Film Scanners

Sat Dec 28 14:19:01 PST 2002

Actually, I believe that there are several scanners that put the light source in the lid.  My old Microtek scanner had a backlight attachment, but it produced pretty bad scans from negatives.  I have the Epson 2450, and I'm fairly pleased with scans taken from slides and negatives.  Since it can scan at 2400 dpi, it has the resolution necessary to produce a good-sized scan (over 4 megapixel), and the quality seems better than scans I got from a 1800dpi USB $200 slide scanner.  I haven't compared with the $2000 slide scanners, though, which I imagine would be better.

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.

For the number of slides I have, each second spent per slide adds up to about 3 hours of work.  Spending 3-5 seconds per slide during acquisition would be reasonable, but spending a minute per slide would not be.  Annotating the slides could hopefully be done in another 3-5 seconds per slide if I'm able to take advantage of the fact that often a series of slides are taken on the same day in the same place, etc.

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.

Does anyone have a digital camera and a slide scanner and a slide projector to see how the same slide would compare those different ways?

Is there such a thing anywhere (even for $100,000) as a scanner that will do fast high-quality scans of slides?

>>> sbaldwin at san.rr.com 12/28/02 14:20 PM >>>
Steven,

a good compromise is the Epson 2450.  This is a flatbed scanner, but  
the only one that can actually scan slides and negatives with a good  
degree of quality.
This is because the 2450 puts a light source in the lid of the scanner,  
so light is passing through the transparent media.  All other flatbeds  
use a reflection technique which simply does not work.

This scanner has a firewire connection, and can do 4 slides or  
negatives at a time.  it creates a separate file for each slide.

The results are very good.  I have to tweak the scanned photos in  
photoshop, but over all I'm very pleased with the results.

At 600 dpi it takes about 13 minutes to scan 4 slides.

This scanner is going for about $350.00 at all the usual places.

Here is a description and reviews:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005OCWM/qid=1041109978/sr=1- 
1/ref=sr_1_1_etk-electronics/102-6860644-3576120

Cheers,

Scott

On Saturday, December 28, 2002, at 08:11 AM, Steven Romero wrote:

> I'm looking to include a film strip scanner into my stable of movie  
> making
> equipment. Granted this is all for family stuff but it could come in  
> useful
> for other stuff as well. Instead of going through all my old pics one  
> at a
> time and scanning them I would like to just scan the negatives and  
> break the
> individual pics from there. I've seen a lot of prices out there ranging
> between $200 and $2000 and more.
>
> Does anybody have any experience with these and can show me a little  
> light
> as to which way to go?
>
> Thanks,
> Steven
>
>
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