Copying Slides.

I have a few thousand 35mm transparencies and film strips which I E6 processed and never mounted. I don't want to copy all of them but I do want to make copies of quite a few.
I have a flat bed scanner with a 35 mm adaptor but it's slow and the results are poor.
Here's a bit of fun. A Self portrait taken in February 1996 through my bathroom mirror. This was on Jessop ISO 100 slide film. I flipped the image in Photoshop. I was 29 years old and still had hair....Happy days!
Anyway, I used a desk lamp with a white piece of plastic acting as a diffuser, and a SMC-M 100mm f4 macro lens.

I use a Plustek Optic film 7500i with Vuescan. Works great for both slides and negs.

I've been thinking of scanning negs going back over many years (not all of them ,just those that look worth the effort). I've scanned a few test negs with an old Canon 8400F flatbed scanner that I've had for many years. The results are not impressive - noise, rather than dust being the main problem - which I assume is down to the scanner.

Is a scanner of the calibre of your Plustek capable of making relatively noise free scans - or is noise still a major problem?

Cheers
Andrew

Is it noise or could it be film grain? As a dedicated film scanner it shouldn't be too bad.

There are some tips in using that scanner here:

http://www.photographyblog.com/reviews/plustek_opticfilm_7500i_review/

Are you using the optimum settings?

John K

I've just scanned one or two more random negs on the Canon 8400F flatbed at 3200dpi (its max resolution) and had better success with some.

I'm beginning to think that most of the "noise" might be film grain from some of the negs. More recently (from 2000 to 2007) I tended to use either Fuji Superia 400 or Fuji Reala 100. Some of these are pretty good, even on the 8400f flatbed. Earlier, I'm not at all sure what the film was - possibly even including some freebies from Bonusprint, Truprint or whoever - though I do remember using Kodak 200 mostly.

This is one of the better test scans after a bit of improvement in LR5.2 ...




and a 100% crop from that .....




I don't think that's so bad for an old cheapie flatbed. I think I'm going to have to have a real good look at samples of negs before deciding that enough are worth digitizing to make an investment in a dedicated film scanner worthwhile.

Andrew

That doesn't look too bad at all. Only you can decide if you think it worth getting another scanner.
If you do want a good scanner, one worth looking at is the Epson Perfection V500. It's at a good price presently.

http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/printers-ink/printers-scanners/scanners/epson-perf...

John K

The young girl in the ride with her mum would have been 5 or 6 years old when that photo was taken, which dates it to 1977 or 1978. Doesn't time fly!!

Andrew

I did show a comparison a while ago: link

But all scanners are slow. Best too pick the good shots only!

I use a Minolta Scan Dual IV and as a dedicated film/slide scanner it does a very good job. Much better than my Epson 2450 Photo. Vuescan is also my preferred scanning software.

The only advice that's been given here, and in the topic linked above, that I disagree with is selective scanning. I prefer to scan everything, then select the ones to discard. Having positive images of everything will always make it decide which ones to bin. If you have the prints it's not such a problem of course.

> I have a flat bed scanner with a 35 mm adaptor but it's slow and the results are poor.

Ou man. You don`t know how slow and time consuming is real scanners...

To scan 10 frames 35mm with Nikon Coolscan 9000 (ICE for scrath and dust remove enabled, 4x pass for smoother details, Super CCD enabled (it scans with onl one row of sensors, to make zero possibilty for banding appearence and other mistakes).... Just scanning takes 3 hours. But before this, one usually makes preview, adjusts some curves and white ballance.

If you wish, I can scan your negatives for some agreed expenses (Emmm... I am not so busy with work at the moment).

To understand difference between film scanner and best flatbed scanner, look here: http://www.webweavertech.com/ovidiu/weblog/archives/000448.html

It's a lot quicker photographing them

--

Yep

very green. Colour balance adjusted ....

Indeed, yes - it looks a lot better corrected.

My main concern was whether it was worth using the old Canon scanner at all. Most of my earlier attempts have lots of noise which I had assumed to be scanner related, but this scan shows that notion to be wrong (probably). If the bad scans are noisy due to film grain, there's not going to be anything that a good dedicated film scanner can do about that.

Andrew