Need help with film scanner purchase

I know there is another current thread on this, but it is not providing me with the info I need and I don’t want to hijack it, so here it goes…………..I want to buy a film scanner to digitize all of my old 35mm slides and negatives. This type of thing is foreign to me. What DPI should I be looking for? Any other particular feature? All of my negs are cut into strips, so I don’t see much use for the machines that process entire film strips. Most of my pics are on negatives, not slides. My main objective for this project is to post pics on my web gallery – I will want to make prints of some of the nicer stuff too. I need to keep this under $500.

Thanks - Shaun

I highly recommend a scanner capable of at least 4000DPI. I have an older Canon FS4000 and it does a fantastic job. The only drawback to this unit is the speed (or lack thereof) when using the USB connection. I use mine with a SCSI adapter, and it's speed is quite acceptable.

Just so you know, if I were to scan a color slide or negative using the maximum resolution and maximum color depth with this scanner, the resulting .TIF file is around 130 megabytes. However, you can see detail that is just about unheard of with most 35mm style DSLR's - assuming the original slide or negative was properly exposed, well focussed, camera/lens was held steady, and a very sharp lens was used to make the image. You can easily see the grain in faster films when scanned at full resolution.

Skip - Thanks for the info! So, 4000 dpi or better, got that. What does "interpolated resolution" mean? Should I pay attention to this? What is a happy medium to set the resolution at for good scans without them getting so big (assuming I am using the 4000 dpi scanner you have suggested)? Or does it vary based on film/image quality? Most of my film pics were shot with kodak and fuji consumer grade film, mostly ISO 100. I do have some Velvia slides too.

Shaun

This will work well for the web, but how big a print? My solution was to assemble this:

Do you Cobble? (Slide duplicator)

It's not for everyone & I haven't made prints from the files, but it seemed to work OK.

depends how much you value your slides. I use the Minolta Multi Pro, because i still shoot 120/220 film, but any good software will give you a RAW data scan of your slides. If you going scan everything at 4000dpi... well make sure you have plenty of time, and alot of HDD space.

Just as you do with dSLR RAW, the scanner RAW are raw date, and should be kept for non-modifications.

I bought a second hand Nikon from a guy in Lexington, via eBay, and have been very happy with the results. It does slides and negatives with a resolution of about 3000 dpi but produces very large TIFF files at maximum everything.
I am in the process of doing a pbase gallery which includes quite a few of my efforts as I have not been into digital long enough to accumulate enough piccies. If you are interested I could direct you to the gallery and you could have a look.
P.S. You must get a scanner which has the ICE feature.

I have the Minolta Dual scan IV. I think it goes for about $230 now. It has 3200 dpi but no ICE. I keep my slides super clean and use a powerful blower before scanning. This method has worked pretty well for me. I have printed up to 8x10 with no problems. Haven't tried to print larger but i don't think it would be much of a problem. I'll try to put a sample up later.

The ICE is very nice but i found the prices were up in the $450 + range and I just didn't want to spend that much.

Here is a scan and a 100% crop. The crop is kind of noisy and i'm not quite sure how to remove it. Didn't show up when printed at 8X10 so not a big deal unless printing bigger.

http://i42.photobucket​.com …upersonic/Neu_f​or_web.jpg

http://i42.photobucket​.com …/Neu_100_percen​t_crop.jpg

Your Minolta produces a RAW file.
Like a dSLR RAW that can only be opened with a RAW converter?

Interpolated Resolution is not true optical resolution. It is a combination of software algorhythms and tricky over-sampling by the scanner.
And yes pay attention to this. If you can find info about true-optical resolution, that is the benchmark you want to go by.

Shaun, this page might be useful: http://www.scantips.co​m/basic13f.html

ICE and FARE (which my old Canon FS4000 has) are technologies whereby the film scanner can detect and remove dust particles, etc., from the scan.

No, no need for a Raw converter. It scan RAW data. So there is no exposure corrections, or anything... just pure data. Vuescan will allow you to scan RAW.

You can use photoshop or Lasersoft Silverfast (which I use) to get most out of the scanned RAWs.

Here is Raw Scanfrom Vuescan(which I use)

Thanks for all of the helpfull info! I should be able to figure out which one to buy now. I hope.

Shaun

One last scanner question - would a decent quality flatbed be adequate for quality negative and slide scans for posting to the intenet (no printing)?

I am thinking I might start out with a flatbed as I have a bunch of old photos to scan. Then move up to a film scanner for my stuff I want to print.

Any thoughts?

Thanks,

Shaun

There are a few flatbeds that say they support slides. I have never tried one of them though. I did try using a regular flatbed with a homemade lightbox. The results weren't too good though. Maybe someone else has tried the slide compatible flatbed scanner and can give you a better idea.

The one I had a few years ago was barely adequate. Then, thankfully it died & I made my rig. They're probably better now.