I am pleased to report that I got my MAC G4 (Quicksilver 867) running OS 10.3.9 to work
with SilverFast AI via a Microtech a FireWire to SCSI adaptor, without external power.
To this point I have been very pleased with the Leafscan 45 running on OS 9.2.2 with the
Leaf 2.2 plug in. That worked fine for scanning in B&W in 16 bit with Photoshop 7.0.
However, scanning color negatives was very complicated as it involved a lot of post scan
manual processing and I quite a lot of color work that needs scanning. I compared results
of the Leafscan 45 with my Epson V700 and sharpness of the Leaf is vastly superior. In
fact, in terms of real resolution the Leaf is almost twice as sharp as the V700 when
scanning 645 negatives at 2540 dpi compared toi the best optical resolution of the Epson.
I am pretty amazed that a 14 year old piece of equipment is so much superior to a brand
new Epson that touts resolution of 6500 dpi, but that is indeed the case.
In any event the SilverFast software works much better for scanning 48 bit color negative
files than the Leaf 2.2 plugin in that it saves a lot of post processing time. And since I have
been using SilverFast for many years with other scanners there is a lot more familiarity
here than with the old Leaf plugin. So far I have scanned about twenty medium format
negatives with no problems at all, though it took me a while to locate the eject and focus
tools. Everything else works more or less like SilverFast for other scanners.
As soon as I got the SivlerFast to work on the demo version I called SilverFast and
purchased the product. I was very pleased to see that the price has been reduced quite a
bit since I last looked. It is $217 for the regular version, plus 15% off to persons who have
registered versions of SilverFast for other scanners.
Now if I could just get SilverFast to market their software for the Scitex EverSmart Pro. The
old Scitex driver I have is very good but will not allow file saves in 16-bit.
Sandy King
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