Same old question - which scanner for slides?

[jamesdfloyd]

Before I start, my apologies for asking a question that I am sure has been asked dozens of times before.

I unearthed about 1,000 slides from the 1970's belonging to my father and I would like to scan them for him. At the same time, my step-father has found about an equal amount from the 1960's - 1980's and he wants me to scan them as well.

So here is my situation; I want to get the best scanner/software combination for old Kodachrome & Ektachrome mounted slides, with high resolution and the ability to batch as many as possible...effiecently. It is doubtful that any of these will be printed larger than 8x10, or even printed at all. This project will be to archieve these long lost images.

The usual suspects are the Cannon 8800f/9000, Epson 4490, Epson 500/750 or the Plustek.

Or...the possibility of having a service do this for me.

Suggestion...Guidance...What would you do?

 

[Paul_C]

If you otherwise have no need for a scanner, look into scanning services.

 

[Ranchu]

Completely untenable on a flatbed. There is a Nikon Coolscan that takes a slide loading attachment, the 5000? Or the earlier 4000? might work. All the Nikons are discontinued, but that's what you need. It will be expensive and time consuming. Maybe these guys can kick you some funds to cover the costs!

 

[jamesdfloyd]

I've looked at both a 4000 & 5000 on "that auction site no one writes about"...the math seems to point towards a service, because once I am done with this project, I really have no need for a scanner.

J.D.

 

[Stuart John]

Find out what they want to do with the scans first. Once you know what the scans would be for then you have a better idea of kind of service you need or what kind of scanner you may want to buy borrow or rent. There is no point to scan them at all if all they will do is sit idle on a hardrive somewhere and if the reality is that they will share them on facebook then you don't need to have large scans made.

 

[HuubL]

I've started a bold attempt to scanning my many thousands of slides from the early 80's since last Sunday and bought an Epson Perfection V500 photo scanner for the occasion. I'm acquainted with using a Nikon Coolscan V5 ED that I borrow from work and it's a wonderful scanner. However, it can only scan framed slides one at a time. I've found that the V500 does a pretty good job with four framed slides at a time and for most of my "mediocre" slides a lowish resolution (600-1200 dpi) is good enough. And the V500 is cheap in comparison to the dedicated Nikon scanners. And if you really want high dpi (2400-12800) and TIFF output, the V500 can do that job as well.

 

[Matus]

General remark. One sigle frame will take 1 - 3 minutes (depending on the scanner, software, resolution) to scan. Do your math for the total scanning time. Do not forget that to load the scanner, clean the film (pressurized air works well) and set up the scanning takes some time too.

If just "preview" images are enough (or prints about 4x6") than flatbed will do the job.

If you want to print A4 you need the scans to be done with a dedicated slide scanner - think of Nikon Coolscan V or one of the latest Plustek scanners.

So - think it well over - scanning is NOT fun in large volumes. If you can get some semi-decent scanning service for maybe $0.1 or $0.2 per frame than it may be a better solution (even though still more expensive, but you save yourself 2 weeks of vacation scanning 12 hours a day). You may get volume discount too.

 

[jamesdfloyd]

Good point about the math and total time...I took an estimate of the most expensive scanning service for all 2,000 images...divided it by my hourly pay rate...equals...I am getting a box this morning to send the slides out to be done by Pros.

Thanks everyone...