1) The Minolta software is no good for colour negatives in most cases. Often the contrast was boosted too high and you cannot do much.
2) None of my Kodachrome scanned right. Every one of my Kodachrome either came out too dark or wrong colour, or both.
3) The front of the scanner is not covered. I just use a masking tape to cover it when not in use.
On the plus side, the original software scans (make sure you download from the Minolta USA site) E6 slides beautifully. ICE works very well too. The ability to scan 16 times is a big plus, not so much on enchancing details, but to remove most dust spots and scratches (YES, IT DOES!!). However, it seems to take forever to scan 16 times. :(
For colour negatives, I strongly recommend you buy the Vuescan which delivers much more accurate colour and contrast even with default setting.
One surprise is that my plastic slide holder was distorted so that it is not perfectly flat anymore. I think it's the heat that caused the plastic to distort because I used to left it in the scanner for a long time (just went do something else) and the scanner could get quite hot. Minolta said I could mail them the holder to get a new one here in Canada. Unfortunately, they do not have an office in Vancouver so I have no choice but to pay the shipping for an exchange. :(
IMO, if you don't do Kodachrome, F-2900 is a pretty good buy considering the price on eBay is dropping pretty low now.
regards,
Alan Chan
Does any one have experience with this? Thanx, Tonghang.
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