About Frontier, we have one here in Prague (as well as another, but less
professional machine from Noritsu). Maximum paper size is 26x39cm (or 26cm
paper width x large length). I was told that the scanner unit is 4000dpi
one (the Noritsu one scans only at ~2000dpi! quiete bad for any large
prints), which is great (but still worse than drum scans). In actual use, I
have had done the largest size prints, but from very grainy film (it was
Fuji Provia 1600p, which is a push slide film). I don't like the results so
much if it's a grainy or underexposed film, as I find some kind of ugly
imaging artiafact in the print, propably from scanning too low D-min or
what. But otherwise it's nice. It all depends on the skill of the operator,
though. And FUJI, as I was told by the operators, assumed every operator is
dumb. So the FUJI FRONTIER has only the very basic software tools for
correcting things. It's user interface is supposedly very basic, not
allowing for some adjustments. So sometimes it would be better to scan the
pix and adjust it in Photoshop or GIMP than had it printed. To summ it up,
don't except the same quality and sharpness as from carefully hand-printed
prints (but I can't compare it much with CIBA - I have not have had done
any), but I am very picky about print sharpness (I tried to examine the
print through a loupe, and compared to stochastic grain in normal prints,
you can see printing array artifacts - but only through loupe. I found the
prints very good for exhibition purposes (normally, you don't look at
exhibition prints just 10cm from your nose... But I am a strange person - I
like best LF contact prints...). As it is way cheaper than CIBACHROME, I
would recommend it for anybody except the most demanding, or small prints
who are viewed from very small distances.
There might be another problem with Frontier or Noritsu (more with
noritsu, which uses LED array instead of LASER array I think) - that is
scanning small (4x6 or 5x7") prints on flatbed. There might be some moire
between the print artifacts due to non-stochastic printing light array
pattern and the scanner's CCD pattern. I have not yet tried scanning these
prints, so I can't tell anything definite. But on the Noritsu prints, the
array artifacts are quite visible even with naked eye up close, so I
wouldn't scan them, or than resample them to lower size.
If there is need, I could scan and post crops from same photographs done
on Frontier, Noritsu and conventional fuji pro printing machine. But it
will take some time, don't except it right now ;)
Frantisek
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