Camera Labs

First let me say how impressed I am with this forum and its moderators. A tremendous resource, for sure! I am about to buy my first digital camera. I have a couple of thousand color transparencies that I would like to digitize for safekeeping. I can have a photo shop digitize them, but would like to do it myself with a good quality scanner. Any scanner recommendations?

Russ

Hi Russ,

I'm doing it with a macro lens (see signature), a cardboard tube and a flash.
Gives you a 9 megapixel scan and you can clean your transparencies to your hearts desire...

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Neat idea, Thomas! I have so many slides, I'd like a method that would allow me to scan several at once, if possible...I think some scanners will do this, but was wondering which might be best.

Russ

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Russ

Hi Russ, welcome to the Cameralabs forums and Im glad youre finding the site and forum useful!

Thomas`s recommendation is a very good one and there are even attachments for some Nikon digital compacts which are designed for photographing slides - its a quick and easy approach.

If youre after a scanner though there are two main options: either a flatbed with a transparency adapter or a dedicated slide scanner. The former will have the flexibility of scanning normal documents and many models may come with software to scan multiple slides at once and automatically chop them up. The latter are generally capable of delivering much better quality, but of course slides and negatives are all theyll handle. Some have adapters which can take several slides or a strip of film for multiple scans, but normally only a few at a time.

Dedicated film scanners are often pricier too - especially the good ones.

So it all really depends on your budget and expectations of quality. If you want the best quality, you should buy a dedicated film scanner, but it may be slow to scan many slides and a good one could be pricey. I used to use a Nikon Coolscan and got some great results, but the model in question - a Coolscan IV as I recall - wasnt cheap! Ive also tried some flatbeds in the past but have generally been disappointed with their transparency scanning quality, although this was a while back and the siutuation may have greatly improved.

Is anyone else out there scanning their slides?

Gordon

I also tried an Epson photo xyz flatbed with transparency adapter once and found the following:
- pushed to the highest dpi, it was slooooooow
- color was not the best
- even at the highest dpi setting, resolution was worse than what I get with my D80 combo.
With my combo I can do around 3 slides a minute including cleansing with cloth + a blower (which is critical). Dust and other debris leaves worse marks on your slides than any dust in your DSLR!
And the worst thing of all are transparency frames with glass - I needed to take all my slides out of these frames because the glass had some residue on it. Ugly!

The best thing with my combo: I now own one of the best macro-lenses and can have more fun with it than just digitizing slides. But it (digitizing slides) may come in handy as a good excuse to buy a macro

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

Gordon and Thomas,

Thanks for your considered input on this issue. I'm going to explore the availability of dedicated scanners at this point. Will keep you posted.

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Russ

I to use a Scanner as I have around 2000 Slides and Negs up to 4x5.
To pay a service would be quite expensive, so I bought a Epson 4870 a couple years ago.
I have some of my first scans on Fliker.
As with all aspects of photography dust is a real pain.
So check them out at http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonkaye/
Then Search by Scans.

Happy Scanning!

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Jason
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonkaye

Yeah, I can see the dust on the Florida007 scan. This is really a pain in the proverbial...
How much did the Epson scanner cost?

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses