Flatbed scanners for film - worth it?

[meow]

I need some advice. :shock:

Are flatbed scanners good enough for film now? I've been looking at the prices of Canon's scanners and the CanoScan 8400F is my upper price limit. :(

I have no experience of scanners whatsoever, so I don't know what to look for really. I know I want 16 bit. That's about it. http://photography-on-the.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_redface.gif

Oh, this would be mainly for black & white negs, but also some slides. My purpose for this exercise isn't to print but solely to get film stuff into a digital format. But I don't want it to look crappy. :p

All recommendations welcome. Doesn't have to be Canon. Jut happened to be what I checked prices of. :mrgreen:

[tommykjensen]

Following photo was scanned with a HP 5530C - not sure if this is a cheaper or more expensive scanner than the Canoscan You refer to.

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=49456

[tommykjensen]

Ooops, did not read properly, notice You want to scan negatives and slides. Sorry the photo I refer to is a paper photo. The scanne can scan both slides and negatives but I have not tried that.

[meow]

The leopard looks fine anyway. ;)

[tommykjensen]

Thanks, I will see if I can find the negative and try scanning that and see if I can see a difference.

[tommykjensen]

I just posted a new scan of the negative in the thread I refered to.

[primoz]

With one word... no! Don't make same mistake as I did. Friends were telling me not to buy flatbed, because I would end up buying film scanner on end. But no, I was to "smart" to listen and I ended with two scanners on end :) So pay a bit more on begining and be happy with it :) Afterall Nikon Coolscan V, for example, is not even that much more then a bit better flatbed, but when you see scan there's huge difference.

[Conk]

The Epson Perfection scanners are designed with Negatives and slides in mind. Exceptional results.
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/ProductCategory.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=-8172

[meow]

I just posted a new scan of the negative in the thread I refered to.

Thank you. Well, it's obviously a little lacking. On the other hand it's not too bad for a first try. :p

Afterall Nikon Coolscan V, for example, is not even that much more then a bit better flatbed, but when you see scan there's huge difference.
I don't doubt that, but it's three times the price. :-|

The Epson Perfection scanners are designed with Negatives and slides in mind. Exceptional results.
http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/...e=yes&oid=-8172
Thanks. I'll take a look at those too.

So, we have one for and one against flatbed. Confusion remains. http://www.talktalkforum.com/xtra/temp/santa_bg.gif

[ecobo]

Buy a dedicated film scanner. Flatbed scanners are for paper prints. Yes, they can scan transparencies, but they are producing soft scans with limitted dinamic range. There are still some exceptions, but they are in the stellar price range. Take a look at FUJI Lanovia and Heidelberg Topaz - they are the best flatbed scanners for film scanning, but be prepeared to see prices in the range $20000-40000.

[Ajay213]

I have an Epson 2400 flatbed scanner, it has a backlight so it will do slides and negatives and it will do a true 2400dpi scan. For the price (around $150'ish) I don't think you can beat it, pictures come out very nice.

Here's some photo's scanned from some cheap Fuji negatives - http://www.theajays.com/pictures/misc/index.html

I'll see if I can find the original scans and I'll post a link to a full size image, but converted from TIFF to JPG (the TIFF files are 50+MB straight out of the scanner).

Andrew

[Ajay213]

Ok, here's a full size JPEG (3280x2008 about 3MB) of one of the photo's on the website;
http://www.theajays.com/photos/forum/img069.jpg

A couple more thoughts about the setup;
- It's incredibly slow and the "negative holder" only holds 6 photos at a time, so if you have lots of film to scan then it's going to take a LONG time, I don't remember the exact time per scan, but figure 3-4 minutes for each one at max resolution.

- The included software isn't that great, and tries to guess what you want to scan. For instance I had some night shots and the software cropped parts of the photo because they were black. There is 3rd party software out there that get's you around these types of issues.

- Desk space, this thing is big (will scan legal size paper).

Andrew

[ecobo]

take a look here http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Scanners/Canon%209900F/page_1.htm - It's a review about the CanoScan 9900. There are some side-by-side comparison photos from other scanners.

[chris.bailey]

The Epson Perfection 4870 scans negs better than my Minolta Coolscan II in less time and with less hassle. It also has Digital ICE which does a brilliant job of cleaning up old film scans.