Customer Reviews

Konica Minolta DiMAGE Scan Dual IV Film Scanner

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(24)

 

 

Yeah, I hear what some of the other reviewers are saying about the documentation and the fussy startup process - however complaining that you have to follow the instructions _exactly_ when installing it seems a bit odd to me... I had no problem with the install but then again I don't have a problem following instructions ;->.

But all that said, once you get it right it's a very good scanner. I've used others and this is by far the best. I'm suprised to hear the one reviewer complain about the sharpness of the shots - my scanner does an excellent job. I've scanned in over 500 slides so far (archiving the parent's slide collection from the 60s) and they look great.

The dust remover feature works reasonably well, although I've turned off all the pixel polish and image adjustment stuff - it doesn't make that big of a difference on my shots and makes the resulting images bigger.

The batch scan is great - I just sit here and work on other stuff and feed in 4 slides at a time. I've tried both color slides and negative film, both look excellent.

For those still frustrated by the startup sequence - here's what I do and it works every time.

1. Turn on your computer, let it boot.
2. Once up, turn on the scanner with the door closed.
3. Fire up the scanning software you want to use (batch scan, easy scan etc...).
4. once it barks at you to put the film in properly, then open the door and feed in your tray.

After that, you're good to go. I find if you deviate from the process you can come to grief. Once up, I've never had it fail and I've crammed through 150 slides at a sitting without a hitch.

I shopped for a film/slide scanner at a reasonable price, comparing online and magazine reviews of several available. On balance, this scanner had the best features, specs, price and good performance history (prior versions II and III). I am advanced amateur photo enthusiast needing to convert slides to digital images. I have an Epson 3170 flatbed, which is great for old print photos but doesn't produce good images on slides despite some hyping in a couple of reviews that it does. The Minolta Dual Scan IV looks professional, feels substantial, is easy to set up, its software is easy to follow (more advanced components require spending some time learning the subtleties), and the slide and film holders are well made and engage in the travel mechanism very well. Images produced are outstanding - easily allowing you make 8.5 x 11 high quality prints (I use a Canon i960 printer). I am very impressed and totally satisfied. Some improvements were made in model IV, that take care of a few criticisms made about model III. USB 2 connect makes data transfer fast. This is great performance and value for the money.

After studying professional reviews (including CR), I decided on the Dual4. Forewarned by other users' comments about troublesome startup, I followed the manual's detailed installation instructions step-by-step. No problem whatever! Realize well that this is NOT a Plug-and-Play unit you just plug into a USB2 slot; if you do, Windows will use its own lame-duck generic WIA scanner driver, and gone are all the wonderful enhancements that Minolta's marvelously sophisticated scanning software offers. THE big secret is patience; precisely follow the instructions (same goes for my HP flatbed scanner) -- install the software from the CD first, and *only then* connect the USB cable when you are instructed to do so. If you don't: well just read what dissatisfied reviewers have to say. Also, when the manual tells you to initialize the scanner "with the door closed", it doesn't explicitly tell you to remove the film holder [it's the only way you can close the scanner door, after all]. Although better written and organized than an Asian DVD-player manual, there are some dense spots that you will need to explore on your own. Still, you can't unlock all the treasures of the software until you read (painstakingly, I might add) the software capabilities. I've only had the scanner for a few weeks but, once I learned how just a hair on the negative will magnify to a tree trunk on the print, it does an astonishing job of converting analog film slides to digital images that you can enhance in the accompanying complete PhotoShop Elements 2 software. A magnificent tool indeed but, like any precision tool, it needs careful adherence to instructions and some experimentation to realize its full potential. An unbeatable harware product, with software fine-tuned to provide the ultimate in quality images. Even so, lack of online tech support, such as simple driver updates, is disconcerting. Ask Amazon for tech support? You must be kidding!

I haven't really had this long enough to know it well. I am in the middle of a freezing problem. However, what I haven't seen addressed in the reviews is what is a deal breaker for me.
I have Kodachrome slides from the 1950-1960 era. I returned my first scanner thinking it was dirty on the inside. The scans of the slides have what appears to be scratches and dirt spots. Too numerous to fix. None of the filters fix these problems. (By the way, my old Epson Photo Perfection 1650 scanned them clean -although it certainly had its own unbearable issues)
I received the new one and same problem. This time I called MInolta again and asked if there was a problem with Kodachrome and she checked and told me yes. That the scanner technology is not compatable with Kodachrome. She also did admit that the scans woould not be correctable as the scan contain so much noise. Ektachrome, according to her, and any new slide film, should be okay. I will be testing. First quick impression from 4 slides seems that may be true.
So if you are using this to archive slides from Kodachrome, look elsewhere! And perhaps check with Tech support before purchasing. When I initially talked to tech supposrt about the first scanner they did not seem to be knowledgeable. They could have asked what film I was using and avoided a return of a perfectly fine scanner.
(P.S. -no phone number is given in the manual for tech support, but I did get it from amazon)
An update. I will be sending this unit back. The Ektachrome slides sometime show noise, and the negatives show way too many scratches and orange blobs. Colors are vivd on negatives, (not slides). But I have thousands of negatives to go through and all the pixel polish, dust feature and grain dissolver do not fix the problem. Too bad, it was affordable. I had better results with my flatbed (other than the flourescent green line about a pixel in with running throught the picture. I will save for a Nikon.

I am totally impresed with this scanner. I was scanning 35mm film with an Epson 2450. What a difference! More latitude in the tonal range. Very sharp, Scanner has auto and manual focus. Professional driver software. Images consistant in color from scan to scan.
Have not used the dust remove feature yet. So far all my negs and trans are flawless. Even thou it is only 3200 dpi, if you know photoshop, the quality of the scans are so good I have no problems enlarging to 36x24 poster. I did a test and enalrged in the computer to 100 inches and just checking it out on the monitor it still held together NO PROBLEMS!
Have had the scanner for about a month and use it everyday and have had no start up problems or any other sort of problems, yet. But then again I use a MAC. Read the instruction manual before you do anything!
Anyway, well worth the $270 I spent !

I've had this now for two days. I've already scanned in 280 slides, and could not be happier with the results. The batch scan is a breeze and it makes feeding them in so easy. My main problem is STOPPING and going to bed when I should. The one common complaint about the fussy startup is one I share. When I first set it up, I did everything the manual said to. INCLUDING not starting software until the light stopped blinking. It blinked for a LONG time, and nothing. I was figuring I had a bad unit, but then tried starting the software to see if it would respond at all. Soon as the software started it went on steady and I was able to scan. Too picky of a start up which is why I only gave 4 stars. The quality is EXCELLENT. I was very hesitant to buy this at first, but am SO glad I did now. It's been great fun rediscovering the memories that have been buried in the trays for too long. Making them usuable again, is well worth the $265.

I acquired this scanner a few months ago in order to digitize several thousand slides taken by my grandfather between 1958 (at least) and 1973. So far, I've scanned about 950 slides and have at least that many to go.

Setup was not quite plug and play. I have a number of USB devices on my system (P4, @Ghz, 256MB, WinXP Home) and it didn't respond to the first USB plug I chose (which has worked for other connections in the past). The instructions for getting that done and for initializing the scanner itself weren't very helpful. The sequence for initializing it before any use seems to be power (doesn't seem to matter if it's turned on before the computer or after Windows is running), then start up any of the provided software items before opening the door. The instructions tell you to wait for the light to stop flashing before opening it, but I didn't see anything about needing to run any software. Starting the launcher doesn't do it. In my case, since the only way to get through this many is batch mode, I click on Batch Scan Settings (to the right of the button to start Batch Scan Utility) first, even if I'm not changing anything.

The slide holder processes 4 slides at a time, which takes about 4 minutes for slides with normal exposure, not counting the time to remove the previous 4 and insert the next set. If the slides are particularly dark or the software determines it isn't getting something on them, it slows down dramatically for that slide. Once you start, it's generally hands-free between sets (up to 1:30/slide in my experience), although lately I have a number of occasions where the gears that move the next frame into place seem to slip and the slide holder requires a (very slight) tap to get them to engage. If you're not there to catch it, the scanner times out (and probably wears a little while it clicks away) and the software has to be restarted, including turning the scanner off and on again.

I have no complaints at all about the quality of the pictures. I have it set to get the highest resolution possible, and am saving most of the pictures in a jpg format with a relatively low compression rate using the supplied Adobe Photoshop Elements software. When I find particularly good pictures, I go back and rescan them using TIFF format. The jpg files are about 8MB in size and the TIFF files came in a little more than 30MB each, explaing why I'm not doing all of them in jpg! All slides need to go in the same way, so pictures taking at a right angle need to be rotated back using the software, which involves resaving at low compression, so there's probably a little more loss there on the jpg photos.

One thing that surprised me is that the color depth only has 8b or 16b as options. The 16b has fewer options available for editing, so I've set it at 8b for the batches I'm doing. On the other hand, the color seems fine to my untrained eye, so I'm happy with it.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with the results. I've been putting in slides as I type this, so just interrupt whatever I'm doing to reload the trays and move on. The images are great, and are letting me bring back some family photos, taken by a man who's been dead for over 30 years and of people who also may have been gone for at least that long, that would otherwise have been lost.

This is a solid, dependable scanner, especially for the price. Scans at high resolutions are very crisp and professional. I've used a few other slide scanners, including expensive Nikon bulb-type production scanners, and the output of this scanner matches the best I've used. There is absolutely no comparison between similarly priced Pacific Image scanners and their clones. (I replaced a sub-par Pacific Image scanner with this...)

The advanced software interface is slightly utilitarian, but has features found in high end scanners and provides a solid, dependable feel, as if the software engineers actually know the complexities of scanning. The point focus mode is great for curved negatives.

I am using the scanner in High-Speed 2.0 mode under OS X 10.3 with no issues. (under 10.3 may require USB 2.0 drivers from USB card manufacturers). It's extremely quick. A full resolution 42 MB scan takes about 22 seconds from start to display finish in Photoshop.

As others have stated, there are minor startup procedures you must follow. On my first scan, I opened the door to the 'APS' setting accidentally. This is the second door notch, in which it is expecting an optional APS cartridge (and the normal holder wouldn't feed in). Once I noticed the first door notch, everything was extremely smooth. Once, I had to turn the scanner on before the computer. Waking from sleep is no issue, however.

The Software-based dust remover works excpetionally well, removing about 80% of dust artifacts in the data stream before reaching Photoshop, without softening the image quality. (The included Photoshop add in dust filter is less effective and also likes to crash). Both however, are significantly better than Photoshop's dust and scratches tool.

I'd give it a four out of five for minor issues, but the price/quality factor is too much to ignore. Because of this, it gets a five. It's a good choice.

I bought mine at a local camera store instead of Amazon because I was worried about shipping such a delicate, expensive device (I also paid about $55 more). First of all, no problems setting up this scanner. I'm using a Pentium 4 with Windows XP, and I did exactly what the instructions said and it works perfectly. I haven't seen how the Nikon images look, but it's hard to imagine they're noticeably better than this one's. I'm also using it to make a backup copy of family slides that were taken between 1959-87, and the accuracy of the scans is really superb--much better than the flatbed I had tried before. The Photoshop software that it comes bundled with is also amazing. All I can say is, if you get this scanner just follow the manual step-by-step, and you'll be scanning and editing in no time. Once you're slides are in digital form, the possibilities are endless!

I was impressed with the quality of the scan. However, if you are like me, and are using it as a workhorse to scan thousands of slides, be forewarned that the process is slow.

I have scanned perhaps a hundred slides or so up to this point, but am returning it, for two reasons. The first is an annoyance, whereby the machine mistakes the slide carriage for the negative carriage, leading to a lockup of the device, which requires a reboot. The second is more serious: at this point, I have to nudge the carriage to advance from the 2nd to the 3rd slide, as well at from the 3rd to the 4th.