Batch slide scanning speed? - Nikon 5000ED (w SF210) vs Epson V700/V750

I have both the v700 and 5000, so I have direct experience with both scanners. If all you want is a web image, the v700 is ok. If you want a larger print, the 5000 is far superior. In particular, chrome scans from the v700 look horrible when compared with the 5000! Negative films compare better.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mnewhook/3251346899/
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Sorry to repeat, but have a look at the page http://abdallah.hiof.no/pb-4/ There are examples of the same slide digitized with an Epson 4990 flatbed scanner, a MicroTech ArtixScan 120TF film scanner and a Canon 5DII using a Nikon PB-4 bellows with slide duplicator and film strip holder. There are also some Canon RAW files of 35mm negatives. I have tried all 3 systems on a number of slides. The film scanner is best, in fact very, very good, but also very, very slow. The flatbed is OK and somewhat faster than the film scanner. The DSLR and slide duplicator is as good as the flatbed, maybe better resolution and detail, but less dynamic range? The important thing in this contest though is speed and ease of operation. The DSLR and duplicator is just a matter of shifting slides in and out. Using the remote shooting software the image are on the computer by the time the slide is changed. No awkward stands, jigs or lights. The camera, bellows, macro lens and slide duplicator are one integral unit. Not perfect archival results but nice, large digital copies on which to spend more time entering metadata before it's forgotten. Good bellows units and manual focus macro lenses are also fairly reasonable on the second hand market. If your camera is an EOS, there are adapters for a host of lenses.

20090401_094755-420.jpg


- Børre
 
borrel said:
The important thing in this contest though is speed and ease of operation. The DSLR and duplicator is just a matter of shifting slides in and out. Using the remote shooting software the image are on the computer by the time the slide is changed. No awkward stands, jigs or lights. The camera, bellows, macro lens and slide duplicator are one integral unit. Not perfect archival results but nice, large digital copies on which to spend more time entering metadata before it's forgotten.

20090401_094755-420.jpg


- Børre
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Thanks again Borre. This looks like it will be the "better alternative" for me and my slide catalog project.

Thanks to all that responded in this thread. This is a nice outcome and a great first experience for me on the rangefinderforum.

Cheers
 
I can hardly sit down and get 1 roll done at a time, let alone 20,000.

I have 2 suggestions: whenever you are at your computer, start scanning but don't sit down just to do this, you'll end up hating it so much you'll put it off. That's not the point,take it slow, don't try to scan for 10 hours straight for a whole month (that's what it will take on a V700 for example).

The other option would be to pay someone to do this for you, it's going to cost you, but then again, you could probably stand on the corner for all the hours you would be scanning and break even. http://www.scancafe.com/ is known to provide good service on quality equipment, they even take care of the basic dust removal and all that excrutiating post processing that takes longer then the scanning! All for 29 cents a slide. And you get to choose which images you want to pay for (you have to buy at least half of them).

However, 20,000 slides at 30 cents a peice comes out to $6000, that's quite a bit of money, but if you consider buying the scanner yourself (a Nikon 5000 for example) and the opportunity cost of sitting on your butt for a whole month and making your eyes bleed... You could probably work minimum wage and offset most of the cost. Not that you should do that, but it puts things in perspective.

If you decide to do it yourself, don't cheat yourself out of quality scans, even if these are just for archives, i would spend a bit of extra time and scan them nicely so you can enjoy them and even print them if you so desired, as opposed to having to rescan them for a print worthy scan, do it once, do it well!

Have fun?
 
Further thoughts ... false economy?

You guys don't need to comment, but I thought I'd fill you in after a little further thought on this project.

I've dismissed the idea of farming this out. Cost is but one factor. Organizing and trusting the slide library to a third party is another. I do value my time, so ...

I am guesstimating that with the DSLR/slideduplicator route, I'll be able to record ~150 slides/hr. So with 20,000 slides that about 133 hours total. Yipes. That's all my time, too.

I'll go with kully's guesstimate on the Epson V7xx which is 60 slides/hr for a total of 334 hours. I'll further guesstimate that some of this will be unattended, perhaps 30-50%, so 167 to 234 hours of my time. Even more scary.

I am also going to guesstimate that the Nikon 5000/Sf210 will be in the range of 50 to 70 slides/hr so the total scanning time could be 334 hours. I am also speculating that a generous portion of this will be unattended; perhaps 80-90%, so 33 to 67 hours of my time.

OK - the numbers may be off somewhat, but it looks to me like the Nikon 5000/SF210 wins the unattended time battle. Cost-of-equipment wise, the 5000/SF210 is the largest cash outlay, followed by the Epson V7xx, and the DSLR/slidecopier would be less than a $100 proposition for me (perhaps more if I decide to get fancy).

If I were to pay someone to do this by the hour, the total time would be the only thing that mattered to an unrelated party. But, as I've said, I've decided not to go that route.

dfoo made a good point about Digital Ice, but it sounds like I would turn it off for kodachrome scanning anyway. Is this true?

samoksner also makes a good point about "doing it once by doing it well". Looking at 20,000 files there is a huge impact on disk space depending upon the file size. I was aiming for 300Kb jpegs as opposed to 6Mb jpegs or 24Mb DNGs/TIFFs. Total space is more like 6Gb vs 120Gb vs 1Tb. It would certainly skew scanning times as well. I would estimate about a 3% rescan-for-quality rate (but those 3% would be very easy to find).

The number that is the most important in all of this is "my time" number. The back-of-the-envelope estimate of 100 hours of unattended time difference between methods far outweighs the cost of the equipment for me.

.... So, I am leaning back towards the 5000/Sf210 combo.

There is a remaining nagging doubt saying - "Great for the slides, now what about all those negatives, Mr. Smartypants?"
 
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I recently scanned a large collection of slides with a Coolscan 5000, a few at a time over the course of a year. I've played with flatbeds and I own the SF-210 attachment though I rarely use it.

With 20k slides you really should look hard at a camera based setup based on my experiences. Otherwise it will take forever.

I also recommend a workflow for the slides before you start scanning. 20k doesn't sound like much of an edit. What's the story you are trying to tell? Decide the story first, then get a good lightbox, a 5x loupe, and start laying out the slides and grading them based on how good the photo is and how useful it is to the story. You can grade a lot of film in a night once you get it down. I write on the slide mounts with my grade and a few other notes. Then, before you scan, cull all the highest scoring images, say 1000, and scan those first. Reassess if you really need more.

At the end of it all you can rescan the very best images, the handful of greatness, if you intend to print them. For that the Coolscan 5000 is great.

RE: the SF-210. It's not as "unattended" as you think and the many of the scanner's useful controls have to be dumbed down - run in auto everything mode - which lowers the quality of the scanned results vis a vis what the 5000 will do while controlled for each image. It also pays to load the SF-210 with mounts of the same type, as opposed to mixing mounts. When it jams, the job halts until you catch the problem - hardly set and forget scanning. It will be most useful to you if the images are of similar scenes - whole rolls of portraits, etc - and the mounts are all the same.
 
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Not sure about the Epson, but the Coolscan 5000 and V are holding their value very well (especially so since being discontinued). You'd probably get most of the purchase price back if you decide to sell it once you're done scanning.
 
mackigator said:
I recently scanned a large collection of slides with a Coolscan 5000, a few at a time over the course of a year. I've played with flatbeds and I own the SF-210 attachment though I rarely use it.

With 20k slides you really should look hard at a camera based setup based on my experiences. Otherwise it will take forever.

.... ....

RE: the SF-210. It's not as "unattended" as you think and the many of the scanner's useful controls have to be dumbed down - run in auto everything mode - which lowers the quality of the scanned results vis a vis what the 5000 will do while controlled for each image. It also pays to load the SF-210 with mounts of the same type, as opposed to mixing mounts. When it jams, the job halts until you catch the problem - hardly set and forget scanning. It will be most useful to you if the images are of similar scenes - whole rolls of portraits, etc - and the mounts are all the same.
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Well, there's a red flag for ya - a 5000/SF210 owner suggesting that I take the DSLR/slidedupe route. I don't have experience with this; you do. I won't rehash the whole story (it's here in the thread, for those that wish to follow it), but what are realistic "scans per hour" for a 5000/SF210 combo? Bear in mind that the scans will be screen sized (max 1200 pixels in any direction) and, for the most part, uniform Kodak cardboard mounts?

Also, I was anticipating the SF210 to jam on occasion. Should I expect constant jams?
 
Mark Schretlen said:
dfoo made a good point about Digital Ice, but it sounds like I would turn it off for kodachrome scanning anyway. Is this true?
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Yes, unless you use a Coolscan 9000 - which scans slower and needs much more user attention than a 5000 with feeder. On the other hand, you might otherwise spend far more time de-spotting than actually scanning.
 
An interesting thread this one. Some folks are convinced their equipment of choice is the one to go for, whilst making detrimental claims about the other options.

My own experience is with a Minolta Scan Dual II & IV, both have now bit the dust, an Epson V750 and a macro lens/ slide holder on a DSLR. As mentioned in an earlier post, to use the Epson you really need at least one extra holder so the slides can be swapped in one while the other is scanning. I also believe the V750 to be a 2400dpi device. Increasing the resolution gives a larger file, takes more time but does not extract any extra information from the slide. It cannot really be left to get on with the job as the spare holder always needs the slides changing. Any spare time generated is only in blocks of a couple of minutes until the next changeover is due. All in all a mind numbing task.

In my opinion, based on the scanning/copying of many thousands of slides the macro lens/DSLR route is the way to go. Yes, the resultant files are not as good as a really good scan and it is boring, but I do 100-150 slides per day taking maybe an hour and the job is gradually getting done.

Whatever way you go, I whish you luck (and lots of patience). You will need it.

Best regards

John
 
JohnP1 said:
An interesting thread this one. Some folks are convinced their equipment of choice is the one to go for, whilst making detrimental claims about the other options.
...
Click to expand...

Speaking only for myself, I have both the v700 and the cs5000 (and a 5D and a macro lens for that matter). I know which of these options produces the best results for _me_ and under which conditions I get those results...
 
JohnP1 said:
An interesting thread this one. Some folks are convinced their equipment of choice is the one to go for, whilst making detrimental claims about the other options.
Click to expand...

Not me at any rate. I have a Coolscan 9000 and a Epson, and would recommend neither for this particular task. Seriously, for 20,000 cardboard framed slides I'd either hire a lab, or purchase (and later re-sell) a used large scale lab scanner, given enough cash or credit for a temporary $30000 expenditure.
 
One thing is for sure, you'd better have _alot_ of disk space. 4000 DPI color scans are big. If I were you I'd pick out the slides which are worth scanning and do those. In addition, scan more over time. Don't scan all 20k at once, you'll be driven insane.
 
If all you're looking at is cataloguing, perhaps it might be just as easy to shoot a group of slides (20 or so) on a light table. you could probably leave them in the print pages if that's how you store them. Probably wouldn't be able to do iptc for each image unless you cropped them out but it'd be a simple procedure and you'd end up with a digital 'contact sheet' if you will.
 
Thanks for the suggestion, newsgrunt. I think you've got a pretty good grasp of what I'm after. My B&W negatives are already organized pretty much that way (just not digital) and it is trivial to hunt for and find a particular image/negative. The number of B&W images I have is nowhere close to the number of chromes that I have. While I thought I was clear from the outset that I was not intending to scan my kodachromes at 4000ppi with 48bit depth, several posters fear that that is what I am attempting.

Your suggestion would save a bunch of time, but I am looking to integrate my kodachrome images into my digital library. The number of images isn't really that large - I'm pretty sure that many members of this forum would accumulate 20,000 digital images in less than five years. I know that I have and I don't think that's too shocking. I think a reasonable goal for the kodachromes is to have screen-sized jpegs at about 300Kb each. That way I can go from a thumbnail in the catalog to a full screen, recognize people, places, events. Then if I decide to take an image further, I could easily find and pull the physical chrome and re-scan at two trillion ppi if need be.

The images I've kept are not really as junky as some people are suggesting or expecting. They've already been culled and the majority were taken AFTER working as a professional photographer. Technically the images are all OK (focus/exposure/colour). I took a much different path many years ago, but I kept up photography as a very satisfying hobby. I am not expecting to complete this project quickly, rather, I am hoping it is done within two years, perhaps less if I am lucky. I don't think I'll mind if I start up a batch scan, leave and do other things, come back an hour later and find that the job jammed halfway through. I will mind if this happens on every batch (and I would likely abandon the project).

Even though the Nikon is being discontinued, used scanning hardware tends to decline in value. I don't think I'll plan on little or no depreciation, but thanks those that pointed out that no one should expect to see any more new film scanning models from Nikon. The price of a new Coolscan 5000ED was the same as one ounce of gold today. Hmmm.
 
What would work as well, and I'm not sure if it's part of your workflow already, is to use PhotoMechanic for browsing and captioning these groups if you were to shoot them that way.

PM allows you to zoom in on an image so you could go tight for faces. The caption field is roomy so it wouldn't be a problem to be able to id each slide in the grouping. Depending what resolution you shoot at, you could probably also crop out individual frames if you needed to for reference purposes.

PhotoMechanic is my default browse/caption/ftp program re: images before editing in Photoshop.
 
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I have been aware of PhotoMechanic for quite some time (maybe 8 years?). In checking out the latest version, it looks like PM has come a long way. I may have to give it a try.

I've gone through various spurts of organizing and cataloging my images along with intervening years of neglect. It's not a fun task. Over time I have noticed that any effort spent on organizing/cataloging paid dividends long after the task was done. I guess I am about to pay for those intervening years of neglect.
 
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