Film Strip Scanners

[Phil A. Lefebvre]

>Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 11:11:37 -0500
>From: Steven Romero <leromero71 at earthlink.net>
>
>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.
>Does anybody have any experience with these and can show me a little light
>as to which way to go?

I was in a similar boat last year. Had a ton of negatives and most of 
the corresponding prints but no suitable catalog. I started by 
picking the most desirable prints for scanning, but obviously that 
was a pain, and still left me without scans of negatives I didn't 
have prints for, and the nagging doubt I would miss something if my 
thought of what was desirable changed.

I also concluded batch scanning of negatives was the best way to get 
everything digital in the shortest time. However, since I've noticed 
I rarely have more than 4 or 5 keepers per role of film, I didn't 
need a hi-res scan of everything, just a way of finding the shots I 
wanted to use at a later time. I had a Microtek V310 and got it's 
unique 5"x6" transparency adapter. I say unique in that most flatbed 
adapters are either 1.5"x6 or more often 4"x5". 5"x6" allows one to 
scan 4 strips of 4 35mm negatives in one pass; 4"x5" won't allow a 
full strip in any way. (Your 2450's 4"x9" will allow scanning of full 
strips, even 5 negative strips, 3 at a time.) If I was doing it 
again, I probably would have hunted for a UMAX 1200S and its 
corresponding 8"x10" transparency adapter on eBay to scan a whole 
roll at a time.

In practice, I batch scanned negatives at lo-res (300 dpi was the max 
resolution of that scanner) to make printable contact sheets. I used 
a 5x6 piece of glass with some trimmed double sided tape where the 
sprocket holes would lie, to keep the negatives lined up and flat on 
the scanner bed. Three scans captured 2 rolls of 24 exposure film, 
from which I printed a low-res but perfectly useable 5"x7" contact 
sheet. (I was already using a 5x7 system due to the size of the 
contact sheets I'd already gotten with many of my developed films. 
8"x10" would also work.)  When I was in a groove it took about 10-15 
minutes per roll of film from pulling out the negatives to printing 
the contact sheet.

I store the contact sheet with the negatives in a 5"x7" photo flip 
album in chronological order. The scans are cataloged using iView 
Media Pro, with titles and keywords to describe the predominant 
themes of each roll. (I didn't catalog each individual shot.) It 
helps that they are mostly family photos. I can usually find most 
pictures if I know around when it was taken. When I want I hi-res 
print, it takes little time to find the negative and scan it on an 
Epson 1640SU Photo I now have (the predecessor to the 2450).

Regarding videotaping projected images of slides, that is my next 
goal. For a small project I am just finishing, I scanned the few 
dozen slides 4 at a time (the 1640SU has a 4"x5" trans. adapter). 
Obviously that gives the best control over quality, but like you 
said, is very time consuming. My wife is interested in getting her 
hundreds of travelogue slides on videotape. I plan on using my DV 
camera and BTV Pro and it's motion detection, frame averaging, and 
input color and levels correction to automatically: A) detect when a 
slide has changed on the screen, B) capture about 20-30 frames and 
average them to clean up the inevitable noise in a video "still" and 
C) save each averaged "still frame" to a separate file. You can set 
up the input color and light levels for various groups of similarly 
exposed slides, then sit back or do something else while the system 
batch captures the slides. Of course, that is theoretical, as I 
haven't specifically tried it yet. I have used BTV Pro to capture 
some shots from my microscope, so I believe it should work, but we'll 
see.

Anyway, BTV or not, videotaping slide "stills" gives you useable 
material for computer and TV screens, and a catalog you can use to 
find shots you later may want to do hi-res scans for printouts. To me 
it doesn't make sense to scan everything at hi-res if you know you 
don't plan on making 10,000 8x10 prints.

This has been a great discussion, and I hope this helps some more.
-- 
__________________________
Phil Lefebvre
Chicago, IL