Scanner advice please

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andya700

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Andy
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As we are snowed in, I have been looking through my old slides and prints, and finally decided that I am going to buy a scanner. I want it to do a good, accurate job but not break the bank (under£150 if possible?). It will hopefully be capable of handling 35mm slides and negatives and also prints.
Looking forward to some advice.

Cheers,

Andy
 
Being a relative newcomer to scanning negs I am finding the Epson V500 a great product. with a bit of time and care it is yielding better results than I expected! I paid £159 I think for a new one, so very close to your budget. A search on threads will yield a lot of prqaise for this kit. Yest there seem to be better scanners but not without a bigger outlay.
 
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Cheers Adrian, that is the main one which I was looking at (including the V600 which is about £200).
 
The V600 and the V500 are exactly the same except for the V600 having a slightly redesigned outer appearance - the V500 has apparently actually been discontinued and whats selling at the moment is the left over stock, Epson have released the V600 just to get people to buy something that they think is 'better' when actually its exactly the same!
 
s162216 said:
The V600 and the V500 are exactly the same except for the V600 having a slightly redesigned outer appearance - the V500 has apparently actually been discontinued and whats selling at the moment is the left over stock, Epson have released the V600 just to get people to buy something that they think is 'better' when actually its exactly the same!
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It wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't much difference between the V500 and V750...and then without checking the V500 specs it might only be that the V750 can do more negs or pos at a scan.
 
excalibur2 said:
It wouldn't surprise me if there wasn't much difference between the V500 and V750...and then without checking the V500 specs it might only be that the V750 can do more negs or pos at a scan.
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The V700/750 can resolve more detail - tests using the USAF 1951 resolution test chart (by www.filmscanner.info , a very good site for film scanner reviews as they really intensely test them) indicated a maximum resolved DPI of about 2400 with both the V700 and V750 but the V500 and V600 only resolved a maximum of approximately 1600 dpi.
 
s162216 said:
The V700/750 can resolve more detail - tests using the USAF 1951 resolution test chart (by www.filmscanner.info , a very good site for film scanner reviews as they really intensely test them) indicated a maximum resolved DPI of about 2400 with both the V700 and V750 but the V500 and V600 only resolved a maximum of approximately 1600 dpi.
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h'mm maybe a S/H 4990 would be better :shrug:
 
Assuming you won't be scanning MF, which you don't mention, why not get a dedicated 35mm (Plustek etc) scanner for your film and slides and use a flatbed for prints?

I'm not knocking the V500 at all, I have one, but I still put 35mm through the Plustek.
 
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kenm said:
Assuming you won't be scanning MF, which you don't mention, why not get a dedicated 35mm (Plustek etc) scanner for your film and slides and use a flatbed for prints?

I'm not knocking the V500 at all, I have one, but I still put 35mm through the Plustek.
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..but if all your going to do is post your shots here to be seen on a computer screen, at max 1000dpi, a V500 should be good enough....just scan higher and downsize.
That's why I like Asda as they do a VG low scan which I hope members here think my shots are good quality. But I have scanned higher with a V750 to make sure the jpgs I sent off, were extra good, for a lab's special offer of 100 free prints on your first order of 100 6X4s @ 5p each (200 total)...and they were very sharp.

photos.jpg
 
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I have a Plustek 7400 in front of me, and an Epson V500 behind me, and I want to scan a 35mm slide. Are you saying I should scan it with the Epson?
 
kenm said:
I have a Plustek 7400 in front of me, and an Epson V500 behind me, and I want to scan a 35mm slide. Are you saying I should scan it with the Epson?
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Well I've never tried a Plustek but I did scan a 40 year old Kodachrome on an old Epson 2480 photo and posted it on Apug a few years ago and they thought the colours were VG.
Not sure if this was the original but there wasn't much difference between the scans from the V750....probably again due to downsizing and the computer screen being an equaliser.

img367800px.jpg
 
I am in the process of doing the same as the OP, in considering all options, there are photo labs which will do the job for you.

It might be worth mentioning that any scanner used for slides or negatives must have a backlight. My experience of using a flatbed scanner was that in order to obtain a reasonable resolution, the process of scanning and reading to computer was very slow. Then you will have to crop the print

some firms manufactured slide duplicators, which are lenses attatched to ca camera, and the slide re photographed. I have one by Jessops, which I cannot get accurate focus on, and by Ohmar. which is what I am using. This gives the option to save at high resolution and RAW.

wanting to upload two examples of images captured, but cannot see how to do so
 
Very unscientific comparison:


ptek by ken__m, on Flickr


epson by ken__m, on Flickr

Both scanned at 1200dpi, default settings, whatever software came with each scanner, and no PP apart from a little sharpening.
 
You didn't say which was which! My eyes prefer the first...
 
ChrisR said:
You didn't say which was which! My eyes prefer the first...
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The first one is Plustek, but be careful judging as the first has more contrast. Best to bring them both up in Photoshop and adjust to look similar and then blow up with CTRL and +
 
Thanks for all the ideas and suggestions folks, it has left me quite confused really. I think that I may go for the V600 though, but one thing worries me - would it be compatible with Windows 7?
 
Newbie here!
Quick question what software do you guys recommend to use Macintosh?
Been contemplating between getting the V500 or the canon 9000f.:help:
 
Theres no real difference between them from the specs really, the Canon does resolve very slightly more resolution (1700 dpi) compared with the V500/600's 1600 dpi but to be honest there is very little difference.

Try Vuescan, that what I use as it has a good set of features and is fairly easy to use, theres a mac version of that.
 
hlens said:
Newbie here!
Quick question what software do you guys recommend to use Macintosh?
Been contemplating between getting the V500 or the canon 9000f.:help:
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I've just changed to Vuescan on my Mac after Nikon stopped supporting new OS and I can't say I like it that much so far but I think it's my lack of knowledge rather than a problem with the software, one of the things I like most about it is that it will work with all my scanners, something that you have to pay a fortune for with SilverFast.
 
excalibur2 said:
Jeez was it your choice to use Win8...I installed the trial version a while back and couldn't get on with it. :shrug:
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It was an... Error in judgement! I'm considering looking into LR alternatives and going Linux full time... Its that bad!
 
RaglanSurf said:
I've just changed to Vuescan on my Mac after Nikon stopped supporting new OS and I can't say I like it that much so far but I think it's my lack of knowledge rather than a problem with the software, one of the things I like most about it is that it will work with all my scanners, something that you have to pay a fortune for with SilverFast.
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I suspect it is one of those things you need to get used to. I only tried a trial, and it didn;t win my heart. But Silverfast 6, that's a whole different bucket of eels! I'm used to it now (it came with the Plustek scanner), and I've a routine that (usually) works, but it doesn't follow any known GUI/Mac conventions! Every single thing is different from anything you've tried before. I've read that Silverfast 8 is better designed, but I didn't see any other advantages to justify the steep upgrade price.

I'm really saying, spend the time to get used to Vuescan unless there's a reasonable freebie in the box with your scanner that works on the Mac.
 
To clarify, my post has the Plustek first, whereas in the link from FruitFlakes the Plustek is second.

I'd agree that once you get going with the Plustek you establish a rhythm, and even though you are only scanning one slide/neg at a time, you can get through a lot fairly quickly.
 
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andy700 said:
Thanks for all the ideas and suggestions folks, it has left me quite confused really.
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Well you can get good results from old scanners:-

Epson 4180 scanner from boot sale £3, scanned at 4800dpi and reduced to 1000dpi and slightly sharpened, the neg didn't need any colour or contrast adjustment.
img003.jpg


Asda scan (erm wait there is no mention of Fuji machine in properties so it would be a V750 scan).... I could have darkened to match but would have lost the link:-
Photo29_291000px.jpg
 
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