Negative scanner suggestions

[floppybootstomp]

I'm looking to buy a negative scanner, mostly for 35mm but I do have other sizes.

My scanner actually does a good job of scanning negatives but it's slow and fiddly for this task so looking for something more quick and convenient.

I wondered if anybody had purchased one of these and could recommend one?

Looking on Ebay I see that prices range from £17 to £120 and I have not a clue which are any good. I did buy one from CPC for about £40 a couple of years ago but it was faulty so I returned it for a refund.

Here's a link to an Ebay search for 'Negative Scanner'. Negative

 

[Ian]

The low end (~£40) ones look like they photograph the film, rather than scan it - and the resulting quality isn't as good as you'd get out of your scanner it seems (probably still ok though):

https://www.amazon.co.uk/ION-Audio-Slides-Forever-conversion/dp/B00OIQ1NJY/

I had a friend that bought one of these for some old slides he had, but ended up spending a fortune on a second hand machine (something like £400!) to get a bigger industrial scanner from e-bay to get every last bit of quality of the slides. TBH, I would have thought it would have been cheaper for him to send them off, but there we go .

Which model scanner have you got? Some of them have automated slide attachments, so you may be in look at automating using your existing hardware (which may be worth it if your scanner is good).

They'd come out great using a scanner like this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/kdb/Epson-Perfection-Photo-High-Resolution-6400-Scanner/B002TAA3MY/ - so if you can get an older model on ebay then you may be in luck .

 

[Ian]

Just had a quick look on ebay and it looks like there are quite a few of the Epson Perfection negative scanners there - loads of old models, but some of the new-ish ones are selling cheap.

 

[floppybootstomp]

I have an Epson 4490 Perfection scanner which does do a good job but as I mentioned it's a bit slow. Here's a link to an Amazon page although it's a discontinued model: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Epson-Perfection-Photo-9600DPI-Firewire/dp/B000ASAF3E

I looked at those small Ebay slide scanning devices where you feed strips of negatives through and they just looked like a quicker option.

But I'd rather have quality than quickness so maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree here. What do you think?

 

[Ian]

Ah, that's a shame as it's a good scanner, but there's no auto film loader available as a stand alone attachment (at least not that I can see). It looks like there are some similar models that do have the auto loader built in - perhaps those would be the best of both worlds?