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Nikon LS2000 and Hewlett-Packard's PhotoSmart Scanner Slide Scan Comparisons I have had more than a few requests from folks in the Internet community to put up comparison scans from the Nikon LS2000 and Hewlett-Packard PhotoSmart scanners. The Nikon can't be beat for clean noise free shadows in slide scans and clean mid tones to dense areas in negative scans. For the most part I like the PhotoSmart's renditions of mid tones better. The Nikon's LED lighting system shows every tiny defect in the slide or negative. This means that film grain is more noticeable in the Nikon's scans too. The PhotoSmart Units hang in there very well, especially when you consider the Nikon retails for $1899 and the Original PhotoSmart only $299. The new S20 PhotoSmart scanner sells for about $450. You must run 24 or 32 bit color on your monitor for this web page to give you an accurate comparison of these two scanners. Also, in order to properly view and evaluate the sample image scans on this page, you must have a properly adjusted computer screen. You can do a quick check and basic adjustments while viewing a grayscale test pattern. Adjust the brightness and contrast controls of your monitor until you can see the difference between each level on this grayscale test pattern. Use your browser's back button to return to this page when you've completed the adjustments on your monitor.
Notice the cross hatched steaks in the shadows and near shadow areas in the original PhotoSmart scan above. This is probably typical noise levels for a scanner with a dynamic range of 3.0 or less. The crosshatched pattern is all but eliminated in the newer S20 PhotoSmart scanner. Notice the very clean shadows in the Nikon LS2000 scan. The Nikon is rated by Nikon at a dynamic range of 3.6. The green lily pads are a little too green compared to the Velvia slide. This is the default rendering using Nikon's earliest software's Color Management. This problem has been greatly improved in the newest version of Nikon Scan. These next two photos are from my Vermilion Lakes photo. The top or first photo is from the original PhotoSmart scanner. The bottom from the Nikon. Kodachrome 25 slide film original.
The film grain and defects in the slide are less noticeable in the HP scan above. The HP scan is about 15% smaller (2400 dpi vs the Nikon's 2700) So, film grain and defects should be a bit more noticeable in the Nikon scan. However, I'm convinced the LED lighting system of the Nikon exaggerates film grain and image defects. You can see this same part of the image scanned using the LS2000's automatic defect correction by visiting the defect correction examples page of this review.
These last Three images are scans of a lion photo from the zoo. The lighting was very nice. Soft, but not flat. Just the kind of lighting to make subtle color and tonal nuances viewable in the photo. The original 30 bit PhotoSmart scanner had a bit of trouble with this sort of image. It just didn't have the ability to pick up these subtle color differences. I could use the "saturation" slider in the HP software to enhance the "existing" colors. However, I was never able to reach the same level of color quality that the new HP S20 PhotoSmart and the Nikon LS2000 can produce. All three of these images are un-manipulated except for having levels done. The Nikon scan and the HP S20 scan had the levels done in preview before the scan. The original PhotoSmart scan had the levels done in Photoshop after the scan.
Above image scanned with the Nikon LS2000
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