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Scanner for Slides and Negatives

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SVJIM

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I'm looking for a good scanner to scan the thousands of negatives and slides that I have in addition to ocassional prints. I have a buget of somewhere around $350.

Any suggestions? Please list the features that make the scanner you recommend that make it stand out for the needs that I have stated.

Thanks for your input

Jim
--
Photography should be fun

http://www.pbase.com/jcollins
 
Jim,

I don't think you can do it right with a negative/slide scanner at the $350 price point. Some of the reasons:

1. From personal experience. I had the Minolta Dual Scan II for the very same purpose. I finally gave up and sold it. The reason...dust and scratches. I was spending hours in photoshop fixing scanned images. I tried everything to eliminate dust. I got so frustrated I thought about using pledge:). I tried canned air, brushes, anti-static cloths, and still had dust. Scratches are another story. I am so careful with my negatives, yet there always seems to be scratch on the the best ones.

2. Scan time. It takes some time to get quality scans. You can consume a lot of hours doing this task. Batch processing would be a big plus. Depending on the scanner it will take several minutes per scan.

3. Quality. I would assume you want quality scans and not something that would just look good in a web browser. So as a minimum you want 2800 dpi.

4. Scanning Software. Sometimes what comes with the scanner is good, other times it is not. Many use vuescan to do the work.

I have been researching this for the past two weeks as I still want to scan my negatives. I have ruled out the flatbed scanners that have a transparency adapter. All the reviews I have read say the same thing...they don't work that well. I decided that the best tool for the job is the tool designed for the job.

I have narrowed down the search to two scanners. My goal was a price point under $1000 and it must have dust/scratch removal technology. The two are the Canon 4000 with FARE(Canon's defect removal) and the Nikon IV ED with Digital Ice. Either one can be had for $800-$850.

I am leaning toward the Nikon for several reasons...One, the software bundle is much better. Includes Digital Ice, Digital Gem, and Digital Roc and a full copy of Genuine Fractals. Second, scan times are faster than the Canon. You can check out reviews on these at imaging-resource.com

Best Buy is selling a Benq (formally Acer) film scanner for $499 that includes digital ice. I read the reviews, looked at the manual on the Beng web site and decided it was not worth it considering what I was giving up.

I found scanning negatives and slides is a huge task full of lots of pitfalls that the marketing types don't tell you about. Speed, color balance, sharpness, contrast, dust, scratches are all in the mix. Then there is the scratched negatives. Was I surprised at the number of them.

Hope this helps some.
Silicon Valley Jim said:
I'm looking for a good scanner to scan the thousands of negatives
and slides that I have in addition to ocassional prints. I have a
buget of somewhere around $350.

Any suggestions? Please list the features that make the scanner
you recommend that make it stand out for the needs that I have
stated.

Thanks for your input

Jim
--
Photography should be fun

http://www.pbase.com/jcollins
Click to expand...
--
RicWis
 
Hi Jim,
reading your motto "Photography should be fun" I only can say: "Forget it!"

I tried out to scan negatives and sliders with an Epson Perfection 1640 Photo. Yes, it works and for a few scans you will have fun but soon you can see that it takes 15Min. or more to get one good scan. Removing all the Dust an scratches will annoy you very soon and fun will leave you.

Sorry and regards
Peter
Silicon Valley Jim said:
I'm looking for a good scanner to scan the thousands of negatives
and slides that I have in addition to ocassional prints. I have a
buget of somewhere around $350.

Any suggestions? Please list the features that make the scanner
you recommend that make it stand out for the needs that I have
stated.

Thanks for your input

Jim
--
Photography should be fun

http://www.pbase.com/jcollins
Click to expand...
--
Peter
 
Well said, I agree with everything you said.

I use the Nikon Coolscan IV, and while I consider it good, It would be the minimum I'd recommend.

It's a bit slow, and can't batch scan slides, but for the money, it's great, and ICE is amazing.
Rich Wisler said:
Jim,
I don't think you can do it right with a negative/slide scanner at
the $350 price point. Some of the reasons:
Click to expand...
 
Rich,

Just to let you know that I have purchase a brand new Nikon Coolscan IV (LS-40) for $616.00 + $ 28.00 s&h. A little high for shipping but a total of $644.00 was better than I could get anywhere else and a bit less than $850.00.

Here is a link for who I bought it from. Others are out there selling the same product for about the same. You choose.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1364361953

regards,
DM
 
Silicon Valley Jim said:
I'm looking for a good scanner to scan the thousands of negatives
and slides that I have in addition to ocassional prints. I have a
buget of somewhere around $350.

Any suggestions? Please list the features that make the scanner
you recommend that make it stand out for the needs that I have
stated.

Thanks for your input

Jim
--
Photography should be fun

http://www.pbase.com/jcollins
Click to expand...
Jim, first you should know that doing this is going to be time consuming, very time consuming. I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm.

OK, having said that get a dedicated film/slide scanner, not a flatbed with an adaptor.

For your price point it will be hard to balance quality, spped and ease of use. An HP Photosmart can be had at that price but it is slow and perhaps not best suited for the amont of work you have.

So, here is my suggested compromise, a used Nikon film scanner, a Coolscan III (LS-30) would probably hit the price mark. If you add a bit, a used LS2000 or a new Coolscan IV ED. With very careful shopping these might be had for $600, higher than your price point but very good scanners.

I have an LS 30 and can speak highly of it. I am not sure I would want to scan 1000's of negatives with it (actually I am sure, I would not, but you could)
--
Mike Bauer
 
I have the benq2740s. Mounted slides are fine, but my negative images ket showing up with two rows of fine streaks. Thought the lab processing machine had scratched my negatives, but have discovered that my scanner is the culprit. Not happy. You get what you pay for-mine was a free gift!
mjbauer said:
Silicon Valley Jim said:
I'm looking for a good scanner to scan the thousands of negatives
and slides that I have in addition to ocassional prints. I have a
buget of somewhere around $350.

Any suggestions? Please list the features that make the scanner
you recommend that make it stand out for the needs that I have
stated.

Thanks for your input

Jim
--
Photography should be fun

http://www.pbase.com/jcollins
Click to expand...
Jim, first you should know that doing this is going to be time
consuming, very time consuming. I don't want to dampen your
enthusiasm.

OK, having said that get a dedicated film/slide scanner, not a
flatbed with an adaptor.

For your price point it will be hard to balance quality, spped and
ease of use. An HP Photosmart can be had at that price but it is
slow and perhaps not best suited for the amont of work you have.

So, here is my suggested compromise, a used Nikon film scanner, a
Coolscan III (LS-30) would probably hit the price mark. If you add
a bit, a used LS2000 or a new Coolscan IV ED. With very careful
shopping these might be had for $600, higher than your price point
but very good scanners.

I have an LS 30 and can speak highly of it. I am not sure I would
want to scan 1000's of negatives with it (actually I am sure, I
would not, but you could)
--
Mike Bauer
Click to expand...
 
Nikon 5000 ED...........thought it was worth the extra $$ to have something that really gave me the results that I wanted and it does.
katk said:
mjbauer said:
Silicon Valley Jim said:
I'm looking for a good scanner to scan the thousands of negatives
and slides that I have in addition to ocassional prints. I have a
buget of somewhere around $350.

Any suggestions? Please list the features that make the scanner
you recommend that make it stand out for the needs that I have
stated.

Thanks for your input

Jim
--
Photography should be fun

http://www.pbase.com/jcollins
Click to expand...
Jim, first you should know that doing this is going to be time
consuming, very time consuming. I don't want to dampen your
enthusiasm.

OK, having said that get a dedicated film/slide scanner, not a
flatbed with an adaptor.

For your price point it will be hard to balance quality, spped and
ease of use. An HP Photosmart can be had at that price but it is
slow and perhaps not best suited for the amont of work you have.

So, here is my suggested compromise, a used Nikon film scanner, a
Coolscan III (LS-30) would probably hit the price mark. If you add
a bit, a used LS2000 or a new Coolscan IV ED. With very careful
shopping these might be had for $600, higher than your price point
but very good scanners.

I have an LS 30 and can speak highly of it. I am not sure I would
want to scan 1000's of negatives with it (actually I am sure, I
would not, but you could)
--
Mike Bauer
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
Silicon Valley Jim said:
I'm looking for a good scanner to scan the thousands of negatives
and slides that I have in addition to ocassional prints. I have a
buget of somewhere around $350.

Any suggestions? Please list the features that make the scanner
you recommend that make it stand out for the needs that I have
stated.

Thanks for your input

Jim
--
Photography should be fun

http://www.pbase.com/jcollins
Click to expand...
Jim:

I'm not sure what you intend to do with your thousands of images after you have them in digital form or what quality you want, but previous posters have pointed out the problems you face: time and labor intensive operations, dust, stratches, boredom of repetitive operations, etc. Earlier negative and slide scanners such as the old HP Photosmart would drive you up the wall doing a thousand slides because each slide required many manual operations.

Luckly, some recent flatbed-type scanners can process slides and negatives with reasonable quality in a semi-automatic mode- 4 to 6 at a time. My Epson 2450 is of this type. More recent ones in this line are probably even more automatic. I have scanned hundreds of slides/negatives (B/W and color) with it. After I set up my workflow, I load the slides 4 at a time or negatives 6 at a time and let it do it's thing for 2-5 minutes while I watch football or baseball on TV. It's fairly pain free that way but if you sat there waiting and watching the scanner or having to manually frame each image one at a time, etc. you would give up fast.

--mamallama
 
bring it to your local lab with a frontier tell them to scan for their largest print size, my lab goes up to 8x12 and the scans for that size are 3600x2400 aproximately, no dust, no scratches...nothing
mamallama said:
Silicon Valley Jim said:
I'm looking for a good scanner to scan the thousands of negatives
and slides that I have in addition to ocassional prints. I have a
buget of somewhere around $350.

Any suggestions? Please list the features that make the scanner
you recommend that make it stand out for the needs that I have
stated.

Thanks for your input

Jim
--
Photography should be fun

http://www.pbase.com/jcollins
Click to expand...
Jim:

I'm not sure what you intend to do with your thousands of images
after you have them in digital form or what quality you want, but
previous posters have pointed out the problems you face: time and
labor intensive operations, dust, stratches, boredom of repetitive
operations, etc. Earlier negative and slide scanners such as the
old HP Photosmart would drive you up the wall doing a thousand
slides because each slide required many manual operations.

Luckly, some recent flatbed-type scanners can process slides and
negatives with reasonable quality in a semi-automatic mode- 4 to 6
at a time. My Epson 2450 is of this type. More recent ones in this
line are probably even more automatic. I have scanned hundreds of
slides/negatives (B/W and color) with it. After I set up my
workflow, I load the slides 4 at a time or negatives 6 at a time
and let it do it's thing for 2-5 minutes while I watch football or
baseball on TV. It's fairly pain free that way but if you sat there
waiting and watching the scanner or having to manually frame each
image one at a time, etc. you would give up fast.

--mamallama
Click to expand...
 
hairyasshat:

Thanks for the information. Do you know the approx charge for scanning a 35 mm slide or negative? For a few it would be good to have it done at a lab. But for archiving a thousand, the DYI approach might be more cost effective.

--mamallama
hairyasshat said:
mamallama said:
Silicon Valley Jim said:
I'm looking for a good scanner to scan the thousands of negatives
and slides that I have in addition to ocassional prints. I have a
buget of somewhere around $350.

Any suggestions? Please list the features that make the scanner
you recommend that make it stand out for the needs that I have
stated.

Thanks for your input

Jim
--
Photography should be fun

http://www.pbase.com/jcollins
Click to expand...
Jim:

I'm not sure what you intend to do with your thousands of images
after you have them in digital form or what quality you want, but
previous posters have pointed out the problems you face: time and
labor intensive operations, dust, stratches, boredom of repetitive
operations, etc. Earlier negative and slide scanners such as the
old HP Photosmart would drive you up the wall doing a thousand
slides because each slide required many manual operations.

Luckly, some recent flatbed-type scanners can process slides and
negatives with reasonable quality in a semi-automatic mode- 4 to 6
at a time. My Epson 2450 is of this type. More recent ones in this
line are probably even more automatic. I have scanned hundreds of
slides/negatives (B/W and color) with it. After I set up my
workflow, I load the slides 4 at a time or negatives 6 at a time
and let it do it's thing for 2-5 minutes while I watch football or
baseball on TV. It's fairly pain free that way but if you sat there
waiting and watching the scanner or having to manually frame each
image one at a time, etc. you would give up fast.

--mamallama
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
ok... we're SUPPOSED to charge $2.99 for the CD then 39 cents per frame...get to know the staff though bring a bit at a time, if you treat them very nicely, they will start charging you only for the cd(and many times not even that if you provide the cd, at my lab we just charge them $.50 if they bring a cd). The key is to go to a drug store, but not a huge one...costco=no CVS=no....Eckerd next door to CVS=yes, the key is the fuji frontier....it also seems the "real" photo labs wont do this because their "better" but some of the drug stores will just to suck the buisness in. drop a roll of film(disposable) camera off before going though just to make sure they treat your film right.
mamallama said:
Thanks for the information. Do you know the approx charge for
scanning a 35 mm slide or negative? For a few it would be good to
have it done at a lab. But for archiving a thousand, the DYI
approach might be more cost effective.

--mamallama
hairyasshat said:
mamallama said:
Silicon Valley Jim said:
I'm looking for a good scanner to scan the thousands of negatives
and slides that I have in addition to ocassional prints. I have a
buget of somewhere around $350.

Any suggestions? Please list the features that make the scanner
you recommend that make it stand out for the needs that I have
stated.

Thanks for your input

Jim
--
Photography should be fun

http://www.pbase.com/jcollins
Click to expand...
Jim:

I'm not sure what you intend to do with your thousands of images
after you have them in digital form or what quality you want, but
previous posters have pointed out the problems you face: time and
labor intensive operations, dust, stratches, boredom of repetitive
operations, etc. Earlier negative and slide scanners such as the
old HP Photosmart would drive you up the wall doing a thousand
slides because each slide required many manual operations.

Luckly, some recent flatbed-type scanners can process slides and
negatives with reasonable quality in a semi-automatic mode- 4 to 6
at a time. My Epson 2450 is of this type. More recent ones in this
line are probably even more automatic. I have scanned hundreds of
slides/negatives (B/W and color) with it. After I set up my
workflow, I load the slides 4 at a time or negatives 6 at a time
and let it do it's thing for 2-5 minutes while I watch football or
baseball on TV. It's fairly pain free that way but if you sat there
waiting and watching the scanner or having to manually frame each
image one at a time, etc. you would give up fast.

--mamallama
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
 
what about the quality? when you say cd are you talking about a normal kodak picture cd? because the quality isn't that great on those.

from what i heard a barrel scan of one film at a local photo lab where i live can cost about 80$.
 
jamie123 said:
that's what i'm going to buy. it's a flatbed scanner but from what
i've read the quality is quite comparable to that of dedicated
negative/slide scanners. in addition you have the possibility of
scanning medium format and large format negatives.

here's a review of the scanner:

http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Epson%204990/Page%201.htm

i a couple of weeks i'll know myself if it's any good.
Click to expand...
jamie:

I agree the 4990 is the way to go if you have many slides/negatives to scan. It is the latest generation of the 2450 I use and with the holders to process, virtually automatically, 8 35mm slides and 24 38mm negatives at a time, it'll go twice as fast.

--mamallama
 
well kinda....cept at a much higher resolution than a kodak picture cd and unless im mis informed its actually a higher resolution than the kodak proffesional photo CD
 
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