Film/Slide Scanners

trishw78

I saw people mention the scanners before in previous threads. Ideally I'm looking for a film & Slide scanner I saw one on ebay a while back for £200 it wasn't a name I recognised. I vaguely remember A kodak film scanner in college. But after that I don't know anything. I have about 100 - 200 rolls of film and 50 rolls of slide that I'd like to scan. I think if I bought my own scanner it would work out cheaper plus I don't trust any one pro-lab or not to scan them without scratching them or damaging them.

Any suggestions or help is appreciated

DaireQuinlan

trishw78 wrote: »

I saw people mention the scanners before in previous threads. Ideally I'm looking for a film & Slide scanner I saw one on ebay a while back for £200 it wasn't a name I recognised. I vaguely remember A kodak film scanner in college. But after that I don't know anything. I have about 100 - 200 rolls of film and 50 rolls of slide that I'd like to scan. I think if I bought my own scanner it would work out cheaper plus I don't trust any one pro-lab or not to scan them without scratching them or damaging them.

Any suggestions or help is appreciated

yikes, thats a whole pile of negatives right there. I'd get a cost first for getting them done professionally, because, from personal experience, once you're done scanning 250 rolls of film and then cropping, colour correcting and PPing them, you'll never want to look at a roll of film ever again !

Hardware wise, for that volume you ideally want to get a Nikon Coolscan 5000, it has a bulk loader which means all you have to do is stick a roll in and come back an hour later and all 36 exposures will be scanned. Unfortunately they're expensive... A cheaper option is a Nikon Coolscan V which is probably the best consumer 35mm scanner still available. That'll set you back about 500 euros 2nd hand, or more new. There's also the option of flatbeds, but the general consensus is that for 35mm, a dedicated scanner is best, and the coolscans are the most attractive dedicated scanners available for a reasonable price.

ladgie353

Safe option - Nikon Coolscan V, good film scanner from an established brand.

Slightly riskier - Plustek OpticFilm, got very good reviews but not as well established as Nikon, much cheaper though (under 200 Euros new on ebay from France)

High volume option - Epson 4990 - Flatbed scanner with very decent transparency adaptor. Not as good as the Nikon but good enough for most print sizes. Allows you to scan up 4 bands of film in one go.

DaireQuinlan

ladgie353 wrote: »

Safe option - Nikon Coolscan V, good film scanner from an established brand.

Slightly riskier - Plustek OpticFilm, got very good reviews but not as well established as Nikon, much cheaper though (under 200 Euros new on ebay from France)

I dunno. When I was looking for a scanner I investigated quite a few (got the coolscan V eventually), I've seen some absolutely dreadful reviews with accompanying scans from any of the plustek scanners. I'd steer clear.

Just to narrow it down a bit though, what do you actually intend DOING with these scans ? Are you going to scan at full res 16 bit with the intention of making huge prints ? If so then really your only option is the coolscan. If you're looking to make max A4 prints or upload to the web then maybe a flatbed (one of the better Epsons) might do the job.

trishw78

well I wasn't going to sit there for days on end scaning the all the films I was just initially going to scan them and save them to CD. They're probably only 50 or so Shots that'd I'd consider putting anywhere near flickr. I have quite a few on slide that I'd like scanned though.

I saw the Coolscan 5000 and nearly melted into the ground. When I saw the price, As for getting a price for someone else to do it I just don't trust them. I bearly trusted Albert when I bought my 40D.

JMcL

ladgie353 wrote: »

High volume option - Epson 4990 - Flatbed scanner with very decent transparency adaptor. Not as good as the Nikon but good enough for most print sizes. Allows you to scan up 4 bands of film in one go.

I think I read a couple of weeks back that there's a replacement for this in the V* series (not sure which one specifically)

For a bit more, there're the Epson V700, and Epson V750, which are supposed to be excellent.

You could always sell the scanner again when you've finished the job. Also given the volume, it might be worthwhile checking out 3rd party scanning software like Vuescan[/URL.