I'm looking at buying one myself, but not sure if Konica Minolta is going to continue manufacturing them or not - I'm going to buy one regardless. Calumet droped it from their online catalog last week.

Konica-Minolta shut down operations in the photo field some weeks ago in Canada, and it has been pretty complete from what I hear from correspondents up there. I would expect that scanners, which have been a part of the photo business of Minolta, will be similarly affected. By law companies that go out of business are obliged to support the products for a period of time, but with the current government regulation of such provisions has been typically lax, so I would not expect much. So, far I have not seen any announcements of any provision for servicing current products still under warranty assigned to any office or other company, but if a news release is made I'll copy it here in the forum.

Personally I have had good experience with my Minolta scanners, so if I needed a scanner I might use this opportunity to try to bargain for one at a bargain price. There is no other 5400dpi 35mm film scanner to takes the place of the Minolta.

But who knows in the next few weeks something may turn up. It is too early to say one way or another for sure that it is a fate accomplii.

I ordered one today, from a company that said they had one in stock. The writeup in Shutterbug was one of the prime reasons I wanted to get this particular model scanner. I have no intention of giving up my Nikon F5 or N80 anytime soon. I've got an Epson 4990 that I with my 4x5 transparencies for web presentations; I have them scanned on a Heidelberg Tango for printing. 90% of my work is on the 4x5.

David,

I, too, am interested in puchasing the Scan Elite 5400 II. I wrote an email to the company about their plans for supporting for their drivers and received no answer. It seems that a new driver is often needed when an OS such as OS X undergoes a major revision. It may work now with one's system now, but it may not in a year through no fault of the scanner itself.

LaserSoft may take this over, as they have for the Microtek 1800f, but in the case of the Konica scanner, that would require an additional investment on the owners part as the LaserSoft software is not part of the distribution.

Perhaps a representative of Shutterbug could contact Konica and inquire about this. Hopefully, they'll give you an answer where they did not give one to me.

Thanks,
Bruce

Bruce,

I own and use a K-M Scan Elite 5400 2 scanner myself. And, I have recommended it and from what I hear many have followed along and found it to be a superb 35mm scanner. So. I am concerned and will follow this up because as you say in time driver compatibility may be an issue.

However, I would guess the scanner is actually manufactured in southeast asia by an independent company. So, given a little time someone may purchase the rights to the scanner and continue making it. It is maybe too soon since the K-M announcement, so I'll wait a bit and then contact some people in the industry to see if anything has developed.

I have the Konica Minolta scanner myself, I've spent the last week testing and configuring it. Excellent scanner, but as you have seen it looks like you aren't going to find much information on it. I ordered mine directly from KM, because I couldn't find anyone else who had one in stock - and paid a much higher price for it as well. I can't say about Silverfast, although I recently contacted them about buying the Ai software (but since I have two scanners, it looks like I need two copies of the software).

Sorry, I can't add much other than to say this is a good scanner.