Negative Scanner

[fredjclaus]

I was going through my old film images and found a few recent pictures I shot on film I'd like to scan into a portfolio. Does anyone know what a good negative scanner would cost and where to buy one? I had one of those adaptors for a flat bed scanner, but I'd really like a dedicated unit. Maybe even one that once I do my own, I could scan other people's negatives. I have over 300 rolls of film to go through, and some old slides my dad took over 40 years ago. I'd really like to digitize some of them but don't want to pay the cost of a professional lab doing it.

[Art Scott]

Nikon about $2.2K http://tinyurl.com/4vschg

Hasselblad Flextight X5 about $22K http://tinyurl.com/2c3e4uv

Hasselblad /flextight X1 about $13K http://tinyurl.com/23dtgmb

Bruan About $Slide Scan 4000 about $1.7K

There are other less expensive models but I had a bad experience with Pacific Image around 10yrs ago.......maybe they have gotten much better.

B&H lising for film Scanners: http://tinyurl.com/29kx3eg

Edit:
If you have good quality prints from the negs.....get a cheap used enlarger and use it as a copy stand and just re-shoot the photos at the largest aperture your lens has.........then think of the possibilities of having those shots on raw files........

[jh4wvu]

Saw these the other day at Best Buy....http://bit.ly/9tcsIk

Has anyone ever used one of the ION scanners?

Chris

[r9jackson]

Saw these the other day at Best Buy....http://bit.ly/9tcsIk

Has anyone ever used one of the ION scanners?

Chris
The ION scanner (I believe) is about a 5 mb size of scan, so that might be a little low for some film images. I used a Plustek OpticFilm 7600i scanner to scan in all my film images. It is about 7200 x 7200 DPI, so it is hefty. I think it cost somewhere around $500-$700. It uses a plastic holder with about 5-6 images or slides at a time.

Scanning those negative and slides was a tremendous time consuming task. I really underestimated how much time it would take. I also had a constant challenge with dust - my films were stored for years in a dresser in our house (thank goodness they were never in our hot garage). Color management was also a pain after all those years and the wide variety of film stock used.

I discovered that I had a lot of really bad images and a few really great ones. Out of about 2,000 images I got maybe 75-100 keepers. I think if I had to do it again I would pre-sort them and send the smaller batch to a commercial service.

[PamelaSD]

The ION scanner (I believe) is about a 5 mb size of scan, so that might be a little low for some film images. I used a Plustek OpticFilm 7600i scanner to scan in all my film images. It is about 7200 x 7200 DPI, so it is hefty. I think it cost somewhere around $500-$700. It uses a plastic holder with about 5-6 images or slides at a time.

Scanning those negative and slides was a tremendous time consuming task. I really underestimated how much time it would take. I also had a constant challenge with dust - my films were stored for years in a dresser in our house (thank goodness they were never in our hot garage). Color management was also a pain after all those years and the wide variety of film stock used.

I discovered that I had a lot of really bad images and a few really great ones. Out of about 2,000 images I got maybe 75-100 keepers. I think if I had to do it again I would pre-sort them and send the smaller batch to a commercial service.


Thanks for pointing out the time it takes to actually scan these archives, most people do underestimate the energy it requires. Sounds like you made it through your first scanning project though, congrats- 2,000 images is not an easy feat!

FredJ- If you'd like to give us a try with a small test order, we'd be happy to help. ScanDigital is a trusted SmugMug partner and more information can be found here:
http://www.scandigital.com/smugmug/how_it_works.php