I have lots of negs, filmstrips and slides. Recently spent $250 for some scanning and it was OK. I would like to save some money. I also have a Canon MX 882 AIO. Doesn't seem to do slides,

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A man who is of "sound mind" is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.
(Paul Valery)

I'm scanning film at this very moment, but I also prefer and need to do this myself, given the number of images (thousands) and the possibility of losing them if I have to mail them somewhere. There's no denying that it is very time-consuming.

What sort of quality do you want?

Search wolverine scanners on google. Inexpensive and fast with decent image quality. The high end slide scanners take several minutes per slide. My wolverine does each slide in about 4 - 5 seconds. I was very impressed.

I have a Plustek 8200 scanner. It scans pretty quickly, compared to my 10-year-old Polaroid Sprintscan. I'm scanning mostly at 3600 ppi, but I have gone to 7200 ppi on certain images. I can't see doing this much work to end up with low-resolution images.

It's hard to believe that the cheap ones can do a decent job at 4-5 seconds a slide. Can you post any samples?

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ka jowct
I'm scanning film at this very moment, but I also prefer and need to do this myself, given the number of images (thousands) and the possibility of losing them if I have to mail them somewhere. There's no denying that it is very time-consuming.

What sort of quality do you want?

I would need 2000 dpi. Mostly for reference. WWII spy and air photos from my dad's huge collection. Will donate to March Field Museum but want to examine first. I have a lifetime of slides I need to digitize too.

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A man who is of "sound mind" is one who keeps the inner madman under lock and key.
(Paul Valery)

With a DSLR and a macro lens you can set up a very good 'scanning' system that is sooooo much faster than a scanner. I did about 1000 slides this way, and with a good quality 8x loupe I could not find any detail in the original slides that I couldn't find in the scans.

Here's some info on the idea:

[www.dpbestflow.org]
[thedambook.com]





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/06/2013 10:21PM by thermarest.

Maybe an Epson V700 or 750. You can batch scan 12 slides or 24 frames of film. You can even do 4x5 sheet film.

I bought a Nikon Coolscan V ED a few years ago when I learned Nikon was discontinuing their film scanners. I'm glad I did: now they go for as much as a grand on Ebay. It works great, but yes: it's time consuming.

There may be other decent film scanners on the market now (as opposed to flatbed scanners which won't do a good job on Kodachrome) but I haven't been following the market.

I think a good DSLR and a setup like Thermarest describes may well be the best way to go. It'll certainly be the fastest. Depending on the setup, I don't think you must have a macro lens, but it needs to be good and sharp, with little or no distortion.

An article about this, which deal with lens choice and resolution: [theonlinephotographer.typepad.com]

Here's an article about doing it with a macro lens: [petapixel.com]

Another article with a DIY setup and a flash: [petapixel.com]

Another article dealing with light source: [petapixel.com]

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Scanning software that can do a bit of dust and scratch removal will reduce the amount of cleanup you'll have to do after scanning.

I have an old Canon Fs4? slide and negative scanner. It used to be very slow. Canon nto long has software for it. I installed Scanvue software and it is fairly fast.

The dSLR scanning system may be the best way to handle large quantities.

I just used a Canonscan 9000f to scan around 50 slides with very good results. Took about two minutes each with scanning, importing and photoshop to each.

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“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” -- François de La Rochefoucauld

"Those who cannot accept the past are condemned to revise it." -- Geo. Mathias

The German word for contraceptive is “Schwangerschaftsverhütungsmittel”. By the time you finished saying that, it’s too late

Quote
Uncle Wig
I bought a Nikon Coolscan V ED a few years ago when I learned Nikon was discontinuing their film scanners. I'm glad I did: now they go for as much as a grand on Ebay. It works great, but yes: it's time consuming.

There may be other decent film scanners on the market now (as opposed to flatbed scanners which won't do a good job on Kodachrome) but I haven't been following the market.

I think a good DSLR and a setup like Thermarest describes may well be the best way to go. It'll certainly be the fastest. Depending on the setup, I don't think you must have a macro lens, but it needs to be good and sharp, with little or no distortion.

An article about this, which deal with lens choice and resolution: [theonlinephotographer.typepad.com]

Here's an article about doing it with a macro lens: [petapixel.com]

Another article with a DIY setup and a flash: [petapixel.com]

Another article dealing with light source: [petapixel.com]

You don't need a macro lens but you'll likely need extension tubes or a bellows or something.

The alternative would be to to have something opaque that holds the slide/neg farther away from the lens, because unless you have a macro lens, extension tubes/bellows, your lens won't be able to focus that close. Like a Pringles can or similar.

For those of us who have a SnapScan scanner (I have both the 300M and a 1500M), there's also the possibility to use the scanner for this purpose. It's designed for paper rather than negatives, and I'm well aware that you might really need a dedicated slide scanner for this purpose, but I'm really tempted to try scanning some negatives to see what I'd get.

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Freya says, 'Hello from NOLA, baby!' (Laissez bon temps rouler!)

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ka jowct
I have a Plustek 8200 scanner. It scans pretty quickly, compared to my 10-year-old Polaroid Sprintscan. I'm scanning mostly at 3600 ppi, but I have gone to 7200 ppi on certain images. I can't see doing this much work to end up with low-resolution images.

It's hard to believe that the cheap ones can do a decent job at 4-5 seconds a slide. Can you post any samples?

I have yet to learn how to include pics in the forum. See the following Amazon link and read the first review by Bob Tobias which includes a video comparing three slides professionally scanned and then scanned by Wolverine with no enhancements. [www.amazon.com]

I'm not arguing that a more expensive scanner won't do a better job... just saying I am very satisfied with the scans I got from my Wolverine.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/07/2013 12:15PM by h linamen.

I have yet to learn how to include pics in the forum. See the following Amazon link and read the first review by Bob Tobias which includes a video comparing three slides professionally scanned and then scanned by Wolverine with no enhancements.

I looked, but saw only a tiny little movie clip that I didn't play. You really need to be able to see the images at full res to evaluate them.