Slide Scanners

<gil.blas.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3887cdbb-9a9f-4ffb-9f23-e0a002031799@p73g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
> Between me, my father, and other family members, we have over 5000
> 35mm slides and negatives that we want to scan. At prices I've seen
> for scanning services it seems cheaper to buy a good film scanner. I
> see that Nikon and Braun have scanners with autofeed slide
> magazines.
> I'd appreciate any comments on these or other scanners.
>
> Thanks.

If you have the extreme patience and dedication and are willing to
spend weeks devoted to the scanner to scan 5000 slides carefully and
with good quality.
Consider paring down your slides to a few hundred of your very best
and have those done professionally.
 >> Stay informed about: Slide Scanners 

"Frank Arthur" <Art.RemoveThis@Arthurian.com> wrote:
> <gil.blas.RemoveThis@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:3887cdbb-9a9f-4ffb-9f23-e0a002031799@p73g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
>> Between me, my father, and other family members, we have over 5000
>> 35mm slides and negatives that we want to scan. At prices I've seen
>> for scanning services it seems cheaper to buy a good film scanner. I
>> see that Nikon and Braun have scanners with autofeed slide magazines.
>> I'd appreciate any comments on these or other scanners.

I'd recommend avoiding the Braun. It's probably a decent scanner, but in
reading the scanning forums over the past 6 or 7 years, I've seen no mention
of it whatsoever, and lots of discussion from people using Nikon, Minolta,
Epson scanners. If you have a problem with a Nikon scanner, you'll get quick
responses from people with experience.

Nikon makes two scanners: Coolscan V and Coolscan 5000 (also the 9000, but
that's for larger film and is expensive). The Coolscan V will require you
loading your slides 4 or 6 at a time, but is somewhat cheaper. For really
fussy scanning of dark or underexposed slides, the 5000 has a multisampling
function that should, in theory, help somewhat. Maybe.

The Epson V500 _should_ be _almost_ as good as the Nikon. Maybe. My best
guess is that in an 8x12 print, you would be able to see the difference
(with Nikon 5000 scans looking better). Maybe.

> If you have the extreme patience and dedication and are willing to spend
> weeks devoted to the scanner to scan 5000 slides carefully and with good
> quality.
> Consider paring down your slides to a few hundred of your very best and
> have those done professionally.

Paring down is good advice. A lot of your slides will be less than sharp,
and won't need quality scanning, although you'll still want to scan some of
those for the historical value. Those you can send out for cheap low-res
scans.

However, with a Nikon Coolscan 5000, you'll probably get better scans than
you'd get from any scanning service that you can afford for 500 slides.
Since you should be able to ebay the Nikon 5000 when you are done, the cost
of a new one is less than the sticker price.

Scanning even 500 slides is a lot of work. Slide scanners have limited DOF,
and if a slide is warped, you may have to take it out of the mount to get
the whole frame sharp. Etc. etc. etc.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan
 >> Stay informed about: Slide Scanners 

gil.blas.TakeThisOut@hotmail.com wrote:

> Between me, my father, and other family members, we have over 5000
> 35mm slides and negatives that we want to scan. At prices I've seen
> for scanning services it seems cheaper to buy a good film scanner. I
> see that Nikon and Braun have scanners with autofeed slide magazines.
> I'd appreciate any comments on these or other scanners.
>
Scanning slides is a lot of work. I also started with a plan to scan my 6000
slides but ended up doing only about 600. Unless your slides are glass
mounted you have clean the slides of dust and make sure they are not
warped. You may have to remount some of them to get an even surface. If
they are in anti-Newton glass mount you may get very unsharp images. Those
also may need remounting. After scanning you have to post-process virtually
all of them. Nikon Coolpix 5000 with autofeed will be a good choice but
prepare yourself for long slog.

--
gautam
 >> Stay informed about: Slide Scanners 

Frank Arthur wrote:
> <gil.blas.DeleteThis@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:3887cdbb-9a9f-4ffb-9f23-e0a002031799@p73g2000hsd.googlegroups.com...
>> Between me, my father, and other family members, we have over 5000
>> 35mm slides and negatives that we want to scan. At prices I've seen
>> for scanning services it seems cheaper to buy a good film scanner. I
>> see that Nikon and Braun have scanners with autofeed slide
>> magazines.
>> I'd appreciate any comments on these or other scanners.
>>
>> Thanks.
>
> If you have the extreme patience and dedication and are willing to
> spend weeks devoted to the scanner to scan 5000 slides carefully and
> with good quality.
> Consider paring down your slides to a few hundred of your very best
> and have those done professionally.
>
>
http://www.braun-phototechnik.de/E/Products/scanner/scanner4000.html

First scanner I have seen that make use of slide projector parts.
Standard DiN slide tray, and the body of the scanner does look like a
Braun slide projector.
 >> Stay informed about: Slide Scanners 

gil.blas.DeleteThis@hotmail.com wrote:

>Between me, my father, and other family members, we have over 5000
>35mm slides and negatives that we want to scan. At prices I've seen
>for scanning services it seems cheaper to buy a good film scanner. I
>see that Nikon and Braun have scanners with autofeed slide magazines.
>I'd appreciate any comments on these or other scanners.

This was my project last summer. I used a Nikon 5000 ED with an autofeeder. It
ended up being about 6000 slides and took about six weeks. The autofeeder is
essential. It took about 3 minutes a slide, so I'd fill the feeder and check
back occasionally.

Digital ICE does a nice job of dust and scratch removal. The included software
is quirky, but does a nice job including recovering useable images from 50 year
old Kodachromes that appeared to have been heat damaged at some point. See
http://www.classtech.com/New%20York%20After.jpg and the raw unprocessed
version here:
http://www.classtech.com/New%20York%20Before.jpg

How much work you will have to do before and after scanning depends on the
condition of the slides, your goals, and your standards. I worked quite hard on
some favorites including dusting before, multi pass scanning, and Photoshop
after. Most, I just ran straight through. Here is one example, reduced
resolution, but otherwise straight from the scanner:
http://www.classtech.com/Teton%20Mirror%202.jpg

Someone mentioned remounting. I had a few that would have been helped by that,
but the image was not important enough to me.

I bought the scanner off ebay and then resold it for almost the original
purchase price.

Oh, have lots of disc space. I ended up with about 120GB of lightly compressed
JPEGs. You could easily need four times that for TIFFs.

-- Doug
 >> Stay informed about: Slide Scanners