here; this is for the Elite 5400, not the later 5400II which has seemingly had tons of reliability issues. Some reviews here are for the 5400II and others sound like they could be too.

My personal experience has been that it has processed through hundreds, probably thousands, of slides without a hitch. Color rendering does not quite match my Velvia slides but otherwise I am quite happy. Only complaint (aside from the amount of time it takes to scan at 5400 dpi/16 bit) would be the focusing. I seem to spend a lot of time re-focusing, especially for images with a lot of empty space.

All in all, I would certainly consider this one again. The only other comparable model is the Nikon 5000 which is more expensive and has lower resolution.

This is all probably a bit of a moot point anyway. Minolta has sold off all of its photography interests to Sony. While they continue to support the existing ones, Sony does not seem to have any interest in developing or selling film scanners.

I was greatly dissapointed in this scanner. The software was very problematic on my Mac G4 OSX.4 platform. User groups had solutions but were cumbersome and rediculous to do. The hardware constantly crashed and finally never started. Minolta suggested it needed repair, right out of the box, that it was a hardware problem!!
Good luck.
Dissapointed

Bought it, used it once for a dozen or so slides and.. it broke. No diagnostics, just mechanical failure of the mechanisms moving the slide. Sent it back under warranty for repair.

Got it back, used it as a test.. seemed ok. I learned what was involved with scanning a series of slides, and went off toplan my archive scanning project. Came back to use it 6 months later and... broken. No connection at all, yet no diagnostics. Funny mechanical sound just-like-before, and no utility. Called and .. of course.. out of warranty. They won't help at all unless I send it in for a repair order, likely to be $200 or more.

HUGE waste of money.. huge regrets at having spent nearly $800 on a Minolta product that Minolta apparently pushed to market despite serious reliability issues. Perhaps most annoying, they won't provide support for customers stuck with their inferior product.

I know this is an old product but since I am now paying fees for slide scanning, I wanted to make sure others know about the history.