Scanning Advice

The topic of this week's competition has reminded me that what I deem to be my best photographs were all taken on colour slide film and are 'stuck' in storage boxes, never seeing the light of day.

a) Should I leave them there :

b) Buy a Nikon Coolscan V once Chris @ SRS has some in stock :

c) Buy something else to do the same job :

d) Send them off to be scanned professionally :

Any advice will be gratefully received, since I know nothing about scanners other than scanning documents to send by e-mail at work.

We usually have so many slides that it's a soul-destroying task to try and digitise them all.

I'd opt for the Nikon Coolscan and just scanning images as and when they are needed.

I have found it is both quicker and easier to rig up a slide holder and a source of even illumination behind it, then photograph the slide with a macro lens.

A copypod and light-table should work well.

G

Just got an Epson v500 scanner - flatbed with transparency adaptor. Not tried it on slides yet as all my slides are back in England, but ran a B&W film through it last weekend and was mightily impressed with the results. On film strips it will do 12 35mm frames at a go, but only 4 mounted slides at once.

I attach a picture from a scan - it gives some idea - on the full size scan the grain (of an ageing roll of Delta 400) was very visible

Or......rent a Nikon Coolscan for a weekend, and scan as much as you possible can. Maybe even better rent a Epson 750 pro, as this machine can batch scan very fast.
Martin.

I have been using my Epson Perfection Photo 3170 flatbed scanner which has attachment for 35mm & slides with great results on both formats.

This sample is from a slide approx 30 years old!



This is a 35mm neg scanned in at 3200dpi



Reminds me to do more!

ps- looks like you can pick them up on ebay too:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/EPSON-PERFECTION-3170-PHOTO-SCANNER-BOXED_W0QQitemZ1402036...

If you just have a fairly small job lot to do, why not try a 2nd hand unit from ebay? I picked up a Coolscan 5000 last winter to do my 35mm collection which is fairly quick. I have an Epson 4990 for med format stuff.

Once I'm done with the CS 5000 I'm fully expecting to sell it back on ebay for roughly what I paid for it.

Another tip is to try Vuescan software which really helps with batch scanning jobs.

Will

I bought a Epson 4490 (which isn't an expensive scanner) primarily to scan some medium format stuff however I've been quite impressed with the results with 35mm as well - it's certainly considerably better than my 10 year old dedicated film scanner.