Negative scanner

Hi does anyone have any experience of this scanner?

http://www.jessops.com/online.store/products/67439/show.html

And would photoshop be enough to convert the negs into images?

Thanks in advance

For the price, it's okay. There are other scanner manufacturers available. Use the search facility on this site - there was a topic about this a couple of months back, but I can't remember the names of the more prominent brands.

This is not a scanner and shouldn't be allowed to be called one. It doesn't scan, it simply takes a photograph of your slide or negative using a cheap lens and a cheap 5MP camera.

If you want it to do a quick job then it will, but you can get something for about £20 with pretty much the same spec.

If you want a decent scanner you will need to spend about £200+. They are much slower but will give much better results: link

cheers for that, Gareth!!.. I just remembered the name of the company - PLUSTEK. Have a look for their scanners on the Jessops site (if they stock that brand), and check Amazon.

Thanks, i will give that one a miss and check the plustek brand

Depends what you want from the 'scanner'.

If, like me, you want to reduce the storage volume of old school negs and slides, then the Jessops solution will do the job. I have one of the PhotoFix devices. It is a camera, but for 'quick and dirty' it's not bad. See if you can find a Jessops with one on demo.

If, also like me, you want to make reasonable quality conversions of old school negs and slides, and don't mind a bit of pp time, then the various Plustek devices will do the job. I have an old Plustek 3600i but am frustrated with not being able to replicate the colours from the prints I have with the negs. I'm told I should invest in better scanning software - Vuescan has been recommended.

If, however, you want to make high quality conversions of old school negs and slides, then you'll be looking to invest some serious money and time into Nikon Coolscan or Minolta Dimage film copiers. I've explored this option, and whilst I'm not put off by the cost I am put off by the time that you will have to invest in pp.

I have a Coolscan, and its great advantage is that there's almost no post processing.

With auto-scratch-and-dust-removal, it's just a question of feeding a strip of negs in every few minutes.

Very occasionally, I do a multi-pass scan to reduce the noise, but it's rarely needed.

The worst part is the discipline needed when you have thousands of negs to scan .

I've just got back into using my film slr and dont always want a print of everything I've taken. Thought it would save me space and money if I could have a go myself. The more I look the more confused I'm getting, good idea about looking at a demo one Johnx

I stand corrected! Maybe I'll take another look. What software are you using? The issue for me is when I compare prints against their corresponding negs, the results I get are way out.

In which case, if the volumes are likely to be low yoi might want to look at having your film 'developed' straight to high res digital.

Not cheap, but....

Could I get this done on the high street?

You'll tend to get low res, variable quality, but 'yes', I had one done in Asda, but also another specialist company - name fails me - that Womble recommended. Much better.

I'll see if I can dig out the name, unless Womble comes along and beats me to it.

It is worth paying for a decent scanner with a removable panel in the lid for transmission illumination of slides or negatives.
I have an Epson Perfection 3170 which had the added advantage that it came with a free copy of Photoshop Elements (v2 !)
It comes with a range of holders for different sizes of slides and negatives and the software has a versatile range of settings. The images can be saved as jpegs which can then be edited in any of your favourite photo programs.
I think there are now some Epson multifunction printer/scanners which also offer slide and negative scanning?

Peter

It's The Darkroom UK > http://www.the-darkroom.co.uk/

Also, see this thread > https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/film-developing-and-scanning-to-cd-32974/...

Oh my gosh , I am so glad I found this forum. Reading this thread just made me realise. I have a Minolta Dimage film scanner So I can go back to using colour film if the ME Super body that came with the 50mm f1.7 works. Why oh why did this idea not click in my thick head donkeys years ago.

By the way fourfivesix, I support what the people are saying. If you have a load of negatives that you want scanned, buy the best scanner you can't quite afford. Don't bother with a cheap one if you want to produce prints from your negatives. I found I needed to experiment with the Minolta a fair bit before I started to get half decent results.

I wish I had gone for a Nikon with their superior dust and scratch removal technology. But at the time I didn't realise how much detail these scanners can reveal. Film emulsion is very delicate stuff and I am pretty clumsy as well as being dim.