[Tango Whiskey Papa]

Any recommendation on a film scanner will be greatly appreciated.

[tomkat]

mutual interest bookmark

[Covenantor]

I'm assuming that you're talking about 35mm film. Or not?

What volume of slides or film do you plan to scan? Unless you have a large archive you're wasting money at that price point. You'd be better off selecting the frames you need scanned and going to a scanning service.

I just had a Konica Minolta DiMage Elite 5400 II delivered, which is really an entry level film scanner. (That's available for about twice your opening budget.) But for archiving 40 years of church related photos it's very suitable for the task. It may not be for the more serious slides and film work that I've done.

My best suggestion to you is to find a store that will scan some samples of slides or negatives that you provide so that you can see the results as well as the process ( ease of use, scan time, final product and versatility) Most reputable photo stores will offer to do so because the hook is that you will want to upgrade.

[Tribune7]

Have you considered using a flatbed with a neg tray or is that what you are trying to get away from?

[NautiNurse]

I'm no tech guru--however, have learned that scanning requires plenty of cpu memory for high res capability. IOW, if you want great quality scans, you need lots of memory on your computer too.

[Publius6961]

You need to be more specific about what your intentions are. All of those may be suitable or perhaps none.
How many negatives/slides do you propose to process? 1000? 10,000?
Do you plan to be able to enlarge all of them at some future date to 16x20? or will 8x10 do?

What will your final means of archiving be? What computer do you plan to hook up the scanner to?

And last but not least, what camera(s) were used to make the original negs/slides? How carefully were they focused? What typical film was used? All these questions are interrelated.

[martin_fierro]

I use something similar to the HP 4070, on a strictly nonprofessional basis, and it has worked pretty well.

[SWAMPSNIPER]

Surrender, digicams rule!
http://photobucket.com/albums/v244/tsiya/

[tomkat]

a) ~10,000 slides;
b) 35mm, mainly from an early 50s Leica (?) but the latter couple k w/a Minolta something or other;
c) as a rule, acceptable focus/lighting;
d) to be archived as jpegs on CDs;

[DoctorMichael]

I've been going over to the Information Technology Center here at the university and doing quite a bit of this recently on my personal stash of 35mm slides. I can't remember all the specs and manufacturer's of their equipment. If this Thread continues long enough, I'll get back to you on the names. I know its a Nikon scanner onto an Apple computer and has an automatic feed for slides (which is handy; you DON'T want to do this manually). I can usually fit a 36 exposure roll of high rez scans (suitable for 8 x 10 blowups; 300 dpi Tiffs) onto one 700 MB CD [Count on 15-20 MB per pik for a hi-quality scanned image].

I save them all since ALL of my pictures are fantastic and there are no bad ones, IMHO. [*LOL*]

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