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53 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Scans. Easy to Use., December 16, 2003
By A Customer
I've spent the last couple of months doing the same research you're probably doing right now. I was looking for a scanner that would produce good quality scans from 35mm slides. So far I am very pleased with the Minolta DiMage Scan Dual III. The scan quality has been excellent and it is easy to use.Easy to set up. I had the scanner up and running 30 minutes after unpacking the box. New hardware set up in Windows Xp was flawless. It uses a USB connection. It works well with USB 1.1 but it was designed for USB 2.0. I didn't know that when I ordered it. So, I shelled out the $35 for a new USB 2.0 PCI card and installed it. It nearly cut the scanning time in half. It comes with two film holders. One that holds four 35mm slides and another that holds one six-picture 35mm negative strip. The user inter-face is fairly intuitive. Even so, I have to admit that I read the instruction manual from cover-to-cover. I have about 500 slides to scan and wanted to make sure I understood everything this unit could do before I got too far into the project. It also comes with Adobe Photo Shop Elements 1.0 but is compatible with 2.0, which is what I prefer to use when I need to touch up a photo. I read an earlier review of this unit where the reviewer complained that it didn't quite scan the entire image. I haven't had that problem. In fact, I not only get the entire image but usually have to crop a little bit off of the outer edges. Scanning Resolution. The most difficulty I had was selecting a scanning resolution for my slides. I wanted a quality scan but with a reasonable file size. The instruction manual wasn't very helpful in this area. Depending on the settings, image size can range from just a few hundred kb to over 30mb, at maximum resolution. I spent a couple hours trying different resolution combinations. Ultimately, I chose the maximum resolution (4032 X 2688) using the jpeg format and low file compression. (Jpeg is the same format my digital camera uses.) At those setting I get files that range in size from 5.5mb to 7.0mb each, compared to a 31.0mb file at max. resolution in BMP format. I printed an 8 X10 from each of the two formats. Both were excellent quality and I can't tell one from the other. Granted a 5.5mb to 7.0mb is still a pretty big file. But you can choose medium or high compression, which reduce the file size considerably. I chose low compression, which gives me a larger file, as I plan to burn the scans on to CD and remove them from my hard drive. I scan four slides in a little less than 8 minutes. (Double that if you have USB 1.1) I typically have it running in the background while I'm doing something else at my desk. I also have an HP PSC 2210 all-in-one photo printer, scanner, fax, copier. I have had absolutely no hardware or software conflicts between the two scanners. Both work flawlessly every time. Amazon.com was great to deal with, as usual. They had the lowest price I could find on-line, for a brand new unit. I ordered it on a Saturday evening and chose the Super Saver shipping option (Free). They estimated 15 days shipping but it was delivered to my door in 5 days. So far, this has been a great purchase. Scanning is easy and fun. And it produces good quality scans. I'll have my 500 slides scanned in a snap. (or two).
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