Scanning old negatives and slides
My uncle just gave me a box of old slides, pictures and negatives from the early 1900's. Most are in fair shape and I want to save as many as possible. My parents have an Epson RX500 that has media, slide and negative readers built in. We have an old HP OfficeJet G95 usb with 10x drivers. And an older HP ScanJet 4c connected to an old biege G3. Anyone have recommendations on a good scanner ( it would be nice if it is a network scanner ) that has media, slide and negative readers.
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Only other problem is it doesn't have a feed for the negatives. You have to scan each manually (using the convenient negative-holder)
--B
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If you're looking to spend a little money, get
Konica Minolta DiMAGE Scan Dual IV. Very decent quality scans for the price.
If you want to spend a little more money, go with:
Nikon Coolscan V ED.
Konica is more versitile and maybe more of what you're looking for.
Yes when Blue-Ray DVD's come out, I am going to drop 3-5K on a good quality slide scanner and bring in all our 5,000-10,000+ negatives and slides. Looking at 100MB+/image if I am lucky. Of course the cost for storing the archived DVD's will be a small fortune.
Yes I am picky and want it done right for generations and generations to enjoy.
Yes when Blue-Ray DVD's come out, I am going to drop 3-5K on a good quality slide scanner and bring in all our 5,000-10,000+ negatives and slides. Looking at 100MB+/image if I am lucky.
And what are you going to do with this "high quality" image? What do you need such high resolution for?
Also, have you considered the fact that slides and photos have a very finite grain size. So scanning them at resolution much beyond the grain size is pointless.
About the "clean room", it's much easier and cheaper to photoshop out the few dust particles that you accumulate than to go to a "clean room". Besides, if the slides are that old, they'll have scratches that are more apparent.
reg
Originally posted by Mac Write
I strongly urge you to buy a dedicated slide scanner ($1,500+ for a quality one).
Definitely a dedicated slide scanner will give you the best results. The Konica-Minolta mentioned in a previous post will give acceptable results. The Nikon Coolscan V, around $500?$600 is a quantum leap in quality and gives outstandng results. If you're going to be scanning 1000s of slides you may want to step up to one of Nikon's more expensive scanner, which feature automatic slide feeders as an option.
Originally posted by Mac Write
I strongly urge you to buy a dedicated slide scanner ($1,500+ for a quality one).
Seconded. If you're serious about this, get a dedicated slide scanner. Flatbed scanners are optimized for different things, and it shows.
I use a Nikon Coolscan 4000, and it's my pride and joy. That product was updated a couple of years ago to the 5000, and the price came down a few hundred bucks.
Originally posted by skatman
Also, have you considered the fact that slides and photos have a very finite grain size. So scanning them at resolution much beyond the grain size is pointless.
Right, the key word here is "much." You definitely want the pixels to be markedly smaller than the film grain to avoid grain aliasing. I shoot almost exclusively 400-speed film, upper-midrange Kodak stuff -- i.e. somewhat large grain but not huge. The 4000 dpi Nikon scans have maybe around 20-50 pixels per grain of film, which is only slightly overdoing it, IMO. For ISO 100 or lower film, 4000 dpi is probably only barely enough.
Originally posted by lundy
Hey - speaking of scanning 127 or 35mm (Kodacolor) color negatives, does anyone know how to set software on a regular flatbed scanner to correct for the orange color of the film base?
Sorry, lundy, I have no help for you... but this is another excellent reason to get a dedicated film scanner: they're engineered from the get-go to compensate for orange mask.
Right, the key word here is "much." You definitely want the pixels to be markedly smaller than the film grain to avoid grain aliasing.
I don't see why you're so concerned about grain aliasing.
Once you blow-up your picture to size where grain itself becomes even slightly visible, the picture quality is shitty regardless whether your grain is aliased or not.
Originally posted by skatman
I don't see why you're so concerned about grain aliasing.
Once you blow-up your picture to size where grain itself becomes even slightly visible, the picture quality is shitty regardless whether your grain is aliased or not.
Right, but that's the aliasing part. It's not that you have to blow the image up to the point where you would start to see grains of the original film; it's that if the size of the scanned pixels is comparable to the film grain size, you may end up with artifacts that are noticeable at much lower magnifications.
A simplistic (and I admit slightly misleading) example is the moire patterns that can result when you scan halftone images. The halftone dots are smaller than you can see at a casual glance; the scanned pixels are small too; but the interaction between the two (if they're comparable in size) is something you can easily see in a casual glance at the scan. You don't have to be interested in blowing it up to the point where you would start to see the original halftone dots.
Now halftone dots are not random, and film grain *is* more or less random, so moire effects in scanned halftones are quite a bit more dramatic than the effects of grain aliasing in scanned film. But the general point is this: when scanned pixels are comparable in size to the dot size/grain size of the thing being scanned, unexpected and unpleasant artifacts can result.