USB 1.1 vs Firewire 400 (vs USB 2)

I finally received the Scan Elite II, so I can post some comparison times for USB:

all with Vuescan to raw with film, AF on scan, 2820 dpi, single negative.

Scan Elite II, USB 1.1
no infrared scan, 1x: 2:23 min
with medium IF scan, 1x: 4:27 min
no IF scan, 2x: 4:34 min
file size 56.9 MB

Dual Scan III, USB 2.0
1x: 2:14 min
2x: 4:12 min
file size 57.3 MB

I assume the different file size is due to slightly different cropping.

So I get a tiny bit longer time then in the review someone linked above, but of course we don't expect matching to the second. The Dual Scan III was a bit faster (with a higher file size), but not drastically neither. Of course this would sum up on multiple negatives.

I guess I'll have a look if I can get a cheap Firewire adapter, saw one for CAD 36 but need to check how much they want for shipping to the other side of Canada...

ant! said:

I finally received the Scan Elite II, so I can post some comparison times for USB:

all with Vuescan to raw with film, AF on scan, 2820 dpi, single negative.

Scan Elite II, USB 1.1
no infrared scan, 1x: 2:23 min
with medium IF scan, 1x: 4:27 min
no IF scan, 2x: 4:34 min
file size 56.9 MB

Dual Scan III, USB 2.0
1x: 2:14 min
2x: 4:12 min
file size 57.3 MB

I assume the different file size is due to slightly different cropping.

So I get a tiny bit longer time then in the review someone linked above, but of course we don't expect matching to the second. The Dual Scan III was a bit faster (with a higher file size), but not drastically neither. Of course this would sum up on multiple negatives.

I guess I'll have a look if I can get a cheap Firewire adapter, saw one for CAD 36 but need to check how much they want for shipping to the other side of Canada...

Click to expand...

Your scan times are in line with those from the link I posted of Imagingresource using USB1. I just noticed that slides scan much faster then color negatives. Also, looks like enabling AF affects scan times. Looks like this scanner was released early 2000?

Les Sarile said:

I just noticed that slides scan much faster then color negatives.

Click to expand...

Two reasons for that.

Slides will have lower minimum density (in the highlights) than negatives (in the shadows) because of the orange mask. Some softwares (that try to be smart) will set the longest possible exposure that will still not clip the parts with minimum density (highlights in slides / shadows in negatives). That ensures that there is no clipping and at the same time will get as much information as possible from the denser parts.

Second reason is that some softwares will extend the G and B channel exposure for negatives to account for the orange mask so that there is less data manipulation at the inversion stage and less chance of not penetrating through the densest parts of the G and especially B channel of the negative. I find that mostly unnecessary, especially for scanners that have 12/14/16bit signal processing.

Les Sarile said:

Also, looks like enabling AF affects scan times.

Click to expand...

Why would it not? For AF the scanner needs to bring the frame to the selected AF point (or the middle of the frame if AF point selection feature is not available), take multiple readings at that position, pick the reading with most contrast, return the carrier to the beginning of the frame and start scanning.

Les Sarile said:

Looks like this scanner was released early 2000?

Click to expand...

Yes, like most old real film scanners... The Elite II was replaced in 2003 by the Elite 5400, my old Dual Scan III existed from 2002 and was replaced 2004, so they are very similar, the Elite II is just the higher end version.
The Nikon Coolscan V mentioned somewhere here is from is from 2003, which means one generation later (like the Minolta 5400).

Seems like this time frame, after the switch from SCSI to USB (and Firewire) and before most dedicated film scanners were dropped, is a sweet spot for better scanners. Of course there are still a few new ones, but not Minolta or Nikon, and some of these have no AF, only manual frame advance etc, or are very expensive. I found the Elite II for CAD 50, and is (for 35mm) better then any flatbed (ok, maybe there are some super highend ones I don't know of, but it should be still better then an Epson V800. Actually, I can try this out, since I found also a very good deal on one used to replace my Canoscan 9000f for medium format).

About that time I was already disappointed with my Epson 2450 flatbed and thought I would try my first dedicated filmscanner so I bought the Canonscan FS2720. It was ok but no ICE.

BTW, the Minolta 5400 was in the price range of the Coolscan 5000 - $1000, and were direct competitors then. It wasn't long before Minolta released the 5400 II mainly to address the scan speed. Got to try them out at the PMA show and I decided on the Coolscan 5000. The Coolscan V released at the same time was about $600 and the 9000 was $2000.

Yeah, the Coolscan 9000 is of course still these days quite a bit more expensive since it is for medium format as well, like the Minolta Scan Multi Pro (which is probably a tiny bit older since it is SCSI & Firewire). Would love to have one of those, but I paid for the Minolta scanner here + an Epson V800 about 5-6 less a Coolscan 9000 seems to sell these days...

And even the Minolta 5400, 5400 II or the Nikon 5000 are significantly more then I paid for the above 35mm scanner, so for me a good enough sweetspot.

Just a follow up, I got now a CAD 20 ExpressCard for Firewire400, which works without any issues on Kubuntu with Vuescan. Did not try out how Windows handles the card.

I posted already above the scan speeds for the Scan Elite II with USB 1, so here now the same values for Firewire400:
no infrared scan, 1x: 1:26 min
with medium IF scan, 1x: 2:40 min
no IF scan, 2x: 2:41 min
file size 57.0 MB

-> Using Firewire cuts the scan times on this scanner basically in half compared to USB 1, which is more then I expected! It is also much faster then the Dual Scan III which uses USB 2, even though USB 2 should be in theory slightly faster then Firewire 400 (480 vs 400 Mbps), which means the Dual Scan III does not use the possible speed of the USB protocol.

Happy I got the Firewire card!

And since I have as well for medium format an Epson V800, let's try this one as well. It uses USB 2.0.
3200 dpi, resulting in 80 MB images for the same 35mm negative as above. Of course I could scan with 6400 dpi, but as far as I can see this setting should be already higher then the optical resolution of the lens:
no infrared scan, 1x: 1:21 min
with medium IF scan, 1x: 2:59 min
no IF scan, 2x: 2:42 min

-> Even though the resolution of the Epson is (at least digitally) a bit higher in this test (2820 dpi with the Minoltas, 3200 dpi with the Epson), the speed is very close to the Elite Scan II with Firewire.

I still have to find the optimal holder height for the Epson, then I will try how the results differ. My plan was the Minolta for 35mm and the Epson for medium format, but if the results turn out very close, I might need to think about it. In any case I like the size of the Minolta is much smaller then the Epson...

And now I had a quick comparison of the results of the Scan Elite II vs the V800 (with holder height adjusted as good as I could):
The results look for now: different. The Minolta shows more grain, the Epson smoother. It is difficult to say, at least on the negative I used, which one is actually sharper when looking on details.

Is this more prominent grain due to more optical resolution? Or the different light source (Cold cathode fluorescent vs LED)? Something else? I know the Minolta software has some grain reduction feature, but I use Vuescan for the raw and invert in Darktable/negadoctor. On a reasonable size, the grain is definitely acceptable, on my large screen just very prominent. The Film is some expired Fuji pro 400h, which might be also not the greatest to check grain. I guess I will do this again on some other (fresh exposed, lower ISO) film.

One of the "grainiest" films I have tried is Rollei ScanFilm CN400 Pro - a maskless color negative film. I don't think it had much success even though it would be ideal for today's DSLR based scanning since one won't have to deal with the mask in post.

It is interesting to see how the Epson V700, the Coolscan's 9000 and 5000 handles this grain. The 9000 obviously handles it better then the 5000 without sacrificing details.

Rollei ScanFilm CN400 Pro_01 by Les DMess, on Flickr

ant! said:

Just a follow up, I got now a CAD 20 ExpressCard for Firewire400, which works without any issues on Kubuntu with Vuescan. Did not try out how Windows handles the card.

I posted already above the scan speeds for the Scan Elite II with USB 1, so here now the same values for Firewire400:
no infrared scan, 1x: 1:26 min
with medium IF scan, 1x: 2:40 min
no IF scan, 2x: 2:41 min
file size 57.0 MB

Click to expand...

Great to hear that Kubuntu still has good FW support! Are you on the lastest version?

ant! said:

-> Using Firewire cuts the scan times on this scanner basically in half compared to USB 1, which is more then I expected! It is also much faster then the Dual Scan III which uses USB 2, even though USB 2 should be in theory slightly faster then Firewire 400 (480 vs 400 Mbps), which means the Dual Scan III does not use the possible speed of the USB protocol.

Click to expand...

It depends on the implementation. My Minolta 5400 sometimes hangs for a fraction of a second on FW at full resolution scan, while it doesn't on USB2. That's on Win10 where FW is not officially supported anymore. Never had that on Macs with FW.

ant! said:

Is this more prominent grain due to more optical resolution? Or the different light source (Cold cathode fluorescent vs LED)? Something else? I know the Minolta software has some grain reduction feature, but I use Vuescan for the raw and invert in Darktable/negadoctor. On a reasonable size, the grain is definitely acceptable, on my large screen just very prominent. The Film is some expired Fuji pro 400h, which might be also not the greatest to check grain. I guess I will do this again on some other (fresh exposed, lower ISO) film.

Click to expand...

It's not necessarily more resolution. Many factors, including light source, will have affect on perception of grain. Minolta has a lens that outresolves it's sensor where the situation with Epson is the opposite. Additionally, V800 has two lines of pixels for every colour channel, shifted half a pixel. Most probably this sensor. So, not a very sharp lens (it needs to cover huge area), "matix" ccd and oversampling (moving the sensor at subpixel steps along the bed) yields sufficient resolution but the results looks softer (so it needs sharpening) than what you get from a sharp lens and single line per colour channel ccd.

Les Sarile said:

It is interesting to see how the Epson V700, the Coolscan's 9000 and 5000 handles this grain. The 9000 obviously handles it better then the 5000 without sacrificing details.

Click to expand...

I think the Minolta is in the range of your 5000 seeing the grain. Of course different films, but seeing them vs the V700/800, it goes in this direction. Yes, the 9000 seem to have less pronounced grain. And yeah, would love to have one day the 9000 or the Minolta Multi Scan Pro, but these are still pricey (and I don't think they will ever get low... My Epson V800 I got for a quite good used price. Could have had the V700 even cheaper though, but thought the glass holders might make medium format scans a tiny bit better, since I had before a Canoscan 9000f and I definitely saw some curling in the film holders. If this made a huge difference, not sure).

brbo said:

Great to hear that Kubuntu still has good FW support! Are you on the lastest version?

Click to expand...

Yes, I am on 22.04. I suspect Firewire support should be the same in all Ubuntu flavors, since this doesn't sound like a KDE feature. 22.04 is a LTS, so general support for Ubuntu 22.04 is until 2027-04 and extended security support until 2032-04! For Kubuntu it is a bit less, but this shouldn't matter.

And even if it falls out of support one day, installing the required package manually shouldn't be a problem as long as someone maintains it (or the unmaintained version is still compatible), which might happen as long as someone still uses a Firewire device. Right now it was just plug-and-play, but at least I am comfortable installing an additional driver/package if needed.

In the early 2000s I got an Agfa Duoscan f40, that had both firewire and USB 1.1. Needless to say that the same scanner on the same machine was much, much faster on Firewire…