advertisement


Photo Scanners?

Mullardman

Mullardman

Moderately extreme...
I know nowt about photo scanners, but Mrs Mull was glued to QVC this PM going on about one that they had on for about £70. Summit Photofix or somesuch. She was going on about it being able to archive all our old negs and a load of slides she took as a kid, to the PC.
So, is it worth it? Would you recommend different brands? Is this something that could be achieved with my normal 'printer/copier/ scanner + a bit a processing? We aren't interested in hyper quality stuff here, as most of our old negs will be pretty crappy things from Box Brownies, Kodak Instamatics etc.
Views welcome.

Mull
 
Colin,

old negatives benefit from better scanners which can run "Digital ICE" - ie noise reduction - on board and bring out old negatives beautifully like this one:

2910383810_10c4866003_b.jpg


I doubt if a £70 scanner will do it as well as a £2000 Nikon, but look out for the ICE option.
 
Mull,

It seems that the Epson V500 is the scanner to beat on a budget. However, as Cliff pointed out, expect to live with dust and scratches in the scans.

Joe
 
Cliff,

There are a couple of Nikon CoolScan IV ED's on ebay at the moment, and they do ICE, GEM and ROC
Click to expand...
I thought Mull needed print scanning ability, too.

Joe
 
Hi Joe,

the original post said "archive all our old negs and a load of slides she took as a kid, to the PC", so I'm thinking 35mm negs, some slides and some smaller instamatic type film.

Sure you can get some kind of an image out of a flatbed with a film scanning attachment, but it is horses for courses IMO.
 
Thanks for the info chaps.

I can indeed scan prints with Mrs Mull's Brother DCP-540 CN Printer/Scanner/Copier/Toaster, (with Carpet Cleaner Attachment) It works well enough for my needs.

She has a lot of slides I've never seen 'cos we've never bothered to get any means of viewing them. I took lots of 35 m stuff from the 70's till very recently. I also have negs from old 120 cameras and IIR my old Kodak Instamatic took a 110 cartridge type film. That last camera was a favourite from about 1963/4, when I got it as a Christmas prezzy, until the mid 70s. It was a very honest and reliable little machine. It is still around somewhere.
 
Cliff,

the original post said "archive all our old negs and a load of slides she took as a kid, to the PC", so I'm thinking 35mm negs, some slides and some smaller instamatic type film.
Click to expand...
Yebbut I assumed the thread title -- i.e., Photo Scanners -- implied that Mull also wanted the ability to scan pictures.



Sure you can get some kind of an image out of a flatbed with a film scanning attachment, but it is horses for courses IMO.
Click to expand...
I have a dedicated film scanner, too, and they are good choices for film, but the results that Ian, Pete and Dan get with their V500/V700 Epsons (I'm sure there are others I just can't remember who has one) suggest that good flatbeds are more than up to the task of scanning film well. As well, if Mull wants to scan 120 negs, the only affordable choice is a flatbed, as even a used Coolscan 8000/9000 is going to be more than the ~200 UKP it costs to buy a V500.

Joe
 
Joe Petrik said:
Mull,

It seems that the Epson V500 is the scanner to beat on a budget. However, as Cliff pointed out, expect to live with dust and scratches in the scans.

Joe
Click to expand...
I've been mulling scanners on and off for well over a year and finally decided to buy a V500 over the V700 that I couldn't really justify the cost of and cos I'm the definition of indecision.
V500 available here for £127 inc VAT and delivery (if you choose super saver)
http://www.oyyy.co.uk/product.php/35822/epson-perfection-v500-flatbed-scanner

It does offer Digitial ICE.
http://www.epson.co.uk/scanners/Epson-Perfection-V500-Photo-Scanner.htm
 
Greg,

Sorry, I didn't realize the V500 came with ICE. FWIW, ICE does remove scratches and dust from film as advertised, but Ian thinks it comes at a cost so try scans with and without to see if the pluses outweigh the minuses for you.

Joe
 
Unless Mull has a lot of time and patience it might be better to just get somebody else to do it for him, scanning negatives is a bit of a labour of love.
 
Mmm. That's what concerns me Ian. Time is something I'm a bit short on and i'm not great on patience either.
 
Scanners are one of those things you should only really spend as much as you need to on them.

You buy them, use them...then forget about them (mostly).

A mate of mne was thinking about buying a negative/slide scanner but was stating that the one he wanted was quite expensive and didnt like the look of the cheaper ones with less features etc.

I said to him "Ok think about this, are you scanning these for a major historical archive or just simply to get the memories they contain back in a usable form?"

"Good point!" said he. He got the cheaper one and was happy with that.
 
That's the sort of thinking I'm employing. The photos aren't 'life and death' important.

I assume it is theoretically possible to scan slides via my 'normal' scanner.
Scanning both colour and b/w negs the same way would of course produce scans of negatives. Is there any software around which would convert a neg to a pos in the PC?

Mull
 
I think that scanning takes some practice.
I just scanned a picture on an A4 scanner, and it took a few minutes.
Also, the Micro$oft picture editor thing trashed the picture when I went to rotate & crop it.
So save a copy of the original raw scan before editing!
 
Usually the speed of scanning is in the dpi. An A4 scan at say 300dpi+ will take quite a while as its a big area and a big data file. A 25Mb+ file will always be a liability.

Initially just do some trials and tests, never just jump in and start scanning away.

Start off at say 150dpi and if that quality works fine for what you want, go with that. If its something really special that you might actually want to print then take it higher. There are recommended dpi settings for different media (web/print/photo).

Do a Google search on scanning tips, plenty out there.
 
The one I scanned I did at 1200 dpi; when I went to edit it it said my (4 GB) PC didn't have enough memory!
 
It's wise to do some math before you scan...

If you're scanning a 4x6 inch print at 1200 dpi you'll end up with a lot of pixels — 4800 x 7200 — which, if there was that much real info in the scan, would be the equivalent resolution of a 34.56MP camera. Obviously, this is overkill, all the more so if you're scanning 8x10 prints at this resolution.

However, if you're scanning a 35mm negative or slide, the scanning area is 1 x 1.5 inches, so the same 1200 dpi scan would yield 1200 x 1800 pixels, which is about where you want to be if making 4x6 prints — i.e., an output resolution of 300 dpi.

Joe
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


advertisement


Back
Top