Slide scanner

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Wolf Man

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Folks, I hope that you can help.

After many years, I've decided that I need to transfer all my slides to digital!
So, I'm looking for a good slide scanner that will do justice to all the Velvia stock I have and work on Windows 7. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
 
Hi

I cannot help with your query but:

Do you have a budget in mind, this may help people with recommendations.

Thanks
 
Wolf Man said:
After many years, I've decided that I need to transfer all my slides to digital!
Click to expand...

Why do you think you need to do this? Depending on how many you have, you might discover that it will take a lot longer to do than you think it will and you might also end up resenting the process.

Much better to just scan them as and when you need them and put the time in to do them well rather than a repetitive batch process.


Steve.
 
Thanks guys,

I'm not planning on doing the scanning in one batch...may lose the will to live. But I would like to scan them at a reasonable level so that I can submit them to a photo library, use for websites etc.

Re. The Nikon Coolscan: I've read that they do not work to well with Windows 7 and also you can get better for the money.
I'd love a drum scanner, but are they not rather expensive!

What do you guys think about the Plustek 8100 OpticFilm Scanner.

I suppose my budget is £200-300
 
I use a light box and my D700 with 50mm lens and extension tubes.

My LPL (Jessops) enlarger converts to a copystand and the negative holders from an old A3 Epson scanner holds the negs and slides in place.

A bit of a fiddle but couldn't be cheaper.

All it cost me was £30 for the enlarger, I had the rest of the kit.
 
I doubt if you can get better than a Coolscan for the money if you're talking about 35mm originals - notably the LS2000, which has multi-pass scanning and boostable illumination to help with dense originals, along with ICE dust-removal - but though still available s/h, it requires a scsi connection of a certain flavour (probably via a plain old-fashioned PCI slot on your mainboard). Having overcome that hurdle, it can be got to work with W7/8/10 by using Vuescan. If you can cope with that hassle, and manage to like Vuescan, then it's a belter.

Hopefully you've come across this: http://www.filmscanner.info/en/PlustekOpticFilm8100.html and this: (http://www.filmscanner.info/en/ReflectaCrystalScan7200.html).

The norm is that you get what you pay for.
 
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Thanks droj, that was very useful and helped make a decision.

All your help has been useful.

Is there a sticky thread on here about scanning slides? I can't seem to find one
 
I would suggest you look into professional scanning services if you are intending to submit them to libraries, they can be a bit picky on quality afaik.
I have been working my way through about twenty years worth of film DIY and I can tell you it is NO small job.
I am running a old ACER Scanwit, I bought in Y2K, I have given up on, numerous times and returned to as many, ad computer tech has leap-frogged!. Windows 7 doesn't like the 32bit SCSI card, so it's running on an older XP computer almost as a dedicated scanner rig, which finally lets the thing breath at its highest quality settings and delvers approx 9Mpix 64-bit colour, scans at a rate of about 5-minutes a frame...
Then, when you have got a strip of frames into Photo-Shop or similar... you may start restoring them.... dust motts are an occupational inevitability, scratches, fading, damage, drying marks etc etc etc... silverfast has a little auto-restoration in it, but haven't managed to make it work yet....
BUT the point is, from picking up the box of slides/negs, to having presentable digitised images, you could spend the best part of a whole week-end on just one or two films worth of pictures...
And then risk the wrath of the photo-library over size, format, quality etc....
For 'speed' have been using a little USB web-cam-scan.. much derided, they chuck out about a 12Mpix or 14Mpix file, inflated with a large degree of interpolation, that is pretty mediocre, but 'OK' for web-display... but, it IS 'quick' I can digitise a roll of film and touch up the pictures from it in about an hour or or, to have something to look at, ad decide is need or want a 'better' scan of anything..
Before making big investment in more dedicated hardware, or time, might be a worthy £25 e-bay toe-in-the-water
BUT if you want to submit to image bank, I would check very carefully what their requirements are, and with a large number to digitise, a pro-service, may be the better route, if oly to actually see the job 'done'! (Which is another warning; working 'as and when', I am constantly frustrated finding keeping track of scanned and unscanned! Takes more 'space' more time and more organisation that yu would credit!)
 
Wolf Man said:
Is there a sticky thread on here about scanning slides? I can't seem to find one
Click to expand...

did you think to look in the Film and Conventional section of the forum ??

there's usually a thread once a week or so about scanning slides / negatives / old prints and the like... plus the regulars pretty much own and use every different scanner out there, from flatbeds like the Epson v500 et al, through the Coolscans and up to a few of the drum scanners...

Don't think there's an actual sticky thread on scanning slides etc, as we never seem to have time to compile one, before the next time someone asks...

to be honest, this thread would have been better placed in F&C rather than the computer section, as you'd have had your information in a couple of hours, rather than a couple of weeks...
 
Wolf Man said:
Any thoughts on the Plustec scanner?
Click to expand...

I use a Plustek 7500i scanner, and it does an excellent job with colour slides. It came with SilverFast SE 6, which is pretty powerful but pants interface and doesn't work with today's Macs. Folk say that SilverFast 8 is much better; it would come with one of the current 8000 series Plusteks, I think.

Instead of SilverFast, I use Vuescan Pro, as do several other people here. One price, all scanners, perpetual upgrades, and capable software. Yes, it's interface is a little strange, and the curves implementation sucks, but the best idea is to scan relatively flat, just set the black and white points, and do your fix-up in your favourite PP software. If your slides are NOT Kodachrome, there are 3 grades of "dust removal" to experiment with in Vuescan (you'd need one of the Plustks with an "i" in the name, for an infrared channel; the cost per slide is an extra scan).

A typical 2400 dpi scan for a decent image works out at around 8 mega pixel image; if you like it enough to scan at 3600 dpi you'll get around 17 megapixels. Not all of that will be real, quality pixels, but there's lots you can do with a slide like that.

I have done a few hundred slides and a couple of thousand negatives from my film archive in around a year (just doing a few a day), and now keep up with those negatives I don't get professionally scanned, as they come in.
 
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