Looking for film scanner

[ZalekBloom]

Looking for a scanner to convert my negatives to digital media.
Nothing fancy, with resolution good to show pictures on 19" PC
monitor.
Any idea how long it takes to scan one picture?
I don't want to spend more then $300.
Looking on the Web I found:

Pacific Image PrimeFilm 3610AFL 3600dpi, $ 309.95
Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u, 3600dpi - $ 269.95
Pacific Image Prime-Film 3600u, 3600 dpi, $ 209.95
Canon Canoscan 8600F Color Image Scanner $163.99
Microtek ScanMaker i800 $299.84
Canon CanoScan 4400F Color Image Scanner $89.99

Which one you recommend?

Thanks,

Zalek

 

[degrub]

Epson

WHichever package fits your budget

 

[ray]

Looking for a scanner to convert my negatives to digital media.
Nothing fancy, with resolution good to show pictures on 19" PC
monitor.
Any idea how long it takes to scan one picture?
I don't want to spend more then $300.
Looking on the Web I found:

Pacific Image PrimeFilm 3610AFL 3600dpi, $ 309.95
Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u, 3600dpi - $ 269.95
Pacific Image Prime-Film 3600u, 3600 dpi, $ 209.95
Canon Canoscan 8600F Color Image Scanner $163.99
Microtek ScanMaker i800 $299.84
Canon CanoScan 4400F Color Image Scanner $89.99

Which one you recommend?

Thanks,

Zalek

You can also find some good Epson scanners on the Epson web site -
neighborhood of $150 or less - the 4490 I have works fine.

Scanning takes a LONG time - better to have a commercial outfit do them
for you if your time is worth anything.

 

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Looking for a scanner to convert my negatives to digital media.
Nothing fancy, with resolution good to show pictures on 19" PC
monitor.
Any idea how long it takes to scan one picture?

Anywhere from a couple of minutes to half an hour; not counting any
restoration or retouching that's necessary.

I don't want to spend more then $300.
Looking on the Web I found:

Pacific Image PrimeFilm 3610AFL 3600dpi, $ 309.95
Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u, 3600dpi - $ 269.95
Pacific Image Prime-Film 3600u, 3600 dpi, $ 209.95
Canon Canoscan 8600F Color Image Scanner $163.99
Microtek ScanMaker i800 $299.84
Canon CanoScan 4400F Color Image Scanner $89.99

Which one you recommend?

I would strongly suggest *not* considering anything that doesn't have
Digital ICE or equivalent (infrared scan channel plus software to
interpolate into damaged areas as revealed by the infrared scan channel;
it eliminates dust and hairs and scratches amazingly well).

I would not seriously consider any flatbed scanner with transparency
adapter for 35mm work.

And I would go up to the Nikon Coolscan V at $500. But I haven't used
the Pacific Image products, so I'm basing that opinion on reviews, not
direct personal experience.

Resolution isn't the issue; the issue is dmax and brightness range. At
least you're doing negatives, so the dmax issue isn't so severe.

I can't personally conceive of going to the trouble of scanning a lot of
film, and not doing TOP quality scans. It's so little more trouble; the
big cost is your time. I can so easily imagine regretting not having
done top quality work later on, possibly when it's too late to remedy.

 

[Dennis Pogson]

Looking for a scanner to convert my negatives to digital media.
Nothing fancy, with resolution good to show pictures on 19" PC
monitor.
Any idea how long it takes to scan one picture?
I don't want to spend more then $300.
Looking on the Web I found:

Pacific Image PrimeFilm 3610AFL 3600dpi, $ 309.95
Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u, 3600dpi - $ 269.95
Pacific Image Prime-Film 3600u, 3600 dpi, $ 209.95
Canon Canoscan 8600F Color Image Scanner $163.99
Microtek ScanMaker i800 $299.84
Canon CanoScan 4400F Color Image Scanner $89.99

Which one you recommend?

Thanks,

Zalek

Add the Plustek Opticfilm 7200. Worth considering. Also that crap about
scanning time, it all depends on what you are going to USE the scanned
images for. If all you want to do is digitise your film/slides to show on a
computer monitor, scanning time is very short. If you want top quality
prints, it takes a little longer, but up to 10 by 8, image resolution need
not be all that fine.

Digital Ice costs money, but saves time in the apres-scan work. If you are
good with Photoshop or PSP, and selective as to which of your scans are
worth spending time on, you can live without Digital Ice.

Dennis.

 

[Doug McDonald]

Anywhere from a couple of minutes to half an hour; not counting any
restoration or retouching that's necessary.


I would strongly suggest *not* considering anything that doesn't have
Digital ICE or equivalent (infrared scan channel plus software to
interpolate into damaged areas as revealed by the infrared scan channel;
it eliminates dust and hairs and scratches amazingly well).

I would not seriously consider any flatbed scanner with transparency
adapter for 35mm work.

And I would go up to the Nikon Coolscan V at $500.

I have a Coolscan IV. It, and the ICE3, works, but a scanner with
a diffuse light source would be much better to get rid of
grain. Any suggestions?

Doug McDonald
a person getting tired of Photoshop's band-aid. I cut my
mouse button finger and am currently crippled.

 

[gerrit]

Digital Ice costs money, but saves time in the apres-scan work. If you are
good with Photoshop or PSP, and selective as to which of your scans are
worth spending time on, you can live without Digital Ice.

My Epson 4490 has Digital Ice and is not excessively expensive. As you said,
for screen work it is fine. I even did some colour slides for a printed
book. Took a bit longer but still impressive for the price of the machine.

Gerrit - Oz

 

[Ron Recer]

Looking for a scanner to convert my negatives to digital media.
Nothing fancy, with resolution good to show pictures on 19" PC
monitor.
Any idea how long it takes to scan one picture?
I don't want to spend more then $300.
Looking on the Web I found:

Pacific Image PrimeFilm 3610AFL 3600dpi, $ 309.95
Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u, 3600dpi - $ 269.95
Pacific Image Prime-Film 3600u, 3600 dpi, $ 209.95
Canon Canoscan 8600F Color Image Scanner $163.99
Microtek ScanMaker i800 $299.84
Canon CanoScan 4400F Color Image Scanner $89.99

Which one you recommend?

We have a Canon 8600 and it seems to do a good job on 35mm slides. Takes
about 30 minutes to scan 4 slides.

Ron

 

[DBLEXPOSURE]

Patrick Ziegler ImageQuest Photography

You can also find some good Epson scanners on the Epson web site -
neighborhood of $150 or less - the 4490 I have works fine.

Scanning takes a LONG time - better to have a commercial outfit do them
for you if your time is worth anything.

I have a Minolta DiMAGE Scan Dual4 that I do not use anymore, I would let
it go cheap.


PZ
www.imagequest.ifp3.com

 

[David Dyer-Bennet]

David Dyer-Bennet wrote:

I have a Coolscan IV. It, and the ICE3, works, but a scanner with
a diffuse light source would be much better to get rid of
grain. Any suggestions?

I've never liked diffuse light sources; always used a condenser enlarger
in the darkroom, too. You can use GEM, or Noise Ninja or NeatImage, to
get rid of grain you don't want easily enough.

 

[Harry Palmer]

Patrick Ziegler ImageQuest Photography


I have a Minolta DiMAGE Scan Dual4 that I do not use anymore, I would let
it go cheap.


PZ
www.imagequest.ifp3.com

how much and where are you?
Hp

 

[jeremy]

I would strongly suggest *not* considering anything that doesn't have
Digital ICE or equivalent (infrared scan channel plus software to
interpolate into damaged areas as revealed by the infrared scan channel;
it eliminates dust and hairs and scratches amazingly well).

I'd second that recommendation. Even my newly-developed film often has
scratches that must be cleaned up. If it were not for ICE3 I would have
abandoned film scanning.

And I would go up to the Nikon Coolscan V at $500. But I haven't used the
Pacific Image products, so I'm basing that opinion on reviews, not direct
personal experience.

I have the PrimeFilm PF3650Pro3, but I notice that it has been removed from
both the Amazon site and from the manufacturer's site (www.scanace.com).
I'm wondering if it has been withdrawn? It has Digital ICE3, it scans an
entire roll of uncut negatives (so I can just let it scan automatically
while I do something else), it scans individual slides, and it has 3600
optical resolution, which is more than the original Kokak "Photo CD" had
(2048 x 3072).

There is a full review here:

http://www2.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=13&id=868

If anyone is looking for the best bang for the buck, they might want to
check around and snap one of these up if they're still in the shops. I paid
about $350.00 on Amazon.com for mine.

 

[Toni Nikkanen]

I've never liked diffuse light sources; always used a condenser
enlarger in the darkroom, too. You can use GEM, or Noise Ninja or
NeatImage, to get rid of grain you don't want easily enough.

I've recently tried the Photoshop Plug-in 2.0 version of Kodak GEM and
I it might be the best grain reduction solution (at least on the
software side) that I've tried so far. I've also got GEM in my scanner
software (Konica-Minolta Scan Elite 5400 II) but it doesn't really do
much in my opinion. I've also tried Photoshop plug-ins Remove Grain 2,
Noise Ninja, Neat Image and possibly one or two more that I can't
remember.

On my dual-core machine, the GEM Plugin is very fast too, at least
compared to the Remove Grain 2 plug-in. I think it has a good
trade-off between grain reduction and detail preservation and
is fine-tunable. I've only tried the demo on a few images but
so far it's very promising.

I've also heard about a separate scanning aid called Scanhancer but
haven't tried that.

 

[David Dyer-Bennet]

I have the PrimeFilm PF3650Pro3, but I notice that it has been removed from
both the Amazon site and from the manufacturer's site (www.scanace.com).
I'm wondering if it has been withdrawn? It has Digital ICE3, it scans an
entire roll of uncut negatives (so I can just let it scan automatically
while I do something else), it scans individual slides, and it has 3600
optical resolution, which is more than the original Kokak "Photo CD" had
(2048 x 3072).

That resolution (if taken literally) is adequate for nearly anything
(certainly unless you have slides shot on very lowspeed films, on a
tripod, with first-rate lenses ).

The entire uncut roll thing sounds *so great* -- except that all the
film I need to scan is already cut into strips of 1, 4, 5, or 6 frames.
(The "1" is mounted slides, and I do have the slide feeder for my
Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED).

Also, the rare times I've had films returned uncut, it's been *much*
more scratched up, probably from what they did to get the entire strip
into a protective plastic sleeve, or else what they did to coil it up in
the film can. So I don't think I'd have film returned uncut even if I
were still shooting film. If I were processing it myself I'd probably
scan it before cutting, though, if I had such a scanner.

 

[DBLEXPOSURE]

Patrick Ziegler ImageQuest Photography

how much and where are you?
Hp

Right now I am a deployed Soldier but I wll be home to South Dakota in six
weeks or so. Price is Make an offer, I really don't use it anymore. It
does have one quirk I need to disclose, From time to time the tractor feed
sticks, all you need to do is give it a tap and it will then advance to the
next slide. But, you cannot leave it un attended when doing a batch of six.
You have to unstick it when it gets hung up or it will just sit and grind
away.

With that in mind and if you can wait until I get home, I am thinking in
the $200 ball park.

PZ
www.imagequest.ifp3.com

 

[Harry Palmer]

Patrick Ziegler ImageQuest Photography


Right now I am a deployed Soldier but I wll be home to South Dakota in six
weeks or so. Price is Make an offer, I really don't use it anymore. It
does have one quirk I need to disclose, From time to time the tractor feed
sticks, all you need to do is give it a tap and it will then advance to the
next slide. But, you cannot leave it un attended when doing a batch of six.
You have to unstick it when it gets hung up or it will just sit and grind
away.

With that in mind and if you can wait until I get home, I am thinking in
the $200 ball park.

PZ
www.imagequest.ifp3.com

It's a good price but I'll pass, I really need the thing now. I'm going to
buy the coolscan this weekend. I saw the one that you have go on ebay for
about $250+ so I'd sell it there if I were you. Good to hear you are coming
home and thanks for looking out for us.

Harry

 

[DBLEXPOSURE]

Thanks harry, Appreciate hearing that,

I am not looking to move the scanner, I simply don't use it much so if
anyone needs one and get use out of it, the deal stands.

Good luck with your Coolscan.


Patrick Ziegler ImageQuest Photography

 

[jeremy]

That resolution (if taken literally) is adequate for nearly anything
(certainly unless you have slides shot on very lowspeed films, on a
tripod, with first-rate lenses ).

The entire uncut roll thing sounds *so great* -- except that all the film
I need to scan is already cut into strips of 1, 4, 5, or 6 frames. (The
"1" is mounted slides, and I do have the slide feeder for my Nikon
Coolscan 5000 ED).

Also, the rare times I've had films returned uncut, it's been *much* more
scratched up, probably from what they did to get the entire strip into a
protective plastic sleeve, or else what they did to coil it up in the film
can. So I don't think I'd have film returned uncut even if I were still
shooting film. If I were processing it myself I'd probably scan it before
cutting, though, if I had such a scanner.

I have my film returned uncut so I can avoid having to stay with the scanner
and keep on inserting strips.

The first pass is pre-scan. That takes about 1 minute per frame. I can
walk away and come back in half an hour, then select the images I want to
have fully-scanned, I can rotate any of them that require it and I can turn
on ICE3/ROC/GEM. Then the full scanning process begins. I can walk away
again, for about 2 hours, and the roll is done.

The ability to scan an entire roll makes the long scan time acceptable.

 

[Alan Browne]

Looking for a scanner to convert my negatives to digital media.
Nothing fancy, with resolution good to show pictures on 19" PC
monitor.

If you're going to the trouble to scan a negative you might as well get
a reasonably good scanner so that you can print if desired. IOW avoid
the flatbed scanners and go for a dedicated film scanner. 3000 - 4000
dpi scan resolution is enough but look for first version (not the "II")
of the Minolta 5400 as well which can be had used for about 250 - 400$.
The only two brands that I would recommend for reliabilty and support
are Nikon and the Minolta. Canon: maybe. They screwed up earlier film
scanners with a noisy power supply so they lost a lot of trust. There
are others as well, just less well known.

Minolta are of course out of this business now and Sony's position in
film scanners is not clear.

Get ICE if you can. Here is why: (mouse over the image).
http://www.aliasimages.com/ScanScratch.htm also works wonders on dust.

Any idea how long it takes to scan one picture?

With edits, archiving and so on I average 15 minutes per frame using the
Minolta 5400. 30 minutes using the Nikon 9000ED, but that's for other
reasons.

If you're less fussy, you can knock down about 10 per hour once you have
your "routine" down (scanning while editing).

I don't want to spend more then $300.
Looking on the Web I found:

Pacific Image PrimeFilm 3610AFL 3600dpi, $ 309.95
Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u, 3600dpi - $ 269.95
Pacific Image Prime-Film 3600u, 3600 dpi, $ 209.95
Canon Canoscan 8600F Color Image Scanner $163.99
Microtek ScanMaker i800 $299.84
Canon CanoScan 4400F Color Image Scanner $89.99

Which one you recommend?

Nikon V,
Nikon 5000 (pricey).

Used. Minolta 5400 (not -II), Minolta Dimage Scan Dual II, III.

I'd avoid Canon even though they probably fixed their problems.

Don't do flatbed. (The flatbed guys will howl, so what).

Cheers,
Alan

 

[DBLEXPOSURE]

Why not a flatbed? Here are a couple flatbeds from Epson that have good and
great resolution, come with Digital Ice, have good Dmax specs and can scan
not only negs and slides but will handle prints and medium and large format
negs if you like.



4800dpi http://tinyurl.com/27xt9t

6400 dpi http://tinyurl.com/2or38c



PZ



www.Imagequest.ifp3.com






Patrick Ziegler ImageQuest Photography

Looking for a scanner to convert my negatives to digital media.
Nothing fancy, with resolution good to show pictures on 19" PC
monitor.

If you're going to the trouble to scan a negative you might as well get a
reasonably good scanner so that you can print if desired. IOW avoid the
flatbed scanners and go for a dedicated film scanner. 3000 - 4000 dpi
scan resolution is enough but look for first version (not the "II") of the
Minolta 5400 as well which can be had used for about 250 - 400$.
The only two brands that I would recommend for reliabilty and support are
Nikon and the Minolta. Canon: maybe. They screwed up earlier film
scanners with a noisy power supply so they lost a lot of trust. There are
others as well, just less well known.

Minolta are of course out of this business now and Sony's position in film
scanners is not clear.

Get ICE if you can. Here is why: (mouse over the image).
http://www.aliasimages.com/ScanScratch.htm also works wonders on dust.

Any idea how long it takes to scan one picture?

With edits, archiving and so on I average 15 minutes per frame using the
Minolta 5400. 30 minutes using the Nikon 9000ED, but that's for other
reasons.

If you're less fussy, you can knock down about 10 per hour once you have
your "routine" down (scanning while editing).

I don't want to spend more then $300.
Looking on the Web I found:

Pacific Image PrimeFilm 3610AFL 3600dpi, $ 309.95
Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u, 3600dpi - $ 269.95
Pacific Image Prime-Film 3600u, 3600 dpi, $ 209.95
Canon Canoscan 8600F Color Image Scanner $163.99
Microtek ScanMaker i800 $299.84 Canon
CanoScan 4400F Color Image Scanner $89.99 Which one you recommend?

Nikon V,
Nikon 5000 (pricey).

Used. Minolta 5400 (not -II), Minolta Dimage Scan Dual II, III.

I'd avoid Canon even though they probably fixed their problems.

Don't do flatbed. (The flatbed guys will howl, so what).

Cheers,
Alan

--
-- r.p.e.35mm user resource: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpe35mmur.htm
-- r.p.d.slr-systems: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpdslrsysur.htm
-- [SI] gallery & rulz: http://www.pbase.com/shootin
-- e-meil: Remove FreeLunch.