Minolta 5400 Film Scanner

[Lisa Nikodym]

[font color=\'#000000\']I strongly disagree that scanning at max resolution is a waste of time!  What's a waste of time is scanning at a low resolution once for web posting, then deciding that you want to print it and scanning it again at higher resolution, then deciding later that you'd like to print it larger and scanning it a third time for that, then someone wants a copy of it at a different print size, which entails rescanning again...you get the idea!  Better to scan it once at max resolution to get the best scan you can (for archiving purposes if nothing else), and quickly adjusting it later in PS for whatever it is you want to do with it at the time.

Also, if you're concerned about noise, I believe that scanning at a substantially higher resolution than the resolution of the final output will reduce the amount of scanner-induced pixel noise, since you're averaging over a number of scan pixels to obtain one output pixel.

Lisa[/font]

[ronnieboot]

[font color=\'#000000\']I have just purchased a Minolta 5400 and first impressions are very good. However, I am new to film scanning and clearly have a lot to learn! I am tempted to scan at the max resolution of 5400 and then resample downwards in Photoshop. I am told that this is a waste of time and that I should scan at a lower resolution depending on the size of print that I require.
OK! (1) assume that I want to print an 8 x 10 print from a 35mm transparancy, and
(2) I want to produce an image for displaying on a monitor screen at 1024 x 768.
In both these cases, which resolution would I set my scanner to?

Ron West[/font]

[Jonathan Wienke]

[font color=\'#000000\']Lisa has nailed it, on all counts. Scan once at max resolution, clean dust spots, de-noise, color correct, save as TIFF. Crop prints and web images from this master file as needed, but don't change it.[/font]