Slide Scanners

[The Hamburger]

I'm in the market to buy a slide scanner.

Any comments on which one to buy would be most welcome.

Cheers

 

[crazyc]

I have a Nikon Coolscan IV ED with Digital Ice and it works fantastic. It's a year old, has scanned 100's of slides and works like a champ. Film or Slides.

 

[RICHinNC]

Depends on what kind of money you are willing to pay...
Two good brands are Umax....and ... Epson.

It is kinda like stereo equipment....doesnt matter how great your amplifier is if your speakers suck.....so....get a good photo printer if you are planning to make your own photos...HP has a couple of really good and affordable (300==400) ones

 

[The Hamburger]

The Coolscan is the only dedicated slide scanner I have seen upclose and does seem very good. Does anybody have the Minolta?

The Epsom and the Umix? are these flat bed scanners with a facility for slides? Which one do you have / use which model.

What is the difference in quality between the dedicated machines and the flatbeds?

I don't ever intend to print from my scans. I let developing lab print for me direct from slide.

My intended use for a sacnner is to be able to easily catalouge and view my pictures.

Cheers

 

[colonelchuck]

Slide scanners, the Nikons and others mentioned above are dedicated machines that produce scans of up to 4000 dpi. Remember, a slide is a pretty small thing. Nikon, Canon, Minolta and some of the other camera makers produce some really good ones

Don't be persuaded that a flatbed scanner will ever produce a quality scan of a slide. You can get an image, but it will not be good for much more than sharing on the net with close friends who will be kind.

 

[The Hamburger]

Chuck,

As I only want it for records and maybe posting a few pics on the web what kind of quality do you get from the flat beds.

I can buy a decent epsom flat bed for about $300 or the Nikon for about $600 (I think the 2700?)

Which would you recomend?

Cheers

 

[colonelchuck]

I lived there for a couple of years in the 70's

If you want to make a record of a slide that you may want to burn to a CD and look at again someday, I recommend you go with a slide scanner. You can do some good scans (read big files - 10-20 meg) When you want to look at them again years later, when your needs change, you won't have to regret not doing quality now.

I think that the flexibility is worth the extra cost.

good luck

 

[stiebs]

Hi Hamburger,

Just to give you some idea, I have included for your enjoyment a comparison scan using two different dedicated film scanners. (They are 35mm/slide scanners, and this image was scanned from a neg, not a slide). Unfortunately I don't have any u/w photos for comparison, but here's one of another of my favourite past times.

My first "film" scanner was indeed a flatbed scanner with a film adapter and backlight. I won't even bother offering a comparison for that one.

The top image was using a AU$400 (US$200) neg scanner, at its maximum resolution of 2400dpi, then sized down. I no longer own that scanner. The bottom image was taken using my Polaroid SprintScan 4000 (AU$2000, US$1000) neg scanner, at only 1000dpi, then sized down. (It's max is 4000dpi, as the name suggests). Other than resizing using Photoshop, no touchups have been done on either image.

I shall let the pictures speak for themselves:

 

[stiebs]

For the sake of continuity, just in case the image source on my web page moves in the future, here's the same image attached locally on scubaboard:

 

[TedJ]

Thought about slide scanners myself a couple weeks ago when I bought my wife a Nikonos V. Do a google search on slide scanner review and you should come up sith a site like "Steve's digicams". He had an extensive review of about twenty products, with pricing and features very well described. His pics in the "reasonable price field" as I recall were Minolta Dual Scan II models, but check it out.