Slide Scanners
 

With all this rain I've been on a nostalgia trip:) Digging out my old slide collection:eek: - which I'm sure it would be great to share:) Would anyone care to recommend a good slide scanner:O
Toulouse 1988 anyone - North Weald Fighter Meet 86 (I think) - Mildenhall.......the list goes on....:ok:
Look forward to any help.
Thanks in advance, PFR.

We do have a specialist 35mm slide scanner at work, though almost as soon as we acquired it, everybody went digital. I mostly use an HP flat scanner with transparency capability at work which certainly does medium format slides OK; also have an Epson 3490 flat scanner at home which seems to work with slides OK, though I've not used it much at all.

North Weald 86 eh? If memory serves that was the year with the very low Northwest 747, plus formation flypasts with a DC-3 in Northwest colours, and some of the Old Flying Machine Company, Fighter Collection, etc, fighters. Happy days...

PFR: Search the Computer forum, the same question has been asked a couple of times.

I have had a Canon D660U for some years which does a great job and didn't cost an arm and a leg. Probably up graded model on the market now.

I recently bought an Epson v1000. It scans any original document or photograph up to A4 as usual, and has good OCR capability for extracting text for editing. The beauty of this scanner is that it can also scan either slides or both B & W and colour negatives. I've just rescued loads of our old slide and colour photos dating back to the 1970s with it. :ok:

Software bundled with the scanner can perform colour correction, but the one-shot correction feature of Paint Shop Pro v5 does the job much better, and the results I got are as good as, if not better than the original images.

Before I was able to borrow a scanner (can't afford one on my pension) I tried photographing my slides using my digital camera. My wife has a light box for her needlework projects - it's a flat box with alight-diffusing white plastic sheet and a fluorescent tube inside. The slide is placed on the white sheet and the digi camera on a tripod. The resulting pics are as good as any I scanned with the expensive scanenr I borrowed.

Scanner
 

Can I warn you that if any of your slides are mounted in thick mounts and not card or thin plastic mounts, the carrier for the slides may not be able to take them. I tried a Canon Canoscan 4400F but I had to return it.

I've used a "Primefilm" 35mm scanner which will do black and white negatives and colour positives and negatives. You can then upload the visuals to your photo programme on your computer and do the enhancement bit to correct the errors of 40 years ago !
I got change out of £150 from Jessops several years so they'll almost certainly be cheaper or a lot better quality today.
It's great fun, I'm absolutely amazed at the definition of some of my 60's
B & W 35mm negatives - some air-to-ground photos can be zoomed in to read the number plates of cars on the road ! Good luck !

Cheers everyone that's been really helpful:) All advice/experience gratefully received - keep it coming:ok: Many thanks, PFR.

Wifey bought me an Epson RX620 for Christmas. Scans slides (thick or thin), colour negatives, b&w negatives, prints, copies etc. One machine to do the lot for £130 (last year). Only drawback is that it only does 4 slides at a time so is a bit slow. Well pleased. Check it out.
GMST

If you are looking at used scanners and have Kodachrome slides do a bit of research as some scanners have difficulties with Kodachrome. I'm not sure of the technical details but it is worth checking.

Had a nikon dedicated film scanner some time ago with great results but it got old and the lenses and mirrors appeared to fade, and it was scsi as most were then. Did some research again recently and deicded a dedicated scanner was still better than a combined flatbed. These were going second hand on ebay for around £100 and then found them new from amazon for £108. Its gone up a bit there but still the same price at jessops. If you google for it, it can be found for £99 inc vat. Had it a while now and have had good results. There's plenty of adjustability in terms of resolution and colour and its reasonably quick and its usb2. Google for Plustek OpticFilm 7200.

I agree with Blacksheep, the Epson is reasonably priced.
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y20...ion/img534.jpg
This wasn't the best quality to start with

PFR wrote:-
With all this rain I've been on a nostalgia trip Digging out my old slide collection - which I'm sure it would be great to share Would anyone care to recommend a good slide scanner
Toulouse 1988 anyone - North Weald Fighter Meet 86 (I think) - Mildenhall.......the list goes on....
Look forward to any help.

Depends how many slides you are talking about. I undertook a similar exercise and found a High Street Photographic Retailer in the UK, operating out of a number of stores throughout the UK would transfer 40 slides onto a CD Rom for £7. Should you require further detail PM me.