I have long been a fine art printer for other photographers and museums, and printed on cold heads and condensers for many years (Leitz, Omega, Aristo etc, five enlarger darkroom for one person), and have read every one of Ansel Adams and Fred Pickers books and many magazine articles, and am very familiar with the effects of both light sources, which have only been partially summarized in the discussions on this group.
A big consideration are scratches on the base side of the film. These appear minimally on diffuse light sources. By comparison, condenser (known as collimated) light exaggerates minor scratches. I scan older slides, which invariably show handling marks. ICE does not help Kodachrome, Anscochrome, or B&W. Condenser and diffuse light sources cannot be directly compared because you have to move the negative from enlarger to enlarger. Alignment, quality of the specific lens (even if identical models), flatness of negative carrier, focus, and negative movement due to heat vary from enlarger to enlarger. If you go out and get ten identical lenses, you will find that two are outstanding, a couple are clearly less sharp, and the rest are in the middle. diffuse light sources create more fog in the negative to lens chamber (in the bellows) and this can appear to reduce sharpness. Fog is huge problem in scanners. I have black tape to reduce it. If you are scanning only brand new E-6 slide and color negs, especially batch scanning, the Nikon scanner may be the best choice. If you are working on old back files, the Polaroid will run circles around the Nikon. If you are not happy with the sharpness of the Polaroid, go get Vuescan. You will get sharper scans and more shadow detail than Silverfast or Polaroid's program. (IMHO) Good luck Thomas Robinson ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe by mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], with 'unsubscribe filmscanners' or 'unsubscribe filmscanners_digest' (as appropriate) in the message title or body
