Nothing suitable from Pentax, so I've gone Nikon

About 20% of 10000 negs - my whole life from 1984 to 2007. I haven't done any for quite a while, but one of my NYRs was to get started again.

Mostly dross, as you'd expect, but a few real gems and lots of priceless memories. I don't have the prints, so every strip is a surprise

Well good luck with it, you have far more patience than I have. Once it's done of course that will be a Very Good Feeling.

I hope you've backed them up!

Thanks. The patience comes and goes if I'm honest.

The biggest problem was the racket from the scanner - although I got used to it initially, it gradually bored its way into my brain and stopped me working. But now I've set up a PC in the other room (hence the Windows 8.1 reference) so I just hear a click at the end of each strip.

I figure that if I can chip away at it, doing even a few strips a day, I'll still get a lot more done than if I leave it completely for months at a time and then go mad for a few days.
I certainly have, along with all my digital stuff (mostly also dross, mind you). Currently on to 2 external hard drives of which one is off site at any one time.

8000 to go, 70 MB per TIFF, that's a bit over half a terabyte. I have about the same already, and I daresay I'll accumulate a lot more digital images. I reckon the two 2TB drives I have will keep me going for a while.

Well done for your perseverance. I gave up after a fortnight! Presumably you've fared better with the Caol Ila?

Still have some left

But I have about 20 on the go, so none depletes too fast

I'vew still got a couple of thousands of my own to scan. Been about a year since I did any. I use a plustek 7500i with vuescan, scan them at 3600dpi. works great.

I'm still processing some of the previosu scans by the way, It sure is a long process, but in a way the scanning abnd editing process is a good excuse to look at the pics and see the memories.

I've also discovered some good pictures that I had overlooked or discarded originally

That second look can be quite valuable as we get a chance to see the images in a colder light, long after the first flush of excitement makes us select the initial few.

Indeed that's the good thing about negatives. You keep them. People delete far too many pics with digital. Rash decisions IMO.

I've probably mentioned this elsewhere, but I ruined a whole roll of film walking in the Lake District, by using one of those extendable rubber lens hoods at the wrong length - the prints came back and the vignetting was awful.

However, now that they're scanned, a little cropping and some of the shots weren't too bad.

Well, I've taken the plunge and equipped myself with a second hand Epson Perfection V750 so that I can digitise medium format film from the 645N and process in lightroom.

After sevicing, the cost worked out at £400 which is as much as I could afford, but it should pay for itself after offsetting the cost of half decent photo studio scanning. I could not summon the budget for a professional scanner, but results look remarkably good for a flatbed.

It came with Silverfast Ai, native Epson, and PS Elements software. Quick scans give decent jpegs for reviewing, but for me the trick is to set it at high resolution with multipass and digital ICE before going to bed. In the morning I have a nice set of tiffs to work on, and not a trace of dust anywhere.

I've still got a lot to learn about scanning though! It will be interesting to compare my best MF .tif scans from the Epson with the best .dng I can get from the K-5.

I am now looking at the boxes of 35mm slides and negatives I amassed in an earlier MX life, thinking; well going through that lot will have to wait for my retirement!

Like Mannesty I also use the Minolta DualScan IV, no longer available, likewise I use Vuescan software which is excellent and well worth the money as it is a one off cost, allowing you future updates, very useful when switching/upgrading operating systems.

I spent two winters scanning about 2000 slides to my computer, it was only then I realised how marked the slides were, after a lot of editing they cleaned up well.

We know that [analogue photography] negatives and slides can survive fairly intact for decades, this cannot be said for digital media, so who knows what may happen in a decade or two from now, the reappearance of analogue photography?

I have kept my Minolta DualScan IV, who knows what tomorrow brings.

Live long and prosper 'V'

I discovered that after installing the Vuescan trial the Minolta software works on later versions of Windows