On Saturday, April 15, 2017 at 9:00:16 AM UTC-4, Sandman wrote:
newshound wrote:

I realise that this question doesn't have a simple answer,
but it is time I started scanning some of my old 35 mm slides
and negatives (mostly b&w).

I would really welcome some comments or experience on hardware
in the "keen amateur" price bracket.

Hey, that's my bracket as well!

Same here.


I use the Epson Perfection V750 Pro (now replaced with the 850 Pro) which
comes with inserts for 135 and 120 film as well as large format and slides.

Image quality is superb.

https://epson.com/For-Work/Scanners/...on-Perfection-
V850-Pro-Photo-Scanner/p/B11B224201

I originally started at work with a Nikon Coolscan LS-1000; think
this was far enough back that it ran on SCSI. Nice setup, although
it appears to now be 99.99% dead because of a combination of the
interface (SCSI) and not easily being able to find suitable drivers.
Kind of wish that I'd kept an old Mac on System 7/8 around for it.

For myself, I have a now-dated Epson flatbed scanner like Sandman;
the OEM software has gone obsolete, but OS X supports it adequately,
plus I think I have some third party (Viewscan?) that also does well.
It has a backlight system and does a good job on transparencies,
including some medium format stuff.

For $200 I picked up a dedicated 35mm Pacific Image USB scanner,
with the idea of pushing through more quantity. After some initial
proofing, I've not gotten back to the project.

My thoughts today are more lazy ^H^H pragmatic:

Set up the slide projector at home, with a dSLR on a tripod next
to it ... project, click, project, click ... this is a quick &
dirty way to get a halfway decent quality image quickly, which
is better than nothing.

My thoughts are that I'd do this as a pre-screening and also as
a "risk-of-loss" reduction step before I send a batch of stuff
out to a 3rd party service for bulk scanning. Similarly, for
any really important shots I come across the way, I'd DIY a
higher quality scan before I put them into the ship-em-out box.

What I've found that it really comes down to is that it is
still a challenge to make the time to grind through the film
collection, and when I finally do, two things hold me up:

- cleaning the images (especially Dad's old slides)
- the temptation to jump right into Photoshop to post-process

Overall, I think that what I'd probably do differently next
time that I take this on would be to define out a more "mass"
based workflow with discrete stages.

Stage 0: reorganize my workspaces. My current setup is
conveniently compact to fit into the home office space, but
this contrary to good productivity for this type of job.
This is where I wish that I had a "150ft long workbench"
to be able to spread stuff out.

Stage 1: pull out the material to be worked on; figure out
what batch size works.

Stage 2: cleaning in batches. Need both a dry & wet plan,
as stuff like Dad's old dusty slides are bad and won't clean
up with just a dry air blower.

Need to think about how much I care if the cardboard slides
have to be dismounted for cleaning.

Stage 3: material handling prep for going into whatever
scanning system (eg, remount slides?).

Stage 4: make the scan

Stage 5: data backup/archiving

Stage 6: post processing (what I've found to be my time suck)


Hope this helps,


-hh