Scanning advice please.

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andya700

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Andy
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Hi there,
I am new, so please take it easy on me if I state the obvious, or say something totally ridiculous.
I have just bought a DSLR (Sony Alpha 700, plus a couple of lenses), but I have to put a portfolio together from my old 35mm efforts. I thought that simply getting the photo CD at the same time as processing would help, but the "so called" high resolution CD, has produced totally unsatisfactory results for me. I think the reason, is the resolution, which is only showing most images to be around the 1mb mark.
I would like to buy a scanner, and go through my whole collection, and scan the best ones. I have a mixture of negatives and slides (Kodachrome 25 and 64 and Agfa and Ectachrome).
I would be most grateful if anyone can give some advice on the best way to go about this, and the sort of scanner I should be looking at.
Thanks,
Andy.
 
Hi Andy,

how much would you be looking to spend, and are the shots all 35mm?

Chris
 
If you need a scanner and wish to scan you film one of the best buys for teh money is the Canon 8800F for £150 or the other way is a slide copier this will do film and slides for about £69 I have use this one and it very good will give you the res of your camera
 
I hope that this exercise will be a one off, but I still have 35mm cameras which I intend to keep, so who knows?
I was thinking around the £100 to £150 mark, and I know that Epson do a couple but I wanted to check on here first.
They will all be 35mm, either slide or negative.
My ultimate aim, is to set up a website, and sort the images into different groups.
 
whats the quality like on slide copiers?

I'm looking at doing colour slide stuff so a slide copier would be the easiest way to digitise them
 
sidxms said:
I've been using a epson v300 which is entry level but gives nice photos for sure.
Theres a newer V350/V500 versions around but I'm not sure they offer much extra.
Click to expand...

Thanks, that seems to be the kind of thing I am after. I have read up on the spec. and Tescos are doing it at £74.97, so that is not going to break the bank (the banks are already broken anyway;)).
 
The Epson scanners are great (I've got a V500 and it does a great job). However many scanners have trouble with Kodachrome as the thickness of the emulsion means that the light in the scanner is not bright enough to produce a good image (I tried, and even shots of skiing holidays in the sunshine came out looking like they were taken at dusk). Depending on how many Kodachromes you have, you may find it worthwhile to get those scanned commercially.
 
happyhomer said:
The Epson scanners are great (I've got a V500 and it does a great job). However many scanners have trouble with Kodachrome as the thickness of the emulsion means that the light in the scanner is not bright enough to produce a good image (I tried, and even shots of skiing holidays in the sunshine came out looking like they were taken at dusk). Depending on how many Kodachromes you have, you may find it worthwhile to get those scanned commercially.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that advice, because I think that most of my best images were Kodachrome ones - three weddings at least that I can think of.
 
I have also been told that if I scan a negative at too high a resolution, then it may cause my PC to crash!!! Is this true, or is it just another one of those urban myths?
The scanning resolution I am after, would enable prints at A3 size, with no grain or other noise (all things being equal in regard to original slide/negative quality).
 
for much cheapness (and desktop space) a neg scanner frmo ALDI caught my eye earlier this year, about 40 notes...
http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/offers/58_9232.htm
doubt they have any left, but it was similar to these by all accounts..

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Veho-VFS-004-Negative-Slide-Scanner/dp/B00190WB2K/
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=225878
http://www.amazon.co.uk/ION-Slides-...ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1237810810&sr=1-117
http://www.veho-uk.com/productdetail.aspx?id=31

there are those similar to the original link on ebay
 
Kodachromes can be a pain to scan my Nikon scanner has a Kodachrome setting, no idea what it does but it certainly makes a better job wehn it is on.

Agfachromes can also be a pain as it tends to be very contrasty film, plus even the 100ISO ones when you scan can look very grainy.

The only way you will crash your PC scanning is if you run out of RAM or HD space. For example if I scan a 6x6 tranny at 4000dpi, 48bit colour depth it will give me a 500+Mb file. it does slwo the machine down :LOL: but wont crash it unless I resize it and forget to drop the dpi from 4000 to 300 :bang: :nono:
 
There arev alot of very good and reasonably priced flatbesds around that scan prints and slides,I recently got the Canon 5600F for £100 recently and am stunned by the quality

3748322855_2dfd22ef29_o.jpg



but if you can afford the 8800F then go for it
 
Wow, that is exactly the kind of colour saturation and detail I am looking for. What was this scanned from, a print, slide or neg?
 
I got a V500 for around £160 and its brilliant, really easy to use and can scan all films except large format. Here are some examples..

Full Image

img007cm.jpg


100% Crop at 4800 dpi

img007cm-1.jpg


Is pretty good at colour (Provia 100)

img027.jpg
 
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