35mm Film scanners

Forums › Digital Imaging › 35mm Film scanners

Camden

115 posts

Master Geek

#91927 23-Oct-2011 15:52

Over the past fifty years I have taken heaps of 35mm slides and 6x4 photos and would like to transfer them to digital format in my computer and onto CD.

I have been looking on Trademe and there are 35mm scanners advertised for between $80 and $250. Has anyone had any experience with these devices. They seem quite cheap for what they promise. Is the quality any good or are they a bit rubbish. I am prepared to pay a bit more than that within reason to get a device that will produce a good image quality.Most of the film was taken on a Pentax reflex with prime lens so the material that I wish to copy is of reasonable quality.Does anyone know of devices available say at the specialty photo stores.If so what sort of spec should one aim for.

Also as a side issue I also have a mile of Super8 movie film that I would like to transfer to either DVD or Blueray dics.I know that you can project a small image and video it with a digital video camera but the result is not that good.Does anyone know of say an amature version of the telecine machines that broadcasting used to use to convert the 16mm news footage to video.I still have my old projector.There are firms who do this transfer but I was hoping to do this myself as the charges to have this done professionally are very high.

If anybody hires this equipment that would be good as well.

Thankyou

1 | 2

4066 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Snowflake

#536784 23-Oct-2011 19:55

do you have a lot of free time to do the transfers and tweaking? my advice would be to take the money you would spend on a decent scanner, and the decent software you need to go with it, and pay someone to do it. I've seen a few deals lately on deal-a-day sites for people offering their services for this - they might be a good option if they have decent kit and decent skills.

i dabbled for a short time with the specialised 35mm slots in my $400 hp scanner, and the awful hp software, and i'd never want to attempt it again!

Sales Engineer
Snowflake
www.snowflake.com

about.me/nzregs
Twitter: @nzregs

Camden

115 posts

Master Geek

#536821 23-Oct-2011 23:54

Thanks for your reply Regs. Oh dear. I thought that it would be quite a simple job. I didn't realise that you needed software as well. I thought it would be just like downloading images out of your digital camera.
There are places in ChCH that do this work so will start out and get some quotes to see how feasible this project will be.Yes, I would think that a reasonable amount of work could be done for the cost of a scanner.
Regards.

Regs

4066 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Snowflake

#537015 24-Oct-2011 20:33

scanners have slots for 4 or 6 (or more) slides, so you load up several and then hit go. your software needs to crop the single image into 4 or 6, straighten and often re-colour... not something the 'comes with scanner' does very well..

Sales Engineer
Snowflake
www.snowflake.com

about.me/nzregs
Twitter: @nzregs

GregV

928 posts

Ultimate Geek

#538250 27-Oct-2011 17:52

I'll jump in here as well if that's OK, as my parents are after something very similar. I saw in a recent Noel Leemings flyer they had an 'Endeavour Film & Slide Scanner Bundle'

http://issuu.com/noelleeming/docs/noe2931_26_oct_pre-xmas_16pg?mode=a_p

Can't find the actual product on the website, but it is on pg16 of the flyer linked. Wondering what people make of this? 5MP @1800dpi.

They have a large number of slides, and the plan is to slowly work through them on rainy days.

Regs

4066 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Snowflake

#538398 27-Oct-2011 22:50

the device 'looks' ok, its a dedicated film/slide scanner which is a plus, but at $150 it seems pretty cheap. commmercial devices are $2000+ and do something like 7200dpi.

i've used the HP flatbed scanners with special slide/negative inserts and had poor experiences. bad quality scans, lots of retouching needed. see the link here for a guide that was, in my opinion, produced whilst wearing rose tinted lenses:
http://www.hp.com/united-states/consumer/digital_photography/organize_archive_photos/tips/scanning_slides.html

(try and imaging cropping, straightening and colour balancing several slides or negatives this way)

Take a look at the pricing model here (i googled this company, no idea if they are good or not): http://www.photofresh.co.nz/pages/11/special-offers.htm
500 'basic' scans at 95c each less 25c discount gives you $350 total.
'basic' scan includes 2000dpi, exposure correction, dust/blemish removal, orientation, cropping, trimming.

now imagine how long it will take you to do do those 500 scans yourself, and then the post processing using 'cheap', 'bundled', software...

Sales Engineer
Snowflake
www.snowflake.com

about.me/nzregs
Twitter: @nzregs

DrCheese

382 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#538410 27-Oct-2011 23:13

GregV: I'll jump in here as well if that's OK, as my parents are after something very similar. I saw in a recent Noel Leemings flyer they had an 'Endeavour Film & Slide Scanner Bundle'

http://issuu.com/noelleeming/docs/noe2931_26_oct_pre-xmas_16pg?mode=a_p

Can't find the actual product on the website, but it is on pg16 of the flyer linked. Wondering what people make of this? 5MP @1800dpi.

They have a large number of slides, and the plan is to slowly work through them on rainy days.

I bought this scanning device a few days ago. The dpi might look good in the specs, but the colours are washed out and the pictures don't look particularly good. They are, at best, adequate.

In hindsight, I'd buy a scanner with a transparency scanning attachment, like the Epson V330 slide scanner. I can't vouch for the quality of this scanner but it would have to be better than the Endeavour.

David.

Jaxson

8041 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#538429 28-Oct-2011 00:13

We had limited success with the cheap ones too.
Drivers were close to useless and we ended up scouring the internet to find a very similar (rebadged) product with better software.
Very limited control over brightness which raised up and down until you were happy with it and started the scan. As above, good for capturing one or two shots, but painful for anything more. Each shot required a lot of post processing to get it anything close to what the original was. All in all, it was close to rubbish.

Equinox IT

Cloud spending continues to surge globally, but most organisations haven’t made the changes necessary to maximise the value and cost-efficiency benefits of their cloud investments. Download the whitepaper From Overspend to Advantage now.

Regs

4066 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Snowflake

#538436 28-Oct-2011 00:41

as far as software goes, i think i played around with the vuescan software available here: http://www.hamrick.com it was way better than the software that came with the scanner (hp g4050 i think)

the film scanning tip on the vuescan website (above) is this: "If you're scanning 35mm film, I recommend getting a used Nikon film scanner on ebay.com. These are the best film scanners ever made"

read up this page about scanning 3000 slides
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/3000slides.htm

and check this one for some scanner recommendations:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/scanrex.htm

Sales Engineer
Snowflake
www.snowflake.com

about.me/nzregs
Twitter: @nzregs

insane

3236 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

#538443 28-Oct-2011 01:15

I cant remember the exact model but I knew a National Geographic photographer who copied all his 35mm shots using a Minolta I remember having to fix the drivers for the guy once and seem to recall it having a magazine/cartridge which held many slides much in the same way old slide projectors did.

The scanned images looks pretty decent to me, but then I'm no image specialist.

Regs

4066 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Snowflake

#538541 28-Oct-2011 09:42

i think that minolta scanner is long gone. i've heard of them too

Sales Engineer
Snowflake
www.snowflake.com

about.me/nzregs
Twitter: @nzregs

Bowering

105 posts

Master Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#542189 7-Nov-2011 19:26

I've used the Epson V700 photo. It's pretty good but you still sometimes need a lot of post-scan processing (depending on the physical quality of the film). I've found the biggest problem getting dust-free slides, but a bit of cloning or spot healing in Photoshop Elements takes care of that.

I did look at getting them professionally scanned, but the cost of doing thousands properly far out-weigned the scanner. And it gives me something useful to do when the telly's on :-)

Some useful links:

http://www.stevehuffphoto.com/2010/04/26/scanning-your-film-with-the-epson-v700-photo-scanner/

http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Epson%20V700/page_1.htm

http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN/V700/V700.HTM

Cheers, Gary

Beddhist

57 posts

Master Geek

#553856 5-Dec-2011 08:58

My cousin (in Germany) scanned her slide collection with a scanner that takes standard magazines. Looks a bit like a projector. The results looked quite good. I've asked her what she used and await her reply. Myself, I have 4-5000 slides to scan.

It seems the only company on the planet making such a scanner is Braun in Germany. Most of them sold over there are re-badged Reflecta and PIE in the US also sell it under their own name. Reading a few user reports it seems that for adequate results you need ICE in hardware and Silverfast scanning software. Needless to say that nobody here sells this gadget. On ebay in Germany they can be had for 6-1200 Euro, but hardly anybody will ship to NZ. Of course, Customs will sting you for GST.

There is a Nikon 5000 with feeder on Trademe, but at $1700 reserve not reached I'd rather have the Reflecta, saving me to manually load them into the feeder. Also, I'm not convinced that the Nikon feeder will handle cardboard frames.

bluedisk

226 posts

Master Geek

#553889 5-Dec-2011 09:54

Epson Perfection v100 or v700, we use these for scanning 35mm slides for inserting into our non-linear video editing system. Comes with software which is good to use.
Good quality and reasonably quick, but you can only load 4 or six slides at a time (depending on size).
I had a cheaper microtek scanner but the included software drove me purple, so I swapped it for a bbq.

Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all...

Zeon

3916 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#562386 29-Dec-2011 10:48

Hey guys just to jump in here I have access to a 20k film/micro feche scanner which does very high quality images and an expert operator. PM if you'd like me to get your stuff done (if its not too much).

Speedtest 2019-10-14

bfginger

1267 posts

Uber Geek

#562719 29-Dec-2011 23:21

Nearly all devices able to scan 35mm film do a poor to very poor job at it. People just don't care about quality. High quality film scanners are out of production due to lack of demand except for the eye wateringly expensive units like the $20,000 unit Zeon has lucky access to ;)

Unless you're willing to spend thousands of dollars or Zeon is happy to scan 1,000 slides for you ;), the Epson V700 is probably going to be your best option.
https://flickr.com/groups/466058@N21/

The only obvious alternative is the Plustek OpticFilm 7600i Ai
https://flickr.com/groups/plustek_opticfilm_7600i_ai/
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/scanners/plustek-pdf.shtml

or to snap photos of the slide with a dSLR and an attachment.

1 | 2