Hi Paul, I also bought S20 recently - say four months back, however, did not use it that extensively to give any authoritative feed back to you. However, it is surely a good scanner and my findings are - 1. yes, the scanned images are a bit soft. i always need to sharpen those. default sharpness is something around 20, i increase it to around 40. 2. the colours, in my observations, do need corrections. not that those are not good, they are ok, however, i find those tending a bit red. 3. also, exposure in highlights and shadows need adjustments 4. i used to scan normally at 300 / 600 dpi with jpg or bmp formats, just this week-end i tried at 2400 dpi with tiff format - i thought of doing some 'dust-fixing' in picture-it. it was good. 5. i had a pretty old b&w negative, which, somehow, did not come out that good. i am still struggling with that one.
There is one photographer who has compiled a very good information on using this S20 scanner - I don't remember his name/his site right now. I have it at home and shall let you know in the evening. It is a good source. I am surprised, however, on your point that the colour reproduction is spot on. I still would suggest you to play around exposure and colours a bit. It would enhance the quality a lot. Also, looks like it is rather cheaper there. I bought it for something around US$ 450 +. I am very much in U.S. Have they reduced prices recently ?! anand. >From: "Paul Jones" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Subject: Just bought a HP Photosmart S20 >Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2001 13:10:48 +1000 > >Hi, > >I have been scanning my negs and slides at work on a Microtek Scanmaster 4 >and have been really really unhappy with the results. I went into a store >to >buy a dishwasher on Friday evening and ended up walking out with a >Photosmart S20 film scanner aswell :) it was reduced to $499au (around >$250us) from $995au. So as a results Saturday was a scanning frenzy and >i've >so far been really happy with the results. The colour reproduction is spot >on, the images loose a little bit of sharpness which is easily corrected in >PS. I think the 2400dpi will be fine for my curren use, which is mainly web >images and PUG submissions. > >I think the worst part about it all is dust on the negs. > >I dont have a good enough printer to make any prints, so i'm not sure how >well it works in that respect. > >I also love being able to scan strips of 5 negs at a time. > >Have any other list members got this scanner and how do you find? any tips >for better scans? > >Regards, >Paul Jones >- >This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, >go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to >visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org . > _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp - This message is from the Pentax-Discuss Mail List. To unsubscribe, go to http://www.pdml.net and follow the directions. Don't forget to visit the Pentax Users' Gallery at http://pug.komkon.org .
