Negative Scanner Recommendations

twhite87

twhite87

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Tim
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Can anyone recommend a good negative scanner. Needs to be able to scan 120 and 35mm negative. Happy to spend up to about £100
 
Dont think you can go far wrong with an Epson V550, or the V500 which is the model before. Should be able to get one of these second hand for £100 or so I would have thought, as they're around £180 new.
 
V500 or V600 should come in at your budget if you can be a bit patient waiting for one on the bay. Both will do the trick. Worth looking into the various custom holders that people have come up with - I definitely think mine was worth the effort of making.
 
Just be careful when buying second hand that the scanner includes the masks for 120 and 135. Sometimes they are used in offices, and the masks are lost. Otherwise, I'm another Epson Perfection V500 user. I've used a few others including a Canon 5600f, and an old Epson V1200. The V500 wins hands down. I found a new V500 online for I think around £125 a few years ago.
 
I replaced my 4490 with a V700. It's a good scanner.
 
Peter B said:
It's a bit older, but there's an Epson 4490 on the auction site currently sitting at £10 with a £15 postal cost and finishing Monday.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Epson-Per...bed-Scanner-/201418283917?hash=item2ee5771b8d

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/pc...ners/epson-perfection-4490-photo-59532/review
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The Epson 4490 is a no brainer—if you have to have a flatbed scanner. It has the exact same technical specifications as the V500; the only difference is the light source, which takes longer to warm up in the 4490.

I'm not necessarily convinced by any of the flatbed scanners, however.
 
I have had good results from my Epson V700. I'm particularly pleased with the medium format and large format scans. The 35mm scans are adequate I would say. The scanner served its purpose when it came down to scanning my old negatives and slides as it features batch scanning, rather than the Minolta film scanner I used previously, which was 35mm only. I use Epson Scan mainly, lazy?, but now and then Vuescan.

One thing though, if you buy second hand, check that a driver is available for you computer. My old Epson 3220 flat bed doesn't work with Windows 7 64bit.
 
skysh4rk said:
I'm not necessarily convinced by any of the flatbed scanners, however.
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I hate to say it but the more colour film I use the more I'm starting to agree with this statement. I was very happy with my V550 scans until I sent a few rolls of to have developed and scanned; the detail that these labs can get out of the same film is unbelievable. I had a roll developed and scanned by Photoghost recently, and just out of curiosity I scanned the same roll when I got it back to compare the results. I was really blown away at the difference between the two images when I compared them side by side at 100%, the lab scans were so much sharper with a heck of a lot more detail. Makes sense though when these labs spend 20 times as much on a scanner, and are much better at operating them than I am
 
TBH I had some scans done last year by ASDA and couldn't match the colours (which I liked) with my V500 but the ASDA scan was of course massively over sharpened and a tiny resolution (which was a shame). But if I was paying for good scans of every shot I'd have to curtail my shooting significantly so I stick with the V500 and one of these days I'll compile my negatives and get them done correctly.
 
steveo_mcg said:
TBH I had some scans done last year by ASDA and couldn't match the colours (which I liked) with my V500 but the ASDA scan was of course massively over sharpened and a tiny resolution (which was a shame). But if I was paying for good scans of every shot I'd have to curtail my shooting significantly so I stick with the V500 and one of these days I'll compile my negatives and get them done correctly.
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Well you can't do much about the sharpening but couldn't you adjust the colours, exposure, contrast etc (from the Asda scans) in Photoshop...and the shame is turning lovely film into pixels.
 
excalibur2 said:
Well you can't do much about the sharpening but couldn't you adjust the colours, exposure, contrast etc (from the Asda scans) in Photoshop...and the shame is turning lovely film into pixels.
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No I mean the colours were better in the ASDA scan than I could do myself, I spent more time than I'd like to admit on it then entered an Asda scan to the POTY (to my eternal shame :) ).
 
steveo_mcg said:
No I mean the colours were better in the ASDA scan than I could do myself, I spent more time than I'd like to admit on it then entered an Asda scan to the POTY (to my eternal shame :) ).
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Ah I immediately thought you had joined the "Asda is crap" brigade ;)......but I too have found sometimes I can't equal the colours of the Asda scan but I think it's because I use old film and the colours have drifted slightly and it's Fuji frontier ver V750 and the Fuji wins in this case.
I'll never understand guys who have there 35mm scanned by an expensive lab and then all they do is degrade their shot by downsizing and parking at Photobucket or whatever... then post here. :rolleyes: assuming the software here also degrades the image. It would be great if you could post a decent size image in T&C direct from your hard disk to cut out the "middleman".
 
I'm certainly inclined to do it myself, if I had the means - I had a 120 film scanned recently by Ag using their 'hi-res' option, but the scans didn't cut the mustard in terms of tonal range (information present in the negatives had been lost). Colour balance was fine, but that's not the only desirable quality.

And across the board in terms of jobbing out scans generally to consumer labs, who wants an 8-bit jpg to archive / take forward? It just isn't good enough.
 
droj said:
I'm certainly inclined to do it myself, if I had the means - I had a 120 film scanned recently by Ag using their 'hi-res' option, but the scans didn't cut the mustard in terms of tonal range (information present in the negatives had been lost). Colour balance was fine, but that's not the only desirable quality.

And across the board in terms of jobbing out scans generally to consumer labs, who wants an 8-bit jpg to archive / take forward? It just isn't good enough.
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The important thing is the negs anytime in the future you could always have winning negs scanned by experts....so how many great shots do you get out of a roll of 24, and you're paying for an expensive lab scan for losers.......but if you think good lab scanners wont be around much longer then you have a point.
 
excalibur2 said:
The important thing is the negs anytime in the future you could always have winning negs scanned by experts....so how many great shots do you get out of a roll of 24, and you're paying for an expensive lab scan for losers.......but if you think good lab scanners wont be around much longer then you have a point.
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Thing is, its not just ASDA that give rubbish quality archival shots. If I'm paying what some of the labs want for scans I expect high quality full range jpgs or tiffs I don't want to farm the negatives back out again. It works for me to scan my negs and one of these days I'll send out a books worth a pay the money to get them scanned properly. We'll I say it works I've got a backlog that would keep a lab in work for months.
 
I've had 4490 and used it for 35mm scanning; results were rather terrible. No match for my later Minolta Scan Dual IV. However, I now have V500 and it's good enough for medium format scanning. I've bought the frame holder from V700 and I am using it with V500 to scan three frames at a time instead of two... A good tip ;)

But for 35mm a flatbed, in my opinion, is not the greatest idea unless you use some kind of flattening add-on like a glass holder from betterscanning.com or so.
 
Maybe it's just my inability to use the scanning software properly then. I've spent a good few hours trying to get the most from the scanner and can't get nearly the amount of detail out of it as my lab scans have got. I’m still going to carry on trying to improve my scanning as I’d really like to be able to dev and scan everything myself one day, but I’m going to start sending all my C41 stuff to labs to scan.

If I self scan a lab developed roll I’ll save about a fiver (£4-5 for dev only or £9-10 for dev and scan) and spend an hour in front of the Mac at home. I could spend that same hour at work and earn enough to get it developed and scanned by a lab. This literally saves me both time and money and I get better results too. As much as I love doing as much myself as I can, I think I’m going to have to commit to sending my C41 off and developing and scanning B&W myself, at least for the next couple years.
 
You'll need to work very hard to get comparable results to lab scanning. And you won't be able to achieve such results with a flatbed, that's for sure. Naturally, scanning bw is much easier and would bring better output... C41 needs careful colour processing in order to remove colour masks. You can follow this nice guide by my friend Alek; http://aleknowak.net/wp/colour-negative-scanning/ - this should help you getting most of your colour scans.

But yes, unless you go into for a dedicated film scanner, good software and good technique, you'll go bonkers in no time. Guaranteed. I did, and I know how to do this pretty well; it was annoying to the point that made me ditch colour film photography entirely (well, that and the cost of it).

:)
 
Carl Hall said:
Maybe it's just my inability to use the scanning software properly then. I've spent a good few hours trying to get the most from the scanner and can't get nearly the amount of detail out of it as my lab scans have got. I’m still going to carry on trying to improve my scanning as I’d really like to be able to dev and scan everything myself one day, but I’m going to start sending all my C41 stuff to labs to scan.

If I self scan a lab developed roll I’ll save about a fiver (£4-5 for dev only or £9-10 for dev and scan) and spend an hour in front of the Mac at home. I could spend that same hour at work and earn enough to get it developed and scanned by a lab. This literally saves me both time and money and I get better results too. As much as I love doing as much myself as I can, I think I’m going to have to commit to sending my C41 off and developing and scanning B&W myself, at least for the next couple years.
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Huh £9-10 for dev and scan and I assume for 35mm...for me over five years that would cost above Asda about £700..for my shots. Anyway most of my shots aren't worth spending a lot of money on :D
 
This link will get to some of my scans - you have to be in detail view to see them all. MFC02-003 was scanned from colour negative film using a V700. It's 35mm (OM1).

MFC44-005 and Scan-150820-001 are both from the same 6x7 colour negative; the first using the V700 and the second a Plustek120 film scanner. This pair of scans was intended only as a test of resolution, not colour, and I made no attempt in scanning (or later) to correct colour balance.

You can ignore LF01-004 - it's a large format black and white from the V700 and irrelevant.

How do these compare with your results?
 
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excalibur2 said:
Huh £9-10 for dev and scan and I assume for 35mm...for me over five years that would cost above Asda about £700..for my shots. Anyway most of my shots aren't worth spending a lot of money on :D
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UK Film Lab is £10 for 2400 x 3600 scans from 35mm and £9 for 3300x3300 scans for 120 (6x6).

I'd really like to try Asda scans for 35mm just to see what their results are like, but my local Asda don't do film developing (the only place I know of in my town that actually develops 35mm still is Boots who are a rip off!)
 
StephenM said:
This link will get to some of my scans - you have to be in detail view to see them all. MFC02-003 was scanned from colour negative film using a V700. It's 35mm (OM1).

MFC44-005 and Scan-150820-001 are both from the same 6x7 colour negative; the first using the V700 and the second a Plustek120 film scanner. This pair of scans was intended only as a test of resolution, not colour, and I made no attempt in scanning (or later) to correct colour balance.

You can ignore LF01-004 - it's a large format black and white from the V700 and irrelevant.

How do these compare with your results?
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I can't open this link from work but I'll have a look when I get home this evening :) (probably fairly late as it's a Wednesday so I'm kayaking straight after work)
 
StephenM said:
This link will get to some of my scans - you have to be in detail view to see them all. MFC02-003 was scanned from colour negative film using a V700. It's 35mm (OM1).

MFC44-005 and Scan-150820-001 are both from the same 6x7 colour negative; the first using the V700 and the second a Plustek120 film scanner. This pair of scans was intended only as a test of resolution, not colour, and I made no attempt in scanning (or later) to correct colour balance.

You can ignore LF01-004 - it's a large format black and white from the V700 and irrelevant.

How do these compare with your results?
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I'm growing a beard waiting for something to happen in your link :(
 
excalibur2 said:
I'm growing a beard waiting for something to happen in your link :(
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Go and have a shave, then try again :)

I just checked, and it seemed to want to open the large format scan, rather than let you choose. I've changed the link and it just worked for me. Sorry about that.

I'd better add - note well the size of the scan from the Plustek scanner. It may give rise to second thoughts about looking at it.

And I should add - all scanned using VueScan.
 
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How much of a requirement is the 120? I just picked up a Kodak Pakon F135+ for only slightly more than your budget and for 35mm it's pretty much unbeatable. It will do 2100dpi scanning with full Digital ICE dust/scratch removal and spot on colour correction in less than 5 minutes per roll! You just feed in one end of the negatives and it spins through the whole lot without further intervention.

I've was using a Plustek 35mm scanner before which I thought was quite good, but honestly the Pakon is a revelation. Only downsides are that it's a little bit fiddly to install (needs Windows XP!) and that it won't do 120, which brings us right back to my initial question - how much do you need the 120?
 
Carl Hall said:
UK Film Lab is £10 for 2400 x 3600 scans from 35mm and £9 for 3300x3300 scans for 120 (6x6).

I'd really like to try Asda scans for 35mm just to see what their results are like, but my local Asda don't do film developing (the only place I know of in my town that actually develops 35mm still is Boots who are a rip off!)
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Another thought is:- a home V500 scan of 120 might equal a lab scan of 35mm. so unless you want to specifically use 35mm it would be cheaper to use a MF camera.....Anyone compared the results? For me I've never used a top\expensive lab ever.
 
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