"Toni Nikkanen" wrote:

While the original advice of buying a new Nikon 9000 when I have gathered
the money is probably the best choice (I could have the money tonight if I
wanted
to; I have a mortgage it is also a question of just how much spending I
can
justify for the silly obsession of scanning film

One of the reasons for my suggestion is that I'm a real wimp when it comes
to electronic equipment: your US$2,000 buys you a year of use (with optics
that start out clean), whereas you don't know when something in a used unit
is going to blow, at your expense (if even repairable, especially with the
Minolta, since the company doesn't even exist any more). I purchase at a
store that provides an extended limited 5 year guarantee (for 5% of the
purchase price), and they've fixed things that have died after one but less
than 5 years from time of purchase.

Sorry to be on your case here, but, IMHO, buying a used scanner is a bad
idea.

I'd stick with the V700. (Have you tried scanning at 6400 ppi, applying
light noise reduction, downsampling to, say, 2700 ppi? That might create a
very nice file that'll print nicely at 300 ppi, which is a 9x enlargement,
which is about all film is good for for quality prints anyway.)

One thing you might want to do is to take your sharpest slide and have it
drum scanned at 8000 ppi and see how much better that is than the V700,
although that will take a large bite out of your scanner fund.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan