Negative scanner - any recommendations.

I HIGHLY recommend using on online service like SCANCAFE. You will get tired of scanning that many negatives and will want a faster way to get it done, so just send them off in two or three batches.

They will scan them and put the images online, then you pick the ones you want to buy, very fast and reasonable.

I use an Epson V700. I've scanned some of my father's old medium format negatives at 2400 dpi and imported the TIFF files into SC5 for processing. The results look every bit as good as he was ever able to get in a darkroom - even better, if I do say so. Especially if the negatives are faded or damaged - it's possible to bring them back to life.

I have seen several positive comments about Scancafe. I have not wanted to use them for two reasons. One, I don't want to mail my negs off. Second I really don't plan on doing that many. While I have maybe 10,000 negs, I have no intention of scanning all. Believe me, I have not taken 10,000 memorable images

I will scan just those that were special to me and not all at once. I have given up masochism for the season.

We do have a photolab in town that can scan decently, at both 3000 dpi and then larger for more bucks. They are a bit pricey and to drive down twice is about 50 miles so I felt it best to try it at home.

I may find out that this was a bad idea. That is when you will see my scanner on Ebay

BTW the Scancafe prices seemed to be too cheap. At $0.69 for a 35mm at 3000 dpi is really cheap. I will pay much more for the local scans here.

Any, again, thanks all. If I learn anything, good or bad, I'll post it.

Well I did buy the Canoscan 9000F, kept it for a month, and returned it.

I scanned b&w 35mm as well as a couple of 5x7 prints. The scans were poor quality, apparently a low resolution, even though I scanned at over 3000 dpi on the negs and 400 dpi on the prints.

I could not make an acceptable print from the negs, and the print scans looked terrible on the screen. They even had what appeared to be dust but the prints and the platen were clean.

I still want to have a neg scanner, but want a quality scan that has an actual resolution of at least 3000dpi,

Oh well, such is life.

I haven't tried the Canoscan 9000F, but bought a Reflecta ProScan 7200 which I'm pretty happy with (I actually considered the 9000F as well). Have scanned both slides and negatives using Vuescan. Tried Silverfast (trial-version) as well, which seemed better out-of-the-box, but with a little help (a tutorial on Flickr among others) I made Vuescan do just as good of a job. Vuescan is a lot cheaper than Silverfast, and you can use it with other scanners as well, in case you end up buying another one later on for instance. What I also like with Vuescan is that I can save as .DNG. But if money is no issue, I'd say go with Silverfast AI.

ProScan can only scan one slide or negative at a time, so it's definitely not the fastest scanner out there. You can find a test of the scanner here: http://www.filmscanner​.info/en/ReflectaProSc​an7200.html

Thanks for your comments. I see from the scandig tests that they achieve a "measured" 3250 dpi, which is about double that of the Canonscan. That should give me the resultis that I want. To what size have you printed a 35mm scan?

Now, I see that you are in Europe. Is that scanner still available there? I cannot find any source for it in the USA. What price is asked in Europe? And yes price is important.

Thanks

proinwv wrote in post #11577490
To what size have you printed a 35mm scan?

Now, I see that you are in Europe. Is that scanner still available there? I cannot find any source for it in the USA. What price is asked in Europe? And yes price is important.

Thanks

I actually haven't printed any of my scans yet, but I've planned to print one of them in DIN A4 this weekend. Will let you know how it turns out. I paid 329 Euros for the scanner about a month ago, which is about 430 USD. So it's not cheap, but still a lot cheaper than the Nikons. Don't know if you can get it in the US though. On the Reflecta site it says "For information about a reflecta distributor in your country please contact us by mail!".

I have contacted Reflecta and their better scanners are not available in the USA. They do market some through Pacific Image, but these are definitely low end machines.

I can buy the Reflecta unit from them but they point out that the shipping is very expensive, and I don't want to have the possible problem of dealing with a warranty issue 7000 miles away.

I did see in the ScanDig reviews that the Plustek 7400 is better than most flat beds but it has it's issues too, apparently with oversized file sizes and lack of sharpness as compared to high end units. Of course some of this might be repairable with post processing. It's measured resolution of 3800 ppi is very good.This unit is priced in my range (about $250) and available here.

Has anyone used this for negs (b&w?) and printed it to a large size?

Update. FYI.

The Canoscan 9000F is not acceptable to me. I returned it because of poor quality scans.

I subsequently have been told that Pacific Image is the manufacturer of the Reflecta scanner and the Reflecta Crystal Scan 7200 is marketed as the PF7250u by Pacific Imaging in the US.

So I purchased the Pacific Image scanner and it is a decent unit. I have printed to 10x15 nicely, and at 8 x 10 it is excellent. It does not have a film transport and only mounts and scans one frame at a time so it is not for production. That is not an issue with me.

I am pleased with this unit and will keep it . I recommend it if your budget is as mine and I felt $US 260 was all that I would pay for a scanner.

Thanks for the input you guys gave.

Unless you want a huge hassle, I'd use a sendout service. There are fast negative scanners, but you will pay over 1k for anything decent. That's a lotta money imho...Probably won't be able to find 64-bit drivers, either. Oh, and many of them will not do black and white film--at all. =p

There's some stuff that is good quality, but slow--like the Nikon coolscan stuff (like talked about in this thread)...hope you're not in any hurry... Then again, I guess not as bad as a flatbed or something.

If you've really got boxes of negatives, do yourself a favor and find a good sendout service, IMHO!

It depends how much negatives you are intending to scan. If you are trying to digitize years of collections, you are better off using a machine that can do much larger batch scanning. The Epson V700 and V750 can scan 24 negatives at once. If you are like me trying to learn to shoot film and want to digitize the negatives, I would get something like the Epson V600 + using VueScan version 9. I like the result so much that I am now shooting both digital and film. I haven't touched my 1dmarkIII for the last 2 weeks. Went through 4 rolls of films already, these weren't even professional films. Take a look here:
http://www.flickr.com …g/sets/72157625​864344366/
I only considered my last 2 rolls to be productive. The earlier ones I was just getting the feel of film and scanning.

I think the software becomes very crucial here. Again, get VueScan version 9 if you can. A lot of times, the scanner can't nail the color on the first scan. VueScan makes it so easy to adjust the color balance. Also, it can do up to 16 passes on each negative. The more passes, the more details and dynamic range you can get out of your negatives. However, the scanning takes up time. I normally use 48bit, 3200dpi (4000x3000 pixel), and 8 passes. Each scan takes up about 5 minutes to 6 minutes. Of course, you don't have to scan all your shots.

woos wrote in post #11682204
Unless you want a huge hassle, I'd use a sendout service. There are fast negative scanners, but you will pay over 1k for anything decent. That's a lotta money imho...Probably won't be able to find 64-bit drivers, either. Oh, and many of them will not do black and white film--at all. =p

There's some stuff that is good quality, but slow--like the Nikon coolscan stuff (like talked about in this thread)...hope you're not in any hurry... Then again, I guess not as bad as a flatbed or something.

If you've really got boxes of negatives, do yourself a favor and find a good sendout service, IMHO!

Well, is not that bad. You have to realize that you have to correct the color balance once the negatives have been scanned. Second, you have to export the file to Photoshop for further post processing such as contrast and saturation increases. Then, you have to use very generous amount of either smart sharpening or USM sharpening to bring out the sharpness of the shot. If you haven't master the post processing with your RAW files, you are going to have a hard time post processing your negative scans. Depending which types of films you use, one may give you more graininess over the other. Here, I found that Kodak Gold 400 gives you the smoothest grain over the Fuji Color Superia 400. The following shot was shot with Kodak Gold 400, Carl Zeiss 21mm ZE with a Canon EOS Elan 7.

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Well my scans are on B&W negs and I have no intention of transferring my entire collection to digital.

What I am doing is selecting an occasional neg to print from my collection. Especially the one I never printed wet, or a few to amuse me through this bitter winter. So speed is not an issue and color correction either.

For post processing in PS CS2 I am using NIK filters; Sharpener and Silver Effex. Both of which I love! I fully recommend NIK products.

I have the Nikon Coolscan 9000. It doesn't come cheap but it does a great job.

The online services do a decent job and they do save time but if one has the time and is inclined to do it themselves we should not fault them for that.