Hacker News Reader

For example, the Epson Perfection V850 Pro scanner has an optical resolution of 6400dpi for $1300 while doing the full bed, greatly exceeding the X1's 3200dpi in that mode. If you want to match the film scanning performance, the Plustek OpticFilm 8200i SE film scanner has a resolution of 7200dpi for just $400.

View on HN

PlusTek and Epson are absolutely nowhere near the quality of discontinued scanners like FlexTight, Nikon CoolScan and Fuji Frontier. Modern scanners claim high DPIs, but the real resolution is far below. What good is scanning at 6400 dpi if the lens only resolves at 3000 dpi. I've scanned multiple tests on an Epson 700 myself, and found that there was no visible difference between scanning at full and half resolution.

See https://www.filmscanner.info/en/FilmscannerTestberichte.html for very detailed tests of scanners, including claimed vs real DPI

I have that scanner you're talking about and a Nikon V ED. The Nikon with 'only' 4000dpi massively out-resolves the V850. It's true resolution is somewhere just over 2000dpi and that's after adjusting the trays height.

Because of that I only use the V850 for 4x5 and 120. It's a waste of time for 35mm even if it's quicker to scan multiple frames.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com