Scanning negatives, long story short
I owned several scanners over the years that can be compared against an Imacon Flextight from my service provider here in Munich.
The first scanner was a Nikon coolscan V ED about eight years ago that was sold for the same price after scanning 10K 35mm slides. Then came in an used Heidelberg Linotype flatbed scanner which was returned for being extremely noisy and mediocre scan quality. The Linotype was followed by Nikon Coolscan 8000 ED that provided a high quality but had problems with flat mounting of 6×9 cm slides (and no chance for 4×5 inch negatives).
Currently I am working with an Epson V850 that has a lower resolution but much better negative handling. I can confirm the experience of Keith Cooper as well as Mark Segal that the V850 is being an ideal day by day scanner where only a few exhibition photos will need a drum scan. I think als Nasir Hamid once told me that he is using an Epson flatbed V700 scanner.
What I have learned over the years that even super optics don’t help you so much if the mirror is slightly blind (the Nikon 8000 ED was introduced 2001!), film plane is not really flat, processing time and data transfer is slow if you need a firewire adapter on your Mac (Firewire is 800 Mbit/s, USB 3.0 is 4000 Mbit/s).
Anyway here is the comparison – same slide on different scanners. Click to see the original.
Epson V850 ▼
Nikon 8000 ED ▼
Hasselblad Flextight ▼
Not so much difference. But this changes when zooming in to 1:1.
Epson V850 ▼
Nikon 8000 ED ▼
Hasselblad Flextight ▼
So my strategy is to use a cheap, fast and reliable scannner for screening and printing up to A3 in my office and go to a service provider for larger scans and prints.