Film / slide scanning at home?

Folks,

My sister pinged me a quick question regarding film/slide scanners.

She has looked at :- This which is a Kodak all in1 scanner.

It looks ok to me given the number of adaptors etc...

Anybody got any thoughts on the best way forward for the requirement? Any "MUST HAVE" features?

The budget looks about right...

Thanks in advance

Martin

I think most of us on here have in the past gently tried to steer people away from this kind of "camera in a box" scanner. They have the advantage of being very simple and quick to use, but the disadvantage of having very few if any controls on the quality of the result. In particular, colour negatives often require colour adjustments for each different film type (partly based on the orange substrate that the emulsion sits on) and since this type of scanner knows nothing about the film type, you can expect to do a lot of post processing colour adjustment.

This one does appear to be a somewhat more advanced model twice the price and 3-4 times the resolution of the one I bought (and returned). It may be better built (mine had horrendous light leaks, and couldn't even scan slides accurately). However, the single one-star review is not encouraging, and it is quite expensive.

If your sister is exclusively into 35mm films, the Plustek 8100 or its more expensive brethren might be worth a look. The Silverfast software it comes with is a little impenetrable, but does a good job. If she has 120 films as well, then an Epson Perfection V500, V600 etc would be a good buy.

I rather suspect that that 1* review is user error rather than a faulty machine - press the wrong button and it'll try to reverse a slide or show a negative image from a negative. What appears to be the same machine gets 4* on Currys/PCWorld's site. THIS review from f-stoppers is worth a read.

Being through Amazon, your sister should be able to return it easily if it's not what she wants/needs.

Nod said:

I rather suspect that that 1* review is user error rather than a faulty machine - press the wrong button and it'll try to reverse a slide or show a negative image from a negative. What appears to be the same machine gets 4* on Currys/PCWorld's site. THIS review from f-stoppers is worth a read.

Being through Amazon, your sister should be able to return it easily if it's not what she wants/needs.

Click to expand...

Good points, Nod. That's a well-balanced review. I liked this quote:

"The Scanza is a fun, simple tool that can easily deliver scans fit for 4x6 prints. Period. Don't look for more than that because you'll just be disappointed. When I was testing this scanner, I gravitated not towards my photo shoots, but towards 35mm pictures of my family. It's for getting scans and small prints for sharing. And in this task, the Scanza shines!"

And that's pretty much what most people want - to get their old negs and slides onto hard drives. A 6x4 print ideally needs 1800 x 1200 pixels (taking 300 PPI as the basis) which is more than enough for most (non photographer) users.

If the OP's sister is after "proper" scans, this machine probably isn't for her but for Joanna Public Blogger, it'll probably be pretty much ideal! In fact, I'd almost be tempted to say that it might be worth consideration for more serious photographers since (from the blurb) it's pretty quick; NOT an accusation that can be thrown at most dedicated scanners. Probably not as the "proper" scanner but for digitising lots of film shots to decide which might be worth doing properly.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Canon-Cano...qid=1542322902&sr=1-4&keywords=canoscan+8800f

A little bit more expensive than what the OPs sister has been looking at but a decent buy imo.

It's the updated ( I'm not sure what changes have been made!) version of the canoscan 8800F which I've used for both 35mm ad 120 scans with very good results and it can also be used to scan documents etc as well as negatives.

Asha said:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Canon-Cano...qid=1542322902&sr=1-4&keywords=canoscan+8800f

A little bit more expensive than what the OPs sister has been looking at but a decent buy imo.

It's the updated ( I'm not sure what changes have been made!) version of the canoscan 8800F which I've used for both 35mm ad 120 scans with very good results and it can also be used to scan documents etc as well as negatives.

Click to expand...

i've got the 8800F as well - perfectly viable alternative to the Epson V500 and newer updated versions... Only reason I tend to recommend Epson family flatbeds on here is simple, there's LOTS of people in this forum area with experience of the Epson's so there's more people to give advice to new purchasers (yeah, okay, it kind of means I can "sidestep" having to be the go-to person on the Canon 8800F as well - which is a good idea, as I don't think i've actually had it connected for over a year now, so my memorys rusty...)