Canon 8000 Scanner

[Ira Flatow]

Any opinion on the new Canon 8000 scanner, as to  how well it scans 35mm
slides?
Thanks.

I. Flatow

> on 12/28/02 2:19 PM, Randy Wilson at wilsonr at fonix.com wrote:
> 
>> The problem is that while the Epson 2450 is the fastest flatbed scanner I've
>> heard of (17 seconds for a 6x4" print at 600dpi, for example), it is still
>> painfully slow on transparent scans (3-7 minutes per slide).  The Super
>> Coolscan slide scanner is suppsed to be "fast", but still takes about a
>> minute
>> per slide (at full resolution, but without any of the additional processing
>> that can make it take 10 times that).
>> 
>> I think I have mentioned here before that I have about 10,000+ slides to
>> scan,
>> and I've been trying to figure out if there is any possible way to do this in
>> a reasonable amount of time.  I don't necessarily need absolutely optimal
>> quality and resolution--just scans that look good on a computer screen (e.g.,
>> a screensaver that zooms in on part of the picture), TV screen (e.g., slide
>> show video with appropriate music and/or narration), and perhaps a print of
>> up
>> to 8x10 inches.  A 4 megapixel image would be sufficient.
> 
>> 
>> To scan a large collection of slides, there seem to be a few alternatives:
>> 1. Use a flatbed scanner.  This is slow (3-8 minutes per slide), and the
>> quality may not be as good as a slide scanner.  However, for me it would be
>> "free", since I already have the scanner.
>> 
>> 2. Use a slide scanner.  This is only slightly less slow (1 minute per slide
>> with a $1200 firewire scanner; slower on a cheaper or USB scanner).  This
>> would probably yield the best quality, if an expensive (>$1000) scanner is
>> used.
>> 
>> 3. Use a miniDV camcorder: Blast through the slides, filming off of a screen
>> or transfer box, and extract images from the video.  This would also be
>> "free"
>> for me, since I have a camcorder, and would be much faster than the other
>> ways: about 2 seconds per slide to shoot the video, and another few seconds
>> per slide to save each slide from the video stream (or perhaps done
>> automatically).  But the quality would be nasty: 640x480 and highly
>> compressed.
>> 
>> 4. Use a digital camera: Project each slide onto a movie screen or transfer
>> box, and use a 4 megapixel digital camera to snap off each picture.  This
>> would probably take 3-5 seconds per picture (assuming the digital camera
>> could
>> store things off that quickly), and would be high enough resolution for most
>> things.  I need to experiment to see how the quality compares with a slide
>> scanner.
> 
>> Is there such a thing anywhere (even for $100,000) as a scanner that will do
>> fast high-quality scans of slides?
> 
> What your time is worth? A few years ago I spent $600 (CND) on an HP
> Photosmart S20 scanner for my Dad with the intent of archiving thousands of
> family slides/negs. By the time all was said and done, we were lucky to come
> out with maybe 25 scans in a hour (and of course that doesn't include time
> to catalog, backup data, etc.). It was totally discouraging, and to be
> honest, the quality wasn't that great.
> 
> Previously we had sent several hundred slides in to a Kodak Photo CD shop;
> awesome quality, no muss, no fuss, and they had 300 slides done in less than
> a week. It seemed a little pricey at the time (about $1/slide) which is why
> I went the scanner route, but in retrospect I should have saved my money on
> the scanner, and countless hours of time, and just had them all done to
> Photo CD. 
> 
> My advice - take them to a service bureau that does Kodak Photo CD/Picture
> CDs and spend your time/money on the creative side of things.
> 
> http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/products/storage/pcdMaster/about
> PCD.jhtml?id=0.3.6.30.17&lc=en
> 
> 

----------------------------
Ira Flatow     
Host/Executive Producer - "Science Friday"