Film Scanners

Looks like I'm going to have to upgrade my film scanner - I have an old Nikon Coolscan III, however the only interface is SCSI and due to a recent motherboard upgrade I can't seem to find an SCSI card that will work properly. The original that came with the scanner was damaged in a power surge caused by a lightning strike on the house next door back in the summer which is what fried the motherboard.

I already have an Epson 4990 which I use for scanning 645 and 617 trannies - it's ok, but a little slow to scan and very labour intensive setting up to scan each image what with having to ensure the film is totally flat and spottlessly clean etc

I've seen a few of the more up-to-date Coolscans on ebay and have been looking at the Coolscan IV or V, plus 4000/5000 models for 35mm or maybe going the whole hog and picking up a Coolscan 8000 or 9000 that will do the 645 trannies...

Do any of you that still use film or still have collections of slides/negs to scan have any experience of any of the above models or could maybe suggest something different such as one of the Canon or Minolta models?

On a related subject I've been using the silverfast software with the Epson but I've only got the LE edition - is there anything else that's worth looking at?

Cheers in advance for any help...

Will

You might try looking for a MINOLTA Dimage film scanner as they USB ports as I have their Dual Scan III and find it quick.

This is because, I moved to the Pentax *DSL2 in the summer I had the orginal Minolta 7000 with many lenses etc which I got as a graduation present back in May 1987, hoping my new SLR with last 1/2 as long.

Will,
I think I have a couple of old PCI SCSI cards (both will be with micro-D type connectors). I don't remember having any trouble using them with modern P4 machines and XP. PM me if you're interested.

I've used a Minolta Scan Dual and a Nikon Coolscan IV. Both gave great results when I used Vuescan (highly recommended). The home page is here.

Vuescan will at least put the scanners on a common ground, but it's "no frills" interface might require a little fiddling to get everything just right. But once you've sorted that, it can chomp through slides and negs with ease.

Hope that helps!
Matt

I replaced a Canoscan 2710F with a Nikon Coolscan V ED...

Manily because I was told SCSI couldn't be used with XP, but as soon as I sold the Canon found out about the patch that allowed it....

However my 4000 dpi Nikon trumps it in a lot of departments... scan speed and scan quality. I just scan and let PS do the sorting.

I've got a Minolta ScanElite 5400 gathering dust beside my monitor - strangely enough it hasn't had much use since getting my D. Certainly gave me good scans, high resolution seemed to suit Velvia, but scan time was a little slow.

Thinking of ebaying it, but not sure - for the same reason I've still got all my film SLRs - you never know when you might need it.

Dan

We use the Nikon Coolscan IV, and it's not bad, but I don't think it's as good as a 6MP DSLR.

I think I would at least look at the Coolscan V.

I hope new scanners keep improving-I only wish I could get scans that looked like my slides on a light table under a loupe!

Hi Will,
I am using a coolscan III on XP with no problems as long as you get the latest driver from the Nikon site. I probably have a spare PCI SCSI card or 2 around as well if you need one.

Kim

Hi All, thanks for the advice ref scanners and in particular thanks for the offer of trying out a couple of alternative SCSI cards to get my existing unit running.

On the subject of existing units, I have had a play with my Epson 4990 this evening to try to scan some 617 slides from my recent trip up to Scotland - I had been hoping to make some huge scans of a couple of the images to get a large (10x enlargement) digital print made to go up on the wall... I had originally tried using the 2400 dpi settings which would have given me around a 500MB file size but half way thru scanning the application (just using the standard Epson Scan utility) quits saying there isn't enough memory to complete the action and I should quit any other apllications that are running. This happens even when all I have open is the Epson Scan utility - I've got 1.5GB of ram running my machine so would have thought it would be more than up to the task. It's fine when I use the 1200 dpi setting (approx 120MB file).

Is there something simple (daft?) that I'm doing wrong here?

Do you keep the target size as original? If you set the resolution to 2400 dpi and outout size to 10 inches, your image will try to be 24,000 pixels wide-in TIFF format that's huge.

It's also likely that not all your RAM is available for the program's use-though I can't tell you where to check.

I assume you are using a version of windows. The problem is that the operating system is not allocating enough memory to the program. You will need to go into the advanced memory settings and tell the operating system to allocate more memory to the program.

Kim

Will,
Have you tried Viewscan?
Matt

Thanks again all - I figured that I might have to go and play with the memory settings.

I haven't tried vuescan, I do have a copy of LE version of Silverfast but can't find the serial no to unlock it.

And yes I have been keeping the target size as original so approx 6x17cms - I know the file I'm trying to produce is massive but I am wanting to get a final 60x170 cms print out of it!!!

I'll have a play again when I get home this eve...

Thanks!

Will

I'm going through the scanner buying process and finding it hard to put down the £500 a good dedidated film scanner starts at. I also need a flatbed cause my old microtek has died, that is mostly for documents though, not high quality photos.

so my options seem to be...

* a decent flatbed with trannie tray - both epson and canon seem to have done quite a few models over the years and some older ones are still available cheap and new. the epson 4490, 4990, HP 4370, 4850, 4890 Canon 600f 4400 8400 8600 - or even the previous models as the improvements could be just pixel count (or not).

* a cheap slide/film scanner such as the 7200/7200i + a cheap entry level flatbed

* an old dedicated slide/film scanner + a cheap entry level flatbed. My worries is to pay £100 for an old coolscan or minolta and have something that's actually less good than a cheaper but more recent model?

I'm leaning towards the first at the moment

I have a lot of film, years and years worth of it, and I want something that allows me to scan through them reasonably fast and get decent quality. Then I can look through all of them and figure out how many I have which really deserve a better treatment - that will then tell me whether I actually can justify buying a better device or just pay to have the few really nice ones scanned better.

We have never attempted to scan our old negatives and transparencies en masse as I'm sure it would be so time consuming and soul-destroying as to be an unbearable task. Worse than tidying out the attic....

The cheap film scanners I hear are less than zero efficiency (worse than useless) so perhaps one of the high quality Epson or similar scanners that will make a fair job out of 35mm and a good job out of 645 and larger?

Unfortunately cheap products are rarely cheap as they need replacing very quickly and end up costing more in the end.