O’Reilly distributes books published by Rocky Nook these days, and the Scanning Negatives and Slides book is one of these titles. Originally, the book was written and published in German, as the author is a German computer expert with a passion for photography. The original German publisher, Dpunkt Verlag, found this to be reason enough for letting mr. Steinhoff write a book on the subject of scanning negatives and slides.

Rocky Nook in Canada translated the book in English and O’Reilly is now distributing this work. I was very thrilled by the idea that an author would finally write the ultimate book on scanning negatives and slides using a scanner and several scanning applications. The marketing text for the book let me assume the author was going to cover SilverFast, VueScan, NikonScan and a whole bunch of different scanners.

I was quite enthusiastic when I started reading. The Rocky Nook publications are all done with much care for the design of the cover and for the quality of the book that you hold in your hands. But when I opened the included DVD-rom, I started to become somewhat suspicious. The DVD-rom holds photographs by the author, scanned with an Epson Perfection V700, with a Nikon CoolScan, and an older Epson Perfection model. For good measure, there are also some scans from Microtek scanners). The DVD further contains demos of SilverFast and VueScan. And that’s it. No mention of Imacon scanners, Kodak (Creo) scanners, or other really high-end scanners.

When I was about two thirds in the book, I already felt sorely disappointed as the author only focuses on Nikon CoolScan and the odd Epson Perfection V700. Of these two, he clearly prefers the CoolScan, as he consistently argues that the flatbed scanner which the V700 and V750 are, are no match to the quality of the Nikons.

This may well be so, but the focus of the book is so concentrated on the CoolScan scanners in all their glory, that it would have been better if the author would have called his book “Scanning Negatives and Slides With Nikon scanners”. That would have been much more honest to the reader, who may now think, as I did, the book actually covers a whole range of scanners.

Therefore, I don’t consider this book to be the best book you can buy if you want to know how to get the best scanner for film. After reading the book, I still don’t know if the Imacon product range isn’t much better --I suspect it is, but I can’t tell from reading Steinhoff’s book. 

I also have a problem with the first few chapters. Instead of immediately tackling the main subject, the author starts by explaining the difference between a scan and a digital photograph. He goes about explaining how digital cameras work, with inside looks of a camera as illustration. But scanners are not thoroughly explained. It’s as if the author was first planning to write a book on photography in general, and then after having written a couple of chapters, has decided to focus on scanners instead.

What he covers, he covers in depth and with much knowledge, and in a clear and concise language. So, the bottom-line is that you will know all about scanning film material using a CoolScan --whatever model you’d like. You’ll also know that Nikons are better than Minoltas, but not for all purposes, that Epson’s scanners are still inferior to dedicated film scanners, and that VueScan is as good as SilverFast.

You won’t know if a prepress scanner is good at scanning film material, whether an Imacon is worth its price, and how much better that one is than the CoolScan series.