Film scanning

I'm thinking of getting a film scanner.

I have a shed load of slides, 35mm negatives, 120 negatives, 110 and 126 negatives as well as prints to scan.

My experience of scanning prints/negatives has been disappointing thus far. Either the resolution has been poor or the quality of the scanned image has been lacking severely. Has anybody any suggestions as to what to look for in a scanner?

At the moment we have an HP flatbed scanner (under the bed) and a scanner in an HP all-in-one. I am wondering whether a dedicated film scanner would do better. There's more 35mm film to scan than anything else but I'd like to scan it all.

Rhys Sage said:

I'm thinking of getting a film scanner.

I have a shed load of slides, 35mm negatives, 120 negatives, 110 and 126 negatives as well as prints to scan.

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Hi Rhys,

Join the line of shoe box stackers, cupboards stuffers and other hoarders planning to scan their film and photographs! The most inexpensive scanners are pretty capable but the most inexpensive scanner to work really well is the Epson V700 series. The professional version seems to have a better glass platen. batch scans are possible and the software is good. Use the Epson software, Vuescan (from Hamrick.com or else Silverfast.

Today, these flatbed scanners approach the quality of the dedicated Minolta, Nikon and Canon 35mm scanners. Unless you have a particularly special file, you will find a flatbed scanner, even an older Epson model, is everything you need.

what you are paying for, actually is not only the quality of the optical system and A/D conversion pathway, but also the mechanics that moves the scanning head. To really do well, you need to spend $3,000 $12,000 to have a used or (lower end) new unit that will give you really fine mechanical movements and a true measurable O.D. of more than 3.9 O.D. units.

Ignore that these epson and Microtek will give you 48BIT and 4.2 O.D. That's marketing twaddle! The probably give you 3.7 at very best, likely 3.3. However, that's fine for most of our work. You can scan for the highlights and then for the shadows and combine if you are fussy! For 99.9% of you work, even a $200 scanner will be fine.

Here's a useful start.

Good luck!

Asher

Hi Asher,

Thank you very much for the link : i am personnally looking for the best scanning solution for my personnal use and i was thinking about Epson V750.

This review is really very interesting, as it shows that differences between V750 and expensive Nikon LS9000 are quite subtile when you apply correct work in Photoshop...

Hmm... so 4800 is 9600 is a good resolution?

Rhys,

I too agree with Asher that the epson v700 series is good enough for most tasks. I however was never
happy with epson sw and purchase the vuescan offering. for my needs, they are plenty.

regards.

p.s. you did not mention c41 color/bw and whether u do your own developing. scratch removals
are the biggest pain, after the dust!

Hi Fahim,

Digital ICE does wonders for both dust and scratch. Unfortunately it doesn't work on B&W or Kodachrome.

Here's an example. http://web.ukonline.co.uk/sw.rae/examples/ice.html

Regards,

Stuart

My negatives are pretty clean and scratch free - mostly B&W but quite a few colour too plus slides.

StuartRae said:

Hi Fahim,

Digital ICE does wonders for both dust and scratch. Unfortunately it doesn't work on B&W or Kodachrome.

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What a great example. Can you post that here?

Also does anyone know how Canon implements their scratch system?

Asher