Hi Guys, Just wondering do any members here scan negatives and slides, and if so what would you use, or would recommend for a good unit to do this job please.
I have a heap of negatives and old slides and thought it may be a good project.
Film scanners are great - but most only had resolution of around 5 MP when i was doing it - and at the time i couldn't find one without scathing reviews so....
my folks had a few hundred, and it took me a few hours using my DSLR, a decent macro lens , a tripod and a LED panel as a backlight i found in bunnings for $20.(you could use a phone or a tablet)
There are plenty of youtubes on how this is done.
slides and b&W negatives are easy to post-process for great results...
colour negatives are a bit of a phaff as you need to play around with the colour balance...if you have hundreds you may consider taking them to a photo place if you can still find one...
depending on what gear you already have, patience you have, and how many slides etc you need to process....this fits the definition of a 'project' ;-)
It took a bit of setup, and lots of sticky tape to hold all the parts steady, but taking the pics was very quick once i was underway.
I didn't bother with a scanner as this job was a one-off, so as captain jack sparrow said "i shall not be doing it again"
I have around 3000 slides (many Kodachrome) and probably a similar amount of negatives. I use a Plustek 7200 film scanner scanning at 4350DPI, a resolution I found best for this scanner with not too big a file size but still over 100MB per scan. Its about 2 minutes a scan (48 bit colour), more if I want multip-pass and longer again if I want dust removal during scan. I used to scan at 5400DPI and 24bit colour but the extra bit rate helps with dynamic range.
I use Silverfast Ai Ver.6. I would like to upgrade to a newer version of Silverfast but need to upgrade my hardware which I am thinking of doing to the Plustek 8300 or another product. Note Silverfast is licenced per hardware so swapping hardware requires a new version of Silverfast and the new version of Silverfast doesnt support older hardware. I have had my scanner since Windows XP days and it can be made to work under Windows 10 with a few tricks. There is other software available which I tried but I prefer silverfast Ai.
I also use the IT8 calibration target (Extachrome and Kodachrome) as well as the USAF resolution target.
I have one that's very similar to the Kogan item linked to by bojan.
Not super high-res (claims 5Mp native and 10Mp via interpolation) and saves the images to an SD card.
Happy to provide more details if you want.
I think it also comes down to what quality you want - astro744's scanner sounds like it's at the top end of the quality spectrum, and mine would be somewhere near the bottom...
I have one that's very similar to the Kogan item linked to by bojan.
Not super high-res (claims 5Mp native and 10Mp via interpolation) and saves the images to an SD card.
Happy to provide more details if you want.
I think it also comes down to what quality you want - astro744's scanner sounds like it's at the top end of the quality spectrum, and mine would be somewhere near the bottom...
Cheers,
V
Actually the Plustek 7200 is considered on the lower end of the quality scale compared to some newer products. It is very reliable though and I have had mine for a very long time. I'll probably get a Plustek 8300i one day but am looking at two models from PrimeFilm also sold as Reflecta brand (they make a 10,000 DPI and 4.2 dynamic range scanner). For slides you want around 4000DPI (any more and the files are huge but needed if printing to A1 for example). Also needed is as much dynamic range as you can get. 3.5+ is good, closer to 4 is better. I have 3.3 on my old Plustek which is OK.
I was looking at Epson Perfection V850 but I think I'll stay with dedicated film scanners.
There are plenty of other links only if you search. No need for a high resolution scanner if all you want is 6x4" prints maximum or small size Jpegs for viewing. having good dynamic range is good but you wont get that oat the low end.
Note you can get camera lens adaptors and take pictures of your slides. Nikon make one for the D850 as an accessory but it can be used with other cameras as it only needs to fit the lens. Not sure what lens would work best.
Just my take but I have a Kogan one that does really good scans onto an SD card. I like it and the small storage (SD) is great for large collections. I printed an A4 size photo for a test run and was happy with the results.
Pete
I used to scan a lot of slides with a dedicated flat bed transparency scanner which gives great result but is very slow.
Lately I have taken the projection lense out of a slide projector, added a white diffuser screen in place of the internal lense and a low wattage lamp.
Then a digital SLR on macro on a tripod aligned on the slide. You can get very high quality slides scanned very quickly and much better resolution than most slide scanners with great colour straight into photoshop. A fun project. Plenty of examples on the net.
Quote:
Originally Posted by leon
Hi Guys, Just wondering do any members here scan negatives and slides, and if so what would you use, or would recommend for a good unit to do this job please.
I have a heap of negatives and old slides and thought it may be a good project.
Leon, If they're old negatives do it sooner rather than later. I had negatives from the mid 80's and I scanned them to digital in 2008. A lot of them are like this one. Sure you can correct them but there's a lot of them and I ain't getting any younger.
