Slide Scanner Recommendation

Epson V series. I have a V500 the past 10+ years. The later models are better again like the V700 or V750. Easy to use and cheap.

Slides are more difficult to scan than negatives though. There are a few tricks with the Epson V series to help.

I have a Nikon Coolscan V which gives very good results (long out of production, unfortunately, though they regularly come up on ebay). I know a couple of people who use the Epson V600 and who are happy with the results. The quality of the original slides and the condition they are now in will also be a factor, of course.

I have a Plustek OpticFilm 8200i slide/film scanner. On good negatives and slides you can get nice results. Cons:

• the whole process of scanning is slooooow if you want to get the best results (for average, faster results, one can use a cheaper scanner)
• does not performs miracles for underexposed negatives, they are too dark for the light source

I have scanned a few hundred of slides/negatives successfully using this scanner. There is another several hundred to go which I a bit afraid to touch because it means long, long evenings of scanning and categorizing the scans ;)

As mentioned, after my Polaroid sprintscan 4000 died, I made this:

Just point at a sun lit sheet of white paper or a grey overcast sky, and it scans in a fraction of a second. Slightly fiddly to mount the slides and get the paralax right, but still quicker than the Polaroid, and a lot cheaper, not even 50c.

I have since upgraded to something even faster and less fiddly, but more expensive, being an old Olympus slide duplicator, which is way cooler looking, but more expensive..