35mm slide scanner

I bought an Epson that cost about £240 ish - sorry I have not got the details with me - but unit is a flatbed scanner that also can handle slides and negatives - I have not processed any negatives yet but the handling of slides is most impressive.
If you can try one out you may decide not to go for the dedicated film scanner

As charmingly sociable as slide-shows are, I recommend with even a £49 scanner-combo quickly converting them to digital/making CDRs etc which will play in many cheap DVD m/cs-all computers into most TV displays etc.

My conclusion follows assessing the market when last year an ancient German slide-projector popped its final theoretically unreplaceable 'lamp', and transferring 2000 35mm slides.

Possibly you might get good service for slide-projector accessories in a local expert's emporium, but IMO digital might be more convenient/cheaper if all of the digital bits do not disappear ...

quote:

Originally posted by iDunno:
Can anybody recommend a decent scanner for 35mm slides (Velvia 100) and some negs (Reala 100)?

Can any of these manage an XPan or Noblex frame in a single pass?

Primary use will be towards a long-term web project where I intend to post pics up to about 800*600 res, but I will also want to print good A4 pictures for framing and display, possibly A3 depending on the subject.

Ideally I don't want to spend more than 500 quid.

Thanks

Nikon and Minolta do a good range of Film scanners for 35mm. Nikon LS 50 ED which sells for around £500
Minolta DiMAGE Dual 1V The Minolta will be about half the price if you can find a UK dealer.
These are dedicated to scanning film and will give much better results than a flat bed type of scanner for the same price.
I have an old Nikon LS2000 that was the top spec 3 years ago but it's not been used in that time since i went digital and i'm not sure if they do software drivers for the Mac OSX now anyway.

"but I will also want to print good A4 pictures for framing and display, possibly A3"

You will need to spend a few thousand to do that. Upto £500 will buy you a scanner capable of producing low res images suitable for web use.

quote:

Originally posted by count.d:
"but I will also want to print good A4 pictures for framing and display, possibly A3"

You will need to spend a few thousand to do that. Upto £500 will buy you a scanner capable of producing low res images suitable for web use.

Sorry Mr count.d but you're giving incorrect advice here.

The Nikon and Minolta 'dedicated' film scanners (Not the flat bed type) are more than capable of producing A4 + prints. Even my old Nikon which has 2800 dpi scan capability is easliy capable of this and models in the links i've provided scan at 4000 dpi. There's no need to spend thousands to get brilliant quality A4+ prints using this type of scanner.

I've got one of the older Minolta dedicated 35mm slide scanners and it's capable of excellent results as long as you manage dust control.

I wrote a reply to rackkit, but since deleted it. I just can't be bothered with this crap.

Thanks chaps. I shall look into the suggestions.

Re: dust control, how important is this digital ICE stuff?

Rackkit, is the Minolta 5400 worth a look if I'm in Nikon territory?

quote:

Originally posted by iDunno:
Thanks chaps. I shall look into the suggestions.

Re: dust control, how important is this digital ICE stuff?

Rackkit, is the Minolta 5400 worth a look if I'm in Nikon territory?

Seems like it's a higher spec than the Nikon for the similar money, so i'd say go for it!
Warehouse Express have it on their site for £495 if you fancy buying online or else see what deal you can find in your area.

A friend of mine has as older version of the lower range Dimage and his scans were as good as if not better, quality than my Nikon could produce. And the Nikon was more than twice the price, if a year or two older in design. The Minolta 5400 should produce superb results, if my friends is anything to go by.

You could try this web site for any tips too Luminous Landscape as i think they have done reviews on Film scanners.

The dust control is software that does it's best to hide the worst of any dust that might be on your negs or slides. My old Nikon did a fair job with it's Digital ICE software but the scans using it tended to be a bit soft. Best solution is to keep your negs/slides in good quality neg sleeves and use a can of compressed air to blow off any dust just before scanning.

quote:

Originally posted by count.d:I wrote a reply to rackkit, but since deleted it. I just can't be bothered with this crap.

I never got to see your reply count.d. Fair do's if. like you say, you can't be bothered.

iDunno

I have just bought a Nikon Slide scanner, the 5000ED. It is very impressive. It has resolution up to 4000dpi and with mulitipass scanning, at 16bit colour depth and ICE turned on the only limitation is the graininess of the film, at least for 100ASA film.

You could easily use this to blow up to A3 or A2 maybe even A1 at a stretch (hmmm... maybe not), the TIFF files produced for a slide are 122MB, that's 20 mega Pixels with 48bits per pixel which is a little more impressive then anything you can get in the digital SLR domain.

I recommend Nikon, though mine took 5 weeks to get!

Matthew

iDunno,
Depending upon the number of slides you wish to process and the size of your budget you may like to consider looking at kit that allows the use of a bulk feeder type device so as to process half a dozen negs in one run. That way you can setup half a dozen for processing and the take the dog for a walk, go to the pub or listen to some music while your new toy does the biz.

Hi iDunno,

If you want to buy a Nikon V ED Scanner, I have one for sale. It is brand new - I won't go through the story as I have already done so here. To add to this story, I have contacted the said supplier who said they would get back to me, but have yet to do so (over a month). So, a spare Nikon V ED... It is a great scanner and I am really pleased with the results - I have posted examples on flickr if you want to look I can give you the url, although I my member name is "deredvers". My only concern for you would be that for bulk slide scanning, you would probably need to buy an extra module - the basic setup will only allow you to scan one slide (i.e. "positive") or 6 negatives at a time.

Rgds,
Tim

Also, you should know that Digital ICE does not work with non-c41 processed B&W (i.e all conventional B&W film). There is a lot of post processing to be done. For colour negatives, it is fantastic!

Rgds,
Tim

After rereading the post, iDunno, you may find that the film scanner is way above your requirements - to print at A4, you can get a half decent flatbed scanner for half the cost of the film scanner. As someone pointed out earlier, the max resolution of a film scanner is equivalent to a 22 megapixel camera - I have produced excellent results on A4 with a 3MP camera....

Rgds,
Tim

Thanks again lads! Lots to look into methinks.

Matthew, 122mb files????? Oh sh*t, more memory for the pooter I reckon!!! Thanks for the info re print sizes. I've always been curious about how large you can print with a scan from one of these things. Previous experience at my usual lab didn't give reassuring results from slides at 8*12 - a print from a 3mp digital was more impressive!

Re bulk slide scanning, I shall investigate though I suspect I shant be too bothered about how long it all takes considering it has taken me 5 years to come to a decision about whether or not to even bother getting a scanner in the first place

Tim, thanks for the offer of the scanner but I think I will get one directly, I've recently had a bad experience with a lens bought for me by somebody else and I'm having a nightmare time trying to get it serviced under warranty

I have a Nikon Scanner. Excellent results on negatives & slides (colour & B & W )and also very good software for cleaning up defects eg scratched negatives. Would definitely recommend the Nikon.
Bob

Posted by Count'D

quote:

You will need to spend a few thousand to do that. Upto £500 will buy you a scanner capable of producing low res images suitable for web use.

ISTR that Count'd is a professional photographer so his comments about a £500 scanner are probably comparable to our comments on a "Dansette" gramaphone player with the latest EL84 valve attached to the volume control.....most "ordinary" people would be perfectly happy with the Dansette, or its modern equivalent.

Count'd, I for one would welcome your comments. I have occasionally wondered whether a £500 Nikon slide scanner would deliver the goods, or whether it would be a complete waste of money.

At present I take pictures with a Canon EOS 100 using Kodak or Fuji, sometimes slides and sometimes prints. I always get a CD copy of the photos (direct from Kodak if slides) or from a local photoshop if Fuji or prints. The CDs come back at about 15Mb per frame (similar to Snappy Snaps highest density).

I have managed to print-off A1-size prints on an HP plotter using photographic quality paper, without any abitiy to distinguish from A1 prints produced by the local photoshop direct from the original negatives. Both sorces seem to produce perfectly good pictures. I have never had any adverse comments.

Comments, advice?

Cheers

Don

Don,

quote:

I have occasionally wondered whether a £500 Nikon slide scanner would deliver the goods, or whether it would be a complete waste of money.

I was going to write a thousand words, but here's a pic (actually two pix), fresh out of a Nikon Coolscan V sitting on my desk at work.

The first is a resized file of a scan of a Fujichrome slide to show the entire frame. The second is a tiny crop of that scan without any processing in Photoshop to show how much detail the scanner can extract.* Whether the results are good enough depends on how picky you are, but for home printing I'd think the 500-pound Nikon would be fine.

Best,
Joe

* Don't be fooled by DPI ratings. A professional drum scanner at 2700 DPI gets a lot more off the slide than a desktop flatbed scanner at 6000 DPI. The point is that not every pixel is equal, which is what I think the count is driving at. Drum scanners are better than dedicated film scanners (such as the Nikon), but both are much better than the typical flatbed scanner with film hood.

Here's a tiny crop, showing actual pixels.

Joe

Note: Both images are less than ideal because they had to be compressed enough to be within the forum's file size limit.

FYI: Here's a crop of a 4800-DPI scan from the Epson Perfection 4990 Photo, a flatbed scanner that can also scan film.

As you can see, even though its reported resolution (4800 DPI) is higher than the Nikon CoolScan V's (4000 DPI), the results aren't even close. But it's OK if all you want are some pix for the Web.

Joe

quote:

Originally posted by Joe Petrik:
I was going to write a thousand words, but here's a pic (actually two pix), fresh out of a Nikon Coolscan V sitting on my desk at work.

Joe, that's a pretty convincing demonstration mate! The decision has been made.

What interests me now is how long it actually takes to get results approaching what you posted?

I have a device for colour profiling my monitor, but what's the procedure like for setting up and calibrating the scanner? How much difference does the software make? Are we talking about Adobe CS2???

Almost forgot, it's one thing to have software deal with dust on the film, but how do you guys deal with dust IN the scanner?

I'm wondering if I should buy a big resealable tub or something and bung it in every time I'm finished?

quote:

What interests me now is how long it actually takes to get results approaching what you posted?

The full-res scan of the 35mm slide with Digital ICE turned on took about a minute after a preview scan, which itself takes about 30 seconds (from memory; I didn't time it).

All results you see are without any Photoshopping. In other words, the Coolscan V scans are fast and pretty good right out of the box, but they can be better still if you Photoshop them. (The flatbed Epson scan, on the other hand, takes longer to scan and much, much longer to process with Photoshop to get something useable -- and just marginally useable at that.)

If you need to scan film bigger than the 24x36mm frame of standard 35mm film, you'll need the Nikon Coolscan 9000ED. The V won't scan your wide-format X-Pan shot

Joe

Joe,

Many thanks for the demonstration and the explanations.

Talking to my wife, her friends at school, their friends etc ect (women!!) I have now found a close neighbour who has a Nikon Coolscan dedicated slide scanner. (don't know which model yet, but he's had it for about 2 years) I am arranging to take some slides over to turn into CD-stored images that I can print at (say) A2 and compare with the same pictures previously put onto CD by Kodak and/or my local photoshop and printed at the same size on the same printer.

I appreciate that simple resolution specification is, at best, only a guide. A bit like camera pixcel specs where 10Mb is assumed to be better than 6Mb (but often isn't). Also a bit like amplifier specs where 500W is assumed to be better than 75W (but we know often isn't). So, in the same way as we recomend home-demos for hifi, I am hoping this home-demo for pictures will help.

Cheers

Don

Don,

quote:

I have now found a close neighbour who has a Nikon Coolscan dedicated slide scanner. (don't know which model yet, but he's had it for about 2 years) I am arranging to take some slides over to turn into CD-stored images that I can print at (say) A2 and compare with the same pictures previously put onto CD by Kodak and/or my local photoshop and printed at the same size on the same printer.

Film scanners improve in quality and become cheaper over time, following roughly the same price/performance curve as digital cameras and computers follow. The $1500 Nikon Coolscan 4000ED of 2003 is roughly equal to the $500 Nikon Coolscan V of today.

I think it comes down to this -- unless you need a high-end scanner, the kind that a pro photographer or pre-press shop needs, the Nikon Coolscan V ought to be more than good enough. If you need better than that, or scan film larger than 24x36mm, look to the more expensive Nikon and Minolta film scanners. If you need something better still, drum scanning is the only option.

Conversely, if you need a scanner for Web viewing only, a decent flatbed with film hood (like the Epson Perfection) or the cheaper Minolta film scanner (DiMAGE Scan Dual IV) should be fine.

Joe