Aldi Film Negative Scanner

Aeneas

There was a discussion on this a few years ago on Boards and now the product has returned to the store. A friend purchased a scanner (Traveller, 5 megapixel) last week and is willing to lend it to me to download my old film negatives. Before embarking on what is likely to be a long process of digitising thousands of negatives I would be grateful to know if this product is considered to be any good. I have transferred a few old negatives as a test but I feel that the quality is not good compared with the original prints - colour seems washed out and needs a great deal of tweaking with saturation, tints, shadows etc. And even then it doesn't come close. But the exercise has got me interested in transferring my old photos to my hard disc if there is a good product out there. All advice and recommendations welcome.

DaireQuinlan

Do a boards search for film scanner or negative scanning or something similar. There are quite a few threads discussing options and products.

Kintarō Hattori

These film scanners are generally of a pretty poor quality. If you want to scan your photos in with any degree of quality a decent flatbed scanner is the only way to go.

A good entry level scanner:

http://www.canon.ie/for_home/product_finder/scanners/flatbed_with_film_scanning/canonscan8400f/index.asp

or

If you want rb to break out in a series of giddy laughs you could pick up one of these:

http://www.epson.co.uk/Home-and-Home-Office/Scanners/Everyday-scanners/Epson-Perfection-V750-Pro

Aeneas

Thanks. From these replies and earlier threads it looks like I would be wasting my time scanning inferior copies of my negatives with the Aldi Traveler. It's the kind of job you only want to do once!. I think the Epson is a bit expensive for my needs! Unfortunately the link to the Canon 8400 F says it is "archived" which I presume means no longer in production. But I see that there are other Canon scanners more reasonably priced that might do - the 4400f and the 700f. Has anyone experience of these? P.S. I have only negatives and prints (about 7000), no slides

dazftw

Ive upgraded to the Epson V700 and plan on selling my Canon Canoscan 8400 soon enough if your interested?

Fenster

While on the topic: What is a worthwhile 35mm scanner? I'm planning to shoot and develop at home in the near future.

Effects

Aeneas wrote: »

But I see that there are other Canon scanners more reasonably priced that might do - the 4400f and the 700f. Has anyone experience of these? P.S. I have only negatives and prints (about 7000), no slides

I have the 4400F, it's alright. I find it handles b+w a lot better than colour so as soon as I get some money I'm going to upgrade to a decent epson

DaireQuinlan

Fenster wrote: »

While on the topic: What is a worthwhile 35mm scanner? I'm planning to shoot and develop at home in the near future.

what's your price range ? If you want a -decent- 35mm scanner for a reasonable price you want to get a coolscan V. Otherwise the top end epsons are meant to be ok.

dazftw

Yeah ive heard nothing but great things about the epsons! The 750 was a little bit out of my price range based on the differences. I think it has different glass and better software.

Im looking forward to scanning a full roll of 24exp film @ 3200 DPI in like 10 minutes Gotta get a firewire cable though.

Fenster

DaireQuinlan wrote: »

what's your price range ? If you want a -decent- 35mm scanner for a reasonable price you want to get a coolscan V. Otherwise the top end epsons are meant to be ok.

$,1200?

MaggyM

I did a little research into a photo and negative scanner just this week as I want to put my parents photo collection into a book.

The best I could find in my price range was the Canoscan 8800f. You can get it for about €200 euro on pixmania, maybe better deals elsewhere!

I won't be getting it for a few months (budget constraints) but I'll let you know how I get on then.

Ghost Train

dazftw wrote: »

Im looking forward to scanning a full roll of 24exp film @ 3200 DPI in like 10 minutes Gotta get a firewire cable though.

I got a cheapish plustek scanner (might be changing it soon)
heres a 7200 DPI scan (might be too big for some browsers)
http://photos2.pix.ie/15/9A/159A22C66F4644CC9B8D456C696A7F42.jpg

the raw file is 370mb

DaireQuinlan

Fenster wrote: »

$,1200?

That's the Coolscan 5000. The Coolscan V is a slightly cut down version. 12-bit v 14-bit ADC, 5000 can scan an entire roll in one operation instead of strips of 6. The one drawback is that they're all (with the exception of the 9000) discontinued, so they're next to impossible to find new anywhere, and they're pretty expensive 2nd hand on EBay. I got mine a few years ago for €600 in really good condition.

gbee

I've used professional Nikon Coolscans in the past ... that was pre-digital shooting, but the industry was digital for a long time before that.

For ten years now I've been shooting and supplying digital end to end. So my old Nikon scanner felt into disuse and died.

I've tried some of the cheap film scanners and thought the job not worth doing, am using a PlusTek currently, like this one ...

http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/2549446/art/plustek/opticfilm-7500i-ai-scanne.html

Except it's price has sky rocketted from when I bought it. My verdict is to try and buy a professional one second hand. My scans are somewhat spoiled by dust, the Plustek CAN run a dust eliminator [Like I had on my Nikon] BUT, but, but, it's go away and come back in a few hours ~ by which time my PC has frozen anyway ...

A good fast PC will speed things up a bit, ICE scanning used to take ages with my slower machine and the old Nikon film scanner, but like ten to twenty minutes of ages, not the hours with much faster computer today.

DaireQuinlan

gbee wrote: »

A good fast PC will speed things up a bit, ICE scanning used to take ages with my slower machine and the old Nikon film scanner, but like ten to twenty minutes of ages, not the hours with much faster computer today.

oh yes, the above is an important bit. Make SURE that whatever scanner you get has (preferably) ICE, or failing that, some other hardware IR based dust removal. It is an absolute MUST for c-41 and slides. I forget what the canon version is called, FARE something or other, but they're a little deceptive because all their scanners boast FARE dust reduction, but only some of them have actual the actual IR hardware necessary to implement the hardware based dust removal.

minikin

keep your eye out for one of these

got one second hand about two years ago to digitise the neg library... sweet as a nut (not that I've made much of a dent in the collection yet)