negatives to positives

Hi All,

I have a few thousand color negatives and would like to convert them digital images without too much effort, and be done reasonably fast. I've researched some mid-level scanners (Canon 9000F and Epson V600), and the reviews seem pretty good, but I'm concerned about the scan speeds. Another alternative is simply photographing the negs with my 7D + 60mm macro. The concern here is the post process effort. So I would appreciate some recommendations:
1) Canon 9000F or Epson V600 (or V750 pricey)
2) 7D + 60mm + Lr4 or CS5
3) above + Vuescan or Sliverfast or ??
4) other

Thanks.

Theres also the Nikon Coolscan V ED, an excellent scanner.

Be aware however that its a slow process if you want good quality scans. You will also need to allow time to post process no matter what scanner you choose.

Lowner wrote in post #16011447
Theres also the Nikon Coolscan V ED, an excellent scanner.

Be aware however that its a slow process if you want good quality scans. You will also need to allow time to post process no matter what scanner you choose.

... or the Nikon Super Coolscan 5000ED, which is the newer version (and the last one Nikon made before they discontinued it).

chantu wrote in post #16011422
Hi All,

I have a few thousand color negatives and would like to convert them digital images without too much effort, and be done reasonably fast. I've researched some mid-level scanners (Canon 9000F and Epson V600), and the reviews seem pretty good, but I'm concerned about the scan speeds. Another alternative is simply photographing the negs with my 7D + 60mm macro. The concern here is the post process effort. So I would appreciate some recommendations:
1) Canon 9000F or Epson V600 (or V750 pricey)
2) 7D + 60mm + Lr4 or CS5
3) above + Vuescan or Sliverfast or ??
4) other

Thanks.

If you want to scan a few thousand images don't bother trying to do it yourself unless you have months of time to do nothing but feed a scanner. Use a scanning service like ScanCafe instead and have them scan to 4000 dpi (pro resolution) TIF ($0.22 + $0.19 + $ 0.09 = $0.50 per image).

http://www.scancafe.co​m/pricing

A high end scanner like the discontinued 5000ED is over $2000 used. By the way, I have one and it's definitely the best non-drum negative scanner around. The Nikon Scan software doesn't work well with Vista and it doesn't work at all with Win 7. However, If you use Win 7 Pro you can load the free XP virtual machine and run it in that environment ... I was surprised how flawlessly it worked. Alternatively you could buy Silverfast or VueScan.

I did a similar project to yours a few years ago and scanned from December to the end of May with very little time for anything else. Each color strip took about 6 minutes (using Digital ICE, 4X mulitisampling, etc.), so I was feeding the machine while having breakfast before work and through every evening when I got home and on weekends. The results were great, but frankly it's part of my life I'll never get back

I'll just add that a popular site showed a video of using a camera with a makeshift tube, attaching the negative to the end of the tube and using a white computer screen as background illumination, and the outcome was pretty good!

tonylong wrote in post #16012400
I'll just add that a popular site showed a video of using a camera with a makeshift tube, attaching the negative to the end of the tube and using a white computer screen as background illumination, and the outcome was pretty good!

Is this the digrev video? I was actually thinking about this, but hard part is the post processing.

Bob_A wrote in post #16012319
If you want to scan a few thousand images don't bother trying to do it yourself unless you have months of time to do nothing but feed a scanner. Use a scanning service like ScanCafe instead and have them scan to 4000 dpi (pro resolution) TIF ($0.22 + $0.19 + $ 0.09 = $0.50 per image).

http://www.scancafe.co​m/pricing

A high end scanner like the discontinued 5000ED is over $2000 used. By the way, I have one and it's definitely the best non-drum negative scanner around. The Nikon Scan software doesn't work well with Vista and it doesn't work at all with Win 7. However, If you use Win 7 Pro you can load the free XP virtual machine and run it in that environment ... I was surprised how flawlessly it worked. Alternatively you could buy Silverfast or VueScan.

I did a similar project to yours a few years ago and scanned from December to the end of May with very little time for anything else. Each color strip took about 6 minutes (using Digital ICE, 4X mulitisampling, etc.), so I was feeding the machine while having breakfast before work and through every evening when I got home and on weekends. The results were great, but frankly it's part of my life I'll never get back

Thanks for the figure about the time commitment. I really want something "push button" with very little effort, and these old photos really aren't that great -- just want to capture something for old time sake.

chantu wrote in post #16012465
Thanks for the figure about the time commitment. I really want something "push button" with very little effort...

When you find it, let us know.
Better still, market it. You will make a fortune.

Scanning yourself is cheap but time consuming. I did about 2500 slides on an Epson 4870 (it holds 8 mounted 35mm slides at once) and it took me about 40 hours. That's not including detailed editing, just generally adjusting the exposure for each one as I scanned.

No way would I do that myself, it's way cheaper and easier to do with ScanCafe. Prices can be $0.22 each.

http://www.scancafe.co​m/services/valuekit-product/

tim wrote in post #16012657
No way would I do that myself, it's way cheaper and easier to do with ScanCafe. Prices can be $0.22 each.

http://www.scancafe.co​m/services/valuekit-product/

This seems interesting. Have you (or anyone) have any experience with these folks.

Just for the hay of it, I tried my first attempt on a 18 year old negative with what I had: 7D + 60mm macro + Lr4.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …s/wesleylee99/8​991456257/

chantu wrote in post #16012766
This seems interesting. Have you (or anyone) have any experience with these folks.

Just for the hay of it, I tried my first attempt on a 18 year old negative with what I had: 7D + 60mm macro + Lr4.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …s/wesleylee99/8​991456257/
IMG_7134 by wesleylee99, on Flickr

What scanner? If it has Digital ICE you should enable it since it will get rid of most, if not all, of the dust and scratches. It only works for color negatives though ... for B&W removing dust and scratches is a manual exercise in PS (all of the automatic filters yield horrible results).

Just type ScanCafe into the search box on the forum and you'll find lots of threads where people have shared their experience with them. It costs anywhere from $0.22/image for a good jpeg to $0.50/image for the highest quality TIF. If the images are nothing great there is no need to go with the highest quality. However, for images that you really care about, or if they are going to need a lot of restoration after scanning, I'd go the 4000 DPI TIF route.

Bob_A wrote in post #16012813
What scanner? If it has Digital ICE you should enable it since it will get rid of most, if not all, of the dust and scratches.

My "scanner" was my 7D. I actually tried editing the negative with Sliverfast 8 but my first attempt was actually worst than simply using Lr4. My scratch removal was cranking up the noise reduction.

Bob_A wrote in post #16012319
If you want to scan a few thousand images don't bother trying to do it yourself unless you have months of time to do nothing but feed a scanner. Use a scanning service like ScanCafe instead and have them scan to 4000 dpi (pro resolution) TIF ($0.22 + $0.19 + $ 0.09 = $0.50 per image).

http://www.scancafe.co​m/pricing

A high end scanner like the discontinued 5000ED is over $2000 used. By the way, I have one and it's definitely the best non-drum negative scanner around. The Nikon Scan software doesn't work well with Vista and it doesn't work at all with Win 7. However, If you use Win 7 Pro you can load the free XP virtual machine and run it in that environment ... I was surprised how flawlessly it worked. Alternatively you could buy Silverfast or VueScan.

I did a similar project to yours a few years ago and scanned from December to the end of May with very little time for anything else. Each color strip took about 6 minutes (using Digital ICE, 4X mulitisampling, etc.), so I was feeding the machine while having breakfast before work and through every evening when I got home and on weekends. The results were great, but frankly it's part of my life I'll never get back

Actually, there is a way to make the Nikon software work with win7 by using the vuescan drivers. In fact, I run Win7, 64bit and my Nikon scan software works great!

Basically, you need to download the trial version of vuescan (which installs the drivers) and the latest Nikon scanner software and it will work. Disclaimer: I did this a few years ago and I don't know if vuescan has since closed this loophole.

Instructions here:

http://www.sevenforums​.com …coolscan-work-w7-x64.html

OP, as others have said: scanning is a slow, tedious process if you do it yourself, and expensive to have someone else do it if you have a lot of media. I, for one, have 10's of thousands of negatives & slides from my grandfather that I have been scanning in my spare time for years (and I have a few years to go )

sharrowm wrote in post #16012839
Actually, there is a way to make the Nikon software work with win7 by using the vuescan drivers. In fact, I run Win7, 64bit and my Nikon scan software works great!

Basically, you need to download the trial version of vuescan (which installs the drivers) and the latest Nikon scanner software and it will work. Disclaimer: I did this a few years ago and I don't know if vuescan has since closed this loophole.

Instructions here:

http://www.sevenforums​.com …coolscan-work-w7-x64.html

OP, as others have said: scanning is a slow, tedious process if you do it yourself, and expensive to have someone else do it if you have a lot of media. I, for one, have 10's of thousands of negatives & slides from my grandfather that I have been scanning in my spare time for years (and I have a few years to go )

Thanks Marc, I'll try it out. I could have sworn I attempted something similar in the past and it didn't work that well (kept crashing after a couple of strips), but maybe that was for Vista. Using XP virtual machine works as well as it ever did with XP (which was pretty flawless).

Correcting all of these scans is definitely going to take years of picking away at them. I figure the day my project of editing all of my scans ends will pretty much coincide with my own end. LOL