Scanning

[JoeMac]

I have a couple of thousand slides and some 35mm color neg film that I would like to scan and put on DVDs. I am looking at the Nikon V coolscan LS50 and the Epson V700. If I only do the 35mm slides and neg film which scanner is the best and why. If I want to do prints I know I would have to use the flat bed, but I don't know whether this is something I need.

Thanks for your help and advise.🙂

 

[kaiyen]

Well, first off, you'll be scanning from now until eternity unless you do some series editing on that quantity of frames....

What is your goal with the images? Prints? How big?

allan

 

[Athena]

I did a similar project last Winter, but with only about 1000 of past years slides,

I have the Nikon 5000D scanner and very pleased with it. I did have problems with the auto-feeder for slides jamming up (holds 50 at a time) and so had to resort to individual feed. It took time; but I got the task done.

I continue to shoot both chrome and film negs and use it regularly.

If you used to shoot Kodachrome the Nikon software has a special setting for it - not sure if that makes a big difference but nice feature.

Oh, one thing. The Nikon software is a bit "obscure" with poor documentation - but once you get the hang of it it works quite well.

Finally, with the Nikon, if you scan to Nikon raw (i.e. NEF) you will NOT be able to read those files into PS CS2 (apparently the companies are "at war"). However, the older version, PS CS, will read scanned NEFs! [Someone's mad at someone here.]

The alternative is to scan into TIF or, if you prefer NEF like I do, just convert the file from NEF to TIF before trying to upload it into PS CS2.

I'm now adding Medium Format to my "mix" and so lookiing at a new scanner - I'll probably go with the Nikon 9000D given my good experience with the 5000D.

EDIT: Oh yes, as to DVD's, that's the only way to go. NEF files are about 67mb each so you need the capacity of a DVD to hold about 40 to 50 slides each (or maybe more with 8gb DVD's)

 

[JoeMac]

kayen,
My goal is to preserve these slides to DVD and print off some of them. I continue to use neg film and slide film and would put them on DVD also.
Thanks

 

[JoeMac]

ops, sorry for mispelling your name Kaiyen.

 

[kaiyen]

Well, for the best quality you'll want a dedicated film scanner, like the Nikon. But, again, it'll take a damn long time to scan that many slides.

allan

 

[Terao]

Well, a dedicated film scanner is much easier to use than a flatbed and in my experience gives better results (less dust/fingerprints risk for a start)

What mounts do you use? If the purpose is to archive rather than carry out individual adjustments and you don't have paper mounts I'd recommend going for the Nikon (Super) Coolscan 4000 or 5000ED plus batch scanner (go for the SF-210, does a much better job than the earlier model.

The big advantage of the batch scanner is you can load 'em up and forget about them for a couple of hours - on the subject of time hope your PC is reasonably fast, makes a huge difference. I was doing full-res 8 bit scans on a pretty high-spec PC two years ago and it was taking about 5 minutes per slide with post-processing switched on.

Doing slides one by one uses up all your time, you can't multitask and do something else and you'll very quickly get totally hacked off with the whole process.

Just my experience from having done exactly what you're doing on my father's archive a while back...