slide/negative/photo scanners

[Marie Hass]

Good morning, everyone

I have many boxes of slides and negatives that my family wishes me to convert to digital and distribute. The estate will pay for a converter/scanner, so money is only of minimal concern.

What are your thoughts/experiences as to make/model/cost? I want a better quality result.

I need to submit a proposal to my family.

Marie

[William W]

My comments cover two extremes and no middle ground.

> Firstly, I do Photo Restorations professionally (i.e. I charge money for my time, skill and experience). If I can get my hands on the negative (or positive) of the damaged print I send it to be professionally scanned, think drum scanning – think about $60,000 worth of scanner.

> Secondly, I have a truckload (well certainly lots of boxes) of personal/family Kodachrome and Ektachrome Slides that I have made and I am working my way through sorting those which I want to make into digital files and I am using a Canon 9000F MkII for the scanning process. I am doing the same with my personal / family 135 and medium format negatives - think about $350.00 for that Canon scanner.

*

I think that the main consideration is EDITING and CULLING. Scanning is very time consuming and whilst it might be admirable to want to convert ALL the negatives and slides from the Estate – one really should consider the time expended for the outcomes made.


***

In between the two scanners that I mentioned are the dedicated amateur Nikon and other brand scanners for about $1200 to $3000 – which I considered for my personal slides – but after a deal of thought I considered for the outputs that my slides will go to - I will put the converted slides on a show real for a 15inch digital display and also give some to family and friends which they might make to 6x4 prints but most likely will put on their screensaver. For those outputs the Canon 9000FMkII makes a suitable file.

WW

[Mike Buckley]

I recommend that the proposal to your family includes at least the option to send the photos to ScanCafe.com. I used them many times to scan a total of about 2000 color slides and can't recommend the firm highly enough. They typically run sales offering discounts of 20% - 25%, so perhaps get on their email list and wait for that to happen.

The firm is very flexible. As an example, I instructed them to save the highest quality JPEGs (you could instead have them save to TIFFs) and to do no post-processing including no sharpening. I only asked them to crop to eliminate the scan of the slide mount. That made it possible for me to custom post-process each image with nothing "baked" into the image file before I worked on it. They also placed the images in folders named exactly as I requested. All of that was at no extra cost. Once you review their website, you'll see that they provide lots of flexibility with regard to the services that you can select.

Two times I received a file that had become corrupt. They sent replacement files to me within a couple hours of being notified.

Using ScanCafe.com will save you a HUGE amount of scanning time, not to mention the time required to evaluate, acquire, set up and learn how to use scanning hardware and software. Depending on the cost of the scanner you might choose, the number of photos you need scanned and the services that you require, using ScanCafe.com might even be less expensive than buying a scanner.

[Ady]

HI Marie,

I would second both William and Mike.

I also do professional work on digital reconstruction of prints, plates, transparencies as well as manuscripts, books and letters and unless it's something you want to get into in a serious fashion I'd go with Mike's suggestion and send the work out.

The best results as William points out will come from a drum, but you can get very good results from a fluid mount flat bed scan, (such as Epson V750 with fluid mount) but it takes a LOT of practice and a copy of something like Silverfast Archive Suite to give you full 64bit output including the IR channel, which can save a lot of time. Having said that even with the fluid mount, decent software and a lot of practice its still a very slow and laborious process.

In addition to flat bed work I occasionally deal with material that can't be handled (or flattened/removed from bindings) and that archives will not allow out of their environmentally controlled stores. In such cases a full frame 35mm or medium format body with a good quality macro can deliver surprisingly good results, especially if you are imaging sections that you then stitch. But again that's a significant outlay and learning curve if you don't already have the kit and/or the experience and its SLOW and painstaking work.

So unless you are interested in investing way too much of your life for the next x years in something that's a long term passion I'd definitely go with Mike.

Cheers,
A

[chauncey]

I gotta agree with my esteemed colleagues here...I find taking descent images complicated enough without adding something else into the equation.

[davidedric]

Hi Marie,

I agree with the above suggestions, but coming from the "other end" since I am certainly not a professional. A few years ago I decided that I wanted to scan my 35mm slides, I suppose I have 5,000 or so. I bought a decent scanner, a Nikon Coolscan 5000 (they now sell at well over $1000 second hand), and started. I don't think I am more than a tenth of the way through.

Apart from the actual time spent scanning, with the Coolscan it is 2-3 minutes a slide, getting an acceptable result is very hard work. By acceptable, I mean when digitised bears some comparison with a digital photo. I know that I may not be getting the best out of the scanner, and I'm not the best pp'er in the world, but you'd also be starting out fresh with a scanner.

I still do some scanning if I have a particular project on the go, but I won't be scanning the whole lot. In fact, reminded by this thread, maybe I'll give a UK based service a go - I could pretty much fund it if I can off-load the Coolsscan for a reasonable price.

Dave

[Marie Hass]

Thanks, William, Mike, Adrian, Chauncey and Dave for that information.

Mike, I have checked into ScanCafe. After I cull the unwanted images, I probably will have close to 1500. I also have a bunch of negatives to have converted as well. Still, it seems a better idea then trying to do it all myself.

Marie

[Mike Buckley]

I'm sure you'll like ScanCafe's service, Marie.

The slides that they scanned for me were my photos taken over about the previous 25 years, so they were very important. Knowing that there is always the extremely small but devastating risk that the UPS truck could get in a highway accident or that the boat going to India (I used that method) could sink and cause the slides to be gone forever, I sent them in about 8 batches over a period of a year or so, always during a sales promotion; if the worst thing that could happen did happen, only a small portion of my slides would be lost. Though nothing bad happened, I'm glad I took that precaution.