Looking for a 35mm Negative scanner for win 10

[shannensdaddy]

Hi
Can anybody recommend a 35mm Negative scanner that will work with windows 10
Looking for something on the cheap side just to scanner a lot of negative that I have been left to me.


Thanks in advance..

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Hi
Can anybody recommend a 35mm Negative scanner that will work with windows 10
Looking for something on the cheap side just to scanner a lot of negative that I have been left to me.


Thanks in advance..

Any scanner will work with windows 10 if you use Vuescan.You could by an old minolta Dual scan for not much money ...the ii or iii would be fine for what you need.
and then just sell it again when you are done. I still Use my Minolta Dual scan LL for 35mm negs and transparencies.

Many people are unaware they can still use their old scanners with Vuescan so sell them cheap on ebay.

 

[shannensdaddy]

Thanks for the info, Terry. I will have a look at this..

 

[Mr Badger]

Reading your post it says "a lot of negatives". This might influence your choice of scanner? Whilst a good-quality dedicated 35mm film scanner might capture more detail, sharpness and depth of colour than a flatbed type film scanner, the 35mm film scanner might take around 5 mins at hi-resolution to scan one frame, then require you to move the negative holder manually to scan the next image. Great if you are only scanning 3 or 4 selected shots, but perhaps not that appealing if you want to rattle your way through a shoe-box full of negative strips? You could scan at low res to speed things up, but then you won't have the advantage of better looking images, and you still might have to sit there to move to the next frame each time?

Perhaps have a think about a flatbed type film scanner instead, maybe something like a good, used Epson V550 or V600 (check the reviews and specs to see if it will suit - there should be a few reviews on Amazon UK). My Epson V600 can scan two strips of negs (up to a total of 12 shots, scanned one frame at a time) but can be set going and left to get on with scanning all 12 images (or 4 slides) while you do something else. Once that's done, just swap the next 2 strips of negs and set those scanning and away you go again. I've found with my Epson V600 there's not much point in scanning above 3200 dpi at 48-bit colour on the settings in terms of image quality (in fact it seems to get less sharp above this setting), so that should speed things up too. The V550 and V600 will also scan medium format (120 roll film) size negatives too, and the results I've had from that have been very nice indeed.

These modern scanners will also connect to your computer via USB, rather than needing a SCSI board fitting to your computer to connect to and work (if there's not one there already) which some of the older scanners do. A flatbed film scanner might be a bit more expensive than an old 35mm film scanner but you can perhaps sell it on again and get some money back once you've finished scanning your negs, providing you don't break it! Anyway, perhaps something to think about when considering what's right for you.

Oh, do bear in mind that some colour negatives are harder to scan than others, as the particular film may have a cast or tint to it that the scanner doesn't handle as well. I'm not sure if a dedicated 35mm film scanner would cope better with this aspect (probably depends on the individual make or model), but perhaps some internet research might help you decide. Also, it might be an idea to re-ask your question in the 'Film and Conventional' section of the forum as there's some members with more knowledge and experience of film scanners that I've got that hang out there. I hope this is useful and you find what's best for your needs.

 

[shannensdaddy]

Many thanks for the advice Mr Badger..I will check out the reviews before i buy. You can beat experience..Thanks..

 

[Teflon-Mike]

As Badger's comments, its no quick job.... I am still working my way through the old halide-archive.. I get about half way through a binder and sort of loose heart, B-U-T Just as an indication,I managed about 2ooo frames last year!!! What's that? About one film a week!

I use a old Scanwit 'dedicated' 35mm scanner; that cost me just shy of £500 back in Y2K, but direct digital cameras didn't come close to matching it's 10Mpix res for a decade! I bought another off e-bay a year or so back, as it came with spare neg carriers & SCSI card... £30! Almost makes me sick!

Anyway!!! This does give suggestion as to potential 'bargains' out there; but beware; a lot of older, higher-end film scanners were SCSI interface; an SCSI card now new, if you can get one, is probably more expensive than the scanner 2nd hand... and that's chunk of the reason the scanner's so cheap.... the SCSI card was left in an old PC chucked out years ago! Any of these SCSI interface scanners will not run on 64bit operatng systems, so Win 7 and up, an you can only put an SCSI card into a desk-top. So you probably want to look for USB scanners.

However, that old Scanwit; chuckes out a healthy 10Mpix and a colour depth far higher than most contemporary DSLR's... but it s 'slow'.. and am not talking about the scan speed... Vuescan does let the hardware breath, and you can use multi-pass over scanning to get some great quality results... but adding over-passes does add to the scan time.... I usually set it up to do a strip of 6, at 12x over-pass, that I reckon is about optimum.. will go up to 20-odd-x ISTR but gains are small for the extra time.

Takes around three quarters of an hour to scan a strip of 6... call it an hour, when you add the time to swap the strips in the holder and run a preview,to check exposure and orientation.... This means practically you do maybe one strip a night, or a film on a Sunday...

And THAT'S just the start.... once scanned, you will want some hefty drive space to store them.... depending on format you are looking at maybe 50Megs a frame.... as captured; tidy them up in Photo-Shop; straighten any skew, crop to conventional aspect ratio, clean up scratches and dust mots, adjust colour and contrast, A-N-D with a non-lossy file format, that can get inflated 2 or 3x... and fill an external hard drive pretty fast!

Scan as, or make a JPG 'display' copy, they may come down to 10M a frame ish... which begs dilemma.... if you are going to get there in the end any way, why not cut to the chase and scan as JPG.. which then begs why bother making a VHQ scan.....

I also have a web-cam-scanner.. sort of little light-box device flogged in ALDI's or Maplins; I think mine cost me about £30 a few years ago.... and the critics are correct, the scan quality is pretty poor in comparison.... these often only run on the supplied software as they aren't strictly a 'scanner' they are a web-cam, being used to take a still image of the neg or slide in a light-box. Quoted Mpix resolutions are also some what erroneous, as they are 'interpolated' ie the pixels the camera makes in an out-put flle not the number it has in its sensor... which s true for most digital optics TBH, but the interpolation inflation on some of these can be quite dire.... I think mine quotes something like 17Mpix.. but it's actually only got a 5Mpix sensor! And that's actually one of the higher sensor res ones! Only 3x interpolation inflation... some of them have far higher interpolation-inflation, and have even lower res sensors.....

HOWEVER....if you just want to see what you got on film.... they are relatively cheap, and easy and convenient, and reasonably 'quick'.... I can do a whole film, in perhaps an hour with one; and you don't get precious about dressing out scratches or corrections in post; you just decide if they are worth keeping or not! A-N-D for web-display, down-sized back to 800x1000, less than 1Mpix, the sort of size you'd stick on Farce-Broke or the like which likely compresses them anyway... they tend to be 'acceptable' if not wonderful....

It IS, though, still a damn chore of a job, and faffing with the scanner, and juggling the strip holders; If Granddad took an 'average' number of photo's a year, from the high-film era.... about 100.. and you have a shoe-box of all his negatives from 40 years of family high-days and holiday when Nan goes in the home, plus those take by the kids with the 110 instamatics, you maybe have 3-4ooo photo's to work through... that's a couple of YEARS worth of work with a high-end scanner doing them 'justice'.. and even with a web-cam-scanner, to just get 'web-proof's you are looking at around 100 hours, just to get them saved to file... that's two and a half full working weeks...... So that's your annual leave taken care of then! Sorry Dear, Turkey's out this year you can put the Thomas Cook brochure down.... I'm going to the study to do photos!

I that context, it really does make you wonder whether paying a pro-scan service to do them for you IS actually worth it!.. May be a big chunk of money compared to a widget from Aldi or Maplns or off e-bay... BUT you still have time to have a life!

Seriously REALLY think it through... I have STOPPED being 'nice' to family and friends when they turn up with carrier bags or shoe-boxes of negatives and photo's, thinking that I can sort them all out, scan them, and post them to Face-Broke IN A EVENING?!, and that Cousin Alison an see them all and tell us who is in them!!! "OK, well, you fire up your computer and stuff, and I'll go make a cuppa, and we can st down and see what we've got!"... No, just NO! But that is the sort of 'expectation' people seem to have!

I really DO like the job.... I honestly do... B-U-T, it palls somewhat when you get the e-mails or phone calls.... "You haven't put up your Uncle Jim's photo's yet? What's the problem? If you cant be BOTHERED!" and so it goes on...... and it doesn't get any better when you HAVE slogged to get them all 'done'.. "Is that ALL of them? There looked more than that in the box!".. yes, well, I didn't bother posting the ones with the thumb infront of the lens, or the ones when no flash was used and it was all black! And THEN, you get blamed for the cruddy colours of forty year old 'free' tru-print flm, and all the scratches.... "Did your machine do all that?" No.. they got scratched when they fell out the sleeved in the draw ad fell down the back of the cupboard twenty years ago, then more when they were swept up and stuck loose in a shoe box! And that's BEFORE you get the family argy bargy over where's the one Dad took of us all on the Beach?,or "Why's there no photos of Gradad in there? or the outrage that Aunt Val never gave her permission for you to post a picture of her half naked... when she was two..... or the one she didn't like the dress she was made to wear at the christening... etc etc etc....

These are just a few of the 'niggles' associated with the chore...

B-U-T... point is, whatever the hardware, its unlikely to be a small job you can do one wet week-end, 'just' to get digi-files to see what you got.... and the cost of the kit, will pall in comparison to the time and effort the job takes.....

My advice is think long and hard what the objective may be..... and how much the job is worth......

A-N-D using a scanner is like using a camera.. the gadget don't do all the work, it takes time and practice to learn how to use it well and get the best from it. You might have to scan 30 films to get the feel for the job and find what sort of settings work best for different negatives... remember, in days of yore, many cameras relied on films exposure latitude and correction in printing, frame by frame to get the exposure near, you have that job to learn and do manually.... there's a pretty steep learning curve to climb to get decent scans, from less certain negs.. and even more, when you have to start recovering ones from the margins, worse still 'restoring' ones that have deteriorated on top.....

It really is a question not of how much the photo's are worth, and how much money you are prepared to pay for a widget but how presentable you want the digi-pics, and how much time you are prepared to put in to get them..... it is a very time consuming task, and lifting the image off the neg into the digi-domain is but the start.

And what scanner, then is probably not the top question in the list, I'm afraid!

 

[Terrywoodenpic]

Reading your post it says "a lot of negatives". This might influence your choice of scanner? Whilst a good-quality dedicated 35mm film scanner might capture more detail, sharpness and depth of colour than a flatbed type film scanner, the 35mm film scanner might take around 5 mins at hi-resolution to scan one frame, then require you to move the negative holder manually to scan the next image. Great if you are only scanning 3 or 4 selected shots, but perhaps not that appealing if you want to rattle your way through a shoe-box full of negative strips? You could scan at low res to speed things up, but then you won't have the advantage of better looking images, and you still might have to sit there to move to the next frame each time?

Perhaps have a think about a flatbed type film scanner instead, maybe something like a good, used Epson V550 or V600 (check the reviews and specs to see if it will suit - there should be a few reviews on Amazon UK). My Epson V600 can scan two strips of negs (up to a total of 12 shots, scanned one frame at a time) but can be set going and left to get on with scanning all 12 images (or 4 slides) while you do something else. Once that's done, just swap the next 2 strips of negs and set those scanning and away you go again. I've found with my Epson V600 there's not much point in scanning above 3200 dpi at 48-bit colour on the settings in terms of image quality (in fact it seems to get less sharp above this setting), so that should speed things up too. The V550 and V600 will also scan medium format (120 roll film) size negatives too, and the results I've had from that have been very nice indeed.

These modern scanners will also connect to your computer via USB, rather than needing a SCSI board fitting to your computer to connect to and work (if there's not one there already) which some of the older scanners do. A flatbed film scanner might be a bit more expensive than an old 35mm film scanner but you can perhaps sell it on again and get some money back once you've finished scanning your negs, providing you don't break it! Anyway, perhaps something to think about when considering what's right for you.

Oh, do bear in mind that some colour negatives are harder to scan than others, as the particular film may have a cast or tint to it that the scanner doesn't handle as well. I'm not sure if a dedicated 35mm film scanner would cope better with this aspect (probably depends on the individual make or model), but perhaps some internet research might help you decide. Also, it might be an idea to re-ask your question in the 'Film and Conventional' section of the forum as there's some members with more knowledge and experience of film scanners that I've got that hang out there. I hope this is useful and you find what's best for your needs.

Only the very earliest first generation scanners have scsi connections, since than nearly all film scanners connect via usb.
aging most film scanners when driven by Vuescan software can scan more than one shot at a time.
I have never had a problem with the base colour of a negative film. as vuescan allows you to set to the film make and type.

I have both a flat bed and a dedicated 35mm film scanner and while the Flat bed is god enough they rarely have any provision for adjusting focus.

 

[Mr Badger]

It's Darren's time I was thinking about, Terry; scanning batches of 12 shots a time on a suitable flatbed film scanner might be a quicker option if there are a lot of neg strips to scan and time (and file size/disk space) is more a consideration than out-and-out image quality and individual focus. What do you think?

That said, the results from a good quality flatbed film scanner are usually quite acceptable. This photo is from my scanner (Epson V600) at 3200 dpi and was taken using a Kodak Retinette 1B 35mm camera from the early 1960s (albeit on modern Ektar 100 film so it will probably look quite a bit better than some 40 year old budget-price film negative that's been kicking round at the back of a draw) but it should give you some idea of what you might expect from a reasonably well exposed negative from an old camera, using a flatbed film scanner, on a 'good day'. You can click on the image and open it in Flickr and zoom in to see the full detail. Total file size of this photo, as scanned at 3200 dpi and 48 bit colour, is 2.33mb.

img389 by J White, on Flickr

The other thing to perhaps consider is how flat are the strips of negatives you'll be scanning? If they are curling up then the sort of negative holder that fits in a dedicated 35mm scanner might hold them a bit flatter than a two-strip type holder on a flatbed? As Terry owns both types perhaps he could comment on this aspect? As mentioned previously, if you ask in the Film and Conventional section of the forum I'm sure you'll get some input from the folks there before you make up your mind and part with any money. Hope this info is useful and best of luck deciding what might be best for you.