Update on 35mm Slide Scanners??

[Frelon]

I have done a search on Pprune for information on 35mm slide (and negative) scanners and see that most of the information available is very much outdated and refers to flat bed scanners and professional scanners costing more than £400!

Like most technology things have moved on and it seems that there is a range of scanners now available which will scan 35mm slides with more than 5 million pixels, and at less than £100.

Do any of you out there have experience of these newer scanners, and what are the pitfalls?

[Bushfiva]

I have a set of scanners from very expensive to really cheap. The really cheap one contains a 5MP camera and stores images to SD card. On perfectly exposed slides & negatives it does a pretty good job and it's very fast. It's a complete pain to keep dust-free, though, and it does a poor job of dense slides/negatives. For serious stuff, I use a Nikon with slide feeder and Hamrick Vuescan.

[green granite]

I have an earlier version of these: OpticFilm 7400 vs OpticFilm 7600i | OpticFilm 7400 vs. OpticFilm 7600i | Plustek (http://plustek.com/uk/products/opticfilm-series//opticfilm-7400-vs-opticfilm-7600i.html) which is excellent, current ones are about £200 at the well known river site

[Old Photo.Fanatic]

I am looking for a good quality Slide/Film scanner.
After extensive searches I have decided that for my needs "Quality" is a must.
To this end I am going for a second hand Nikon Coolscan V.
E-Bay being the best place so far
The price of second hand Nikon scanners are on the rise.
The average price for a very goood Nikon V is about £700. not made anymore.
(The price when new a few years ago was about £400-£500)

I know this is above quoted fig. of £400 but to get the best of all factors I feel you will be pushed to get a good "dedicated film/slide scanner" at this price.

The only other scanner I do know which may fit the bill is an " Epson Perfection V700 flatbed." Do not be put off that its a "Flatbed"

This has good reviews for Film/Slide scanning and on e-bay the price of a new one is about £400 price , give or take a little.
I think a good second one may be nearer the price you might have in mind

The only negative factor is the Film/Slide carriers are not rated very high.

Google should give you the Spec for the Nikon and the Epson

Hope all of this maybe of help

OPF

[seacue]

I have an older Epson flatbed with slide/negative backlight. I have been sufficiently happy with it that I was instrumental in a friend getting an Epson V500. I'm not sure that it will do 5 megapixels, but is plenty adequate for me. Such high-resolution scans would be VERY slow. These Epsons will handle much-less-than-perfect-exposure slides.

The software which comes with the V500 does a pretty good job on taking care of dust on slides. I wish I had that on my older Epson unit. Dust on negatives shows up as white spots, which are far more objectionable than the dark spots from dust on positives.

I thought that the V500 was a bargain at US$150 from the river people.

I scanned about 1200 slides a couple of summers ago. I could average about 20 per hour including selecting the ones I wanted from a Carousel, scanning, and naming the output file for each scan to identify the slide it contained. One slide per file.

[onetrack]

I made the mistake of purchasing a new Yashica slide scanner from a well-known "deals online" crowd. It was on special for AU$89.90, down from some reputedly much higher figure, said the spiel.

I thought, O.K., good Jap product, should be alright. Big mistake. It's a Chinese POS that should have never seen the light of day, let alone had the good name of Yashica put on it.

Built to a price (probably around $15), and the scanned end result is crap. The slide holder wobbles around, affecting the focus, and there's bugger all ability to do anything about it.
I should have just bitten the bullet and bought a professional model. Even a well-worn pro model, would still be ten times better than this POS.

[Bushfiva]

Kyocera sold the brand to a Hong Kong company 3 or 4 years ago. As you note, it's used on all kinds of plastic tat now. Kyocera moved the brand down-market around 20 years ago, and took manufacturing to HK & China.

[green granite]

Try E-Bay, they have lots of slide/film scanners for sale including this: Nikon Coolscan V ED Film/Negative Scanner on eBay (end time 26-Feb-11 20:28:05 GMT) (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Nikon-Coolscan-V-ED-Film-Negative-Scanner-/180627160904?pt=UK_Scanners&hash=item2a0e37bf48#ht_500wt_1156)

[cats_five]

How many slides and what do you want to use the results for?

If you have hundreds of slides then a Nikon Coolscan V with a batch slide feeder is the business - buy on Ebay, sell when you are finished. Even if you keep it, it will be cheaper than getting the slides scanned.

If you have a few tens then AFAIK the top-end of the flatbed scanners (the ones with D-ICE) do a very good job.

Those new cheap scanners are cameras rather than scanners, I have no idea how well they focus, how fast they are in use and they certainly won't be able to do any dust removal from the scans - that's what D-ICE does though unfortunately it doesn't usually work with Kodachrome and those card mounts shed dust like no-bodies business...

[bingofuel]

I purchased one of the 5mega pixel type for about $75in the USA a few years ago. All I wanted it to do was scan old 35mm slides before they turned to dust. It ran from the usb port, and admittedly you had to load them one at a time.
However it was easy enough to sit in an armchair with laptop and scanner on a table beside me and run a production line that allowed me to eventually scan over 2500 slides.
The end result was perfectly good enough to view full size on a computer screen. Okay maybe not HD quality but for saving old family pictures more than good enough.

It also scanned colour negatives very well.

[Frelon]

However it was easy enough to sit in an armchair with laptop and scanner on a table beside me and run a production line that allowed me to eventually scan over 2500 slides.
The end result was perfectly good enough to view full size on a computer screen. Okay maybe not HD quality but for saving old family pictures more than good enough.

Looks like bingofuel has hit the nail on the head!

Off to search on eBay now, thanks for the input Ppruners.

[Loose rivets]

A camera!

When we discussed this before, I mentioned I'd got some good shots simply using my Nikon SLR. It was so fast compared to scanning.

I'm confused about this ICE thing. I got ICE with an Epson scanner, and it seemed to be software that ran AFTER the scanning process.

I had hoped I could do the spot removal when I had more time.


I returned the scanner on the basis of the slider holders. They were a penny's worth of badly molded plastic. Outrageously bad. Otherwise the $250 unit was very good. I got a 3170 PHOTO to replace it. $70 refurbished. Not bad, but not as good as the first one. However, the slide holders were very well made.

It really is a case of not being deluged with Chinese crapola.

Brand names. As an aside, I ordered an Hitachi drill press. I assumed with the name, and being from Sears it would be good-ish. It took two of us to assemble the 6' high machine, and it became obvious before we'd finished, I got more tat from China. Sure enough, tiny writing on the notes. Made in China. Where will it all end?

[seacue]

The slide-holder for my Epson Perfection 2400 Photo flat-bed scanner is considerably more robust that that for the Epson V500. I can understand the complaints about the newer holder.

I concluded that an autofeed slide scanner wouldn't save as much time as one might expect. While the scanning might be considerably faster, there would still be the "overhead" of selecting the slides to scan, naming each file containing an image, and arranging the files in named folders / directories. This "administrative" work took much of my time, yet was vital to making it possible to find the desired scanned images in the future. Some of it could be done while the next batch of four slides was being scanned.

Considerable time was also taken when it was obvious that a slide needed exposure, gamma, or color correction after being scanned.

[onetrack]

After 30-45 years, virtually all my Kodakchrome 35mm slides have gone to $h!t, colour-wise. I don't know what the chances are of recovering them, to a satisfactory viewing level, are, when they are this bad. That's without even considering the dust and scratches.

[Loose rivets]

I had a lot that were poor from the get-go. Good focus, but the colour was just plain wrong. Some did seem to alter with age, but some were marvelous after 30 years.

It's been suggested the processing was at fault, and it may well be, but it is very time-consuming to fiddle them back to something like normal.

This one I put on JB recently is typical. I'll search for a 'good' one.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v703/walnaze/PpruNe/NoGuess.jpg

By the Johnson, means the Johnson Space Centre. ;)


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v703/walnaze/Flying/SuetheJohnson.jpg

Chalk and cheese, and I never knew why. Both with my massively heavy Yashica Pentamatic 35 mm

[Bushfiva]

Kodakchrome 35mm slides have gone to $h!t

Try Hamrick Vuescan. It's free to try. It's extremely good scanning software which outperforms that offered by many manufacturers. It contains profiles for many types of positive and negative film, and also has color recovery features for faded film. You can also build your own color profiles if you want. It works pretty well.

[seacue]

Maybe I'm lucky, but the old Kodachromes I've scanned seem to have their original colors, even some taken in 1941. Those from the early 1970s are uniformly in good shape. All were processed by Kodak in the USA.

On the other hand, many of the Anscochromes are in sad shape. The Anscos also seem more likely to breed fungus.

[green granite]

All my Ektachrome slides going back to 1962 are fine colour-wise.

[FullOppositeRudder]

Most of my Kodachrome 25 slides have been fairly stable after 35 years. However the once highly regarded Perutz C18 slides have really packed up. Blues have gone altogether and some resemble a feeble attempt at sepia toning. This was evident after only 20 years in some instances.

Thank you all for this discussion and the advice. I need to buy something to copy thousands of slides and 24 x 36 B & W negatives to digital - pity about my 2 1/4 square mono negatives. Digital devices to handle these formats seem to be well out of my price range as far as I can discover. I've still got my enlarger and all the associated gear, but the idea of building another darkroom does not excite, and I've gotten over the smell of fixer many years ago.

Regards,
FOR

[seacue]

Here are two Kodachrome samples scanned on my Epson flatbed.

The first was taken in 1941 with an early-1930s Agfa Memo half-frame [18x24] fixed-focus camera. I'm the young kid at the left end.
http://members.toast.net/rcarpen/family1941.jpg

The second [Silverton, Colorado] was taken in 1970 with a full-frame camera, maybe a Canon Pelix. Look at the clock on the County office building to get an idea of the resolution possible with a flat-bed scanner.
http://members.toast.net/rcarpen/silverton1970.jpg.

BTW, you may find that recent flatbeds will scan larger negatives (V500, etc.)

[obgraham]

I don't find the slide carrier on the V500 that flimsy, considering the simple task it has. For color negatives, though, all the snapping in and out is more tedious.

The V500 comes with a separate negative holder for 2 1/4 negatives.

I've found it an adequate performer overall for the task at hand. I too find it odd that one slide/neg has preserved its colour well, while the adjacent one might be faded beyond salvage.

[Loose rivets]

I've shown these before, and the top one is severely cropped, but they were from a few very dirty negs that had been kicking around all my life. I'd never seen them as positives until getting a scanner.

They were taken by a concertina Kodak, I'm sure, bottom of the range. You can see on the second one, some flowers on my mum's frock that are in focus. The further out, the worst distortion. But, it does show the ability to search back into the past without masses of expensive kit.

What I have noticed, and it's obvious really, is that the photos taken with my Aunt's camera, a scaled up model of my mother's, are markedly better.

I try to find the negs to check the surface area ratio - but it's not doubled by any means.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v703/walnaze/Family/MSBWRBcrop.jpg


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v703/walnaze/Family/MSBWRBbetterphotocopy.jpg

Again, getting back to scanning thousands of slides. That's a daunting task, and I would do the masses by sitting with the camera remote in one hand, the carousel control in the other. Odds are I could control the camera with the same hand I was holding my wineglass in.

When the bulk was safely away, I would then use the the T/V to view and pick out the ones worthy of a proper scan.

The screens I have are not up to perfect copies, but they really do bring to life the overall benefits of slides. I don't know if new reflective screens are still available. Maybe, a projector tele screen might give good quality.

[cats_five]

I concluded that an autofeed slide scanner wouldn't save as much time as one might expect. While the scanning might be considerably faster, there would still be the "overhead" of selecting the slides to scan, naming each file containing an image, and arranging the files in named folders / directories. This "administrative" work took much of my time, yet was vital to making it possible to find the desired scanned images in the future. Some of it could be done while the next batch of four slides was being scanned.

I didn't bother with selecting slides, I just loaded them and set it off. Arranging them was easy - each box is numbered, and the software saves them all into a directory of my choice with a prefix and starting number for the file name also of my choice. So box 52 went into folder S52, and the file names were all prefixed S52.

[cats_five]

I'm confused about this ICE thing. I got ICE with an Epson scanner, and it seemed to be software that ran AFTER the scanning process.

It does run afterwards, but you have to tell the scanner software you want it running before you start scanning. So, the scanner scans the slide with all 4 channels (see below), the software picks up the information and processes it, then it saves the image file.

An ICE scanner has a 4th channel - IR - and the information from that tells the software where there are scratches and dust. The software fills those in from the surrounding pixels, and makes a very good job of it. Unfortunately the residual silver in a lot of Kodachrome, and in B&W, messes up the information from the IR channel so you get dud results using ICE on them. Unfortunately the card mounts that old Kodachrome often has sheds dust like crazy.

[onetrack]

Bushfiva - Thanks for the lead to Hamrick Vuescan. It looks interesting. I'll examine it in more detail to see if it fits my needs.

[Mac the Knife]

Hamrick Vuescan

Seriously good software

In addition, generous licence terms and excellent support.

Mac