Nikon's LS-3500 scanner has the edge on detail. (Hardware Review) (comparison of Barneyscan SLide Scanner, Nikon LS-3500 image scanners)(includes related article on troubleshooting) (evaluation)

Nikon LS-3500 scanner has the edge on detail

The Nikon LS-3500 may be a newcomer to the slide scanning market, but it outperforms the Barneyscan.

By Bruce Fraser

Although flatbed color scanners are beginning to make their way onto the desktop, until recently the only way to bring high-resolution 24-bit color images to the Macintosh was by using slide scanners to scan 35mm photographic slides. These scanners make three eight-bit scans through red, green and blue filters, respectively, then combine the three to make a 24-bit full-color image.

In this review, we compare the original Mac slide scanner, the Barneyscan Slide Scanner, with a promising newcomer, the Nikon LS-3500. Both units require a Macintosh II with a minimum of 2 Mbytes of RAM (more is desirable) and plenty of hard disk space. A 24-bit color monitor, while not required, is recommended.

The Barneyscan. Barneyscan Corp. introduced slide scanning to the Macintosh market, and while the hardware is beginning to show signs of age, the software that comes bundled with the Barneyscan offers a complete and elegant true-color image acquisition and editing package.

The Barneyscan hardware consists of the scanner itself, a NuBus board and a cable to connect the scanner to the board. Rather than use a standard GPIB (General Purpose Interface Bus) interface, as do most other slide scanners, Barneyscan uses its own proprietary NuBus board. While this arrangement is less flexible than a GPIB board, it does make configuration much easier, since there are no parameters to set. Hardware setup consists simply of installing the board in a NuBus slot; finding a location for the scanner that offers protection from vibration, heat and significant temperature swings; and plugging in the cable.