How do I choose a film scanner?

I've decided to scan my thousands of 35mm negatives and slides. The
largest they will usually be be is 640x480, occasionally 800x600. if
they do get printed, the largest I print is 8x10.

Now, how do I choose a scanner? Obviously it should be USB 2.0 due to
its universal ease of use. I never use APS film.

Resolution. How do I decide how much resolution I need. I don't want to
purchase more scanner than I need.

Brands. Brand names only? Any brands to avoid?

John

John wrote:

I've decided to scan my thousands of 35mm negatives and slides. The
largest they will usually be be is 640x480, occasionally 800x600. if
they do get printed, the largest I print is 8x10.


Why on earth would you want to scan at those tiny resolutions? Personally
I'd want to go a bit higher as a minimum.


Now, how do I choose a scanner? Obviously it should be USB 2.0 due to
its universal ease of use. I never use APS film.

Resolution. How do I decide how much resolution I need. I don't want to
purchase more scanner than I need.

Well, if you want 8x10 max with printing at 300dpi (proper pixels not ink
jet ones) that would be 2400x3000 resolution. I suspect nearly all
scanners are capable of this. Look at Dmax values, the range of tones the
scanner can deal with. I find with mine that there are dark tones on
slides that my scanner cannot handle. This seams to translate into
excessively grainy skys when dealing with negs.



Brands. Brand names only? Any brands to avoid?

I'm happy with my long in the tooth Acer Scanwitt but it does have
limitations, but then its old.

--
http://www.petezilla.co.uk

John wrote:

BTW, if you are going to post the same item to several newsgroups then it
does make sense to cross post, provided there is a legitimate reason for
posting in each of the groups. Posting the same article separately to
rec.photo.darkroom and rec.photo.equipment.35mm and presumably several
others does not make much sense.

It is also worth noting that this item is probally off topic for both of the
above newsgroups.

Pete


--
http://www.petezilla.co.uk

I always see others crossposting and getting flamed for it. So, I
decided to keep my questions answered by avoiding the distracting
flames that cross posters suffer.

Who knew...
Thanks for the advice!
John

In article ,
Peter Chant writes:

John wrote:

I've decided to scan my thousands of 35mm negatives and slides. The
largest they will usually be be is 640x480, occasionally 800x600. if
they do get printed, the largest I print is 8x10.

Why on earth would you want to scan at those tiny resolutions? Personally
I'd want to go a bit higher as a minimum.

Most film scanners will give much higher resolutions than this as their
minimums (see below).

Now, how do I choose a scanner? Obviously it should be USB 2.0 due to
its universal ease of use. I never use APS film.

Resolution. How do I decide how much resolution I need. I don't want to
purchase more scanner than I need.

Well, if you want 8x10 max with printing at 300dpi (proper pixels not ink
jet ones) that would be 2400x3000 resolution. I suspect nearly all
scanners are capable of this. Look at Dmax values, the range of tones the
scanner can deal with. I find with mine that there are dark tones on
slides that my scanner cannot handle. This seams to translate into
excessively grainy skys when dealing with negs.

I agree with all of Peter's comments here. In particular, 300 dpi on the
print is a good rule of thumb for the minimum resolution. To get the
2400x3000 resolution Peter mentions, you'd need a scanner capable of 2540
dpi. 2400 dpi models are fairly common, and skimping by that margin
probably won't cause big problems; or you could go for 2700 dpi or higher.
As a general rule, of course, the higher the resolution the more expensive
the scanner. Some very low-end models do less than 2400 dpi. Also, not
that some scanner manufacturers quote "interpolated" resolutions, which
means that the software takes a lower-resolution scan and "fakes" a
higher-resolution image. Be sure the resolution figure you're seeing in an
ad is for a *TRUE* hardware resolution.

Brands. Brand names only? Any brands to avoid?

More than brands there's technology. Broadly speaking there are two
classes of film scanners: Dedicated film scanners and flatbed scanners
with transparency/film capabilities. Dedicated film scanners can ONLY scan
film (slides or negatives); they're designed with this purpose in mind.
Flatbed scanners with film capabilities can scan regular paper documents
but have a light source in the lid so that they can also scan slides or
negatives. As such, flatbed scanners typically offer lower resolutions and
fewer features than the dedicated film models, at least from a film
scanning perspective. They also often produce slightly blurrier scans.
Dedicated film scanners are typically more expensive than flatbed scanners
with film capabilities. These are gross generalizations, though;
top-of-the-line flatbed scanners with film capabilities will beat out
bottom-of-the-line or old dedicated film scanners. A few
bottom-of-the-line dedicated film scanners are also designed like flatbed
scanners, but with small "beds" that work only with film. I've got a Web
page with a scan of a sample photo done with three film scanners (plus a
couple of flatbed scans of a print) that you might find informative:

http://www.rodsbooks.com/scanners/

Of course, the results apply only to the specific scanners I tested, so
don't try to apply them too broadly. Still, it should give you some idea
of some of the differences you might see between scanners.

Another feature you might want to consider is infrared (IR) dust and
scratch removal. This is usually marketed as "digital ICE," which is the
trade name for the combination of the IR channel with software support in
the scanner software, but software that's not technically ICE can use the
IR channel in much the same way. (The shareware VueScan, for instance, can
use the IR channel for dust/scratch removal.) This feature is particularly
handy with old slides and negatives. It's useless with conventional B&W
films, though, and it works poorly with Kodachrome slides. It's been
common on high-end dedicated film scanners for a while now, and is slowly
working its way down the product lines. Few flatbed scanners support it,
but I believe one or two now do (I don't recall which ones, though).

As to specific brands and models, I very much like my Minolta DiMAGE Scan
Elite 5400, but it's probably more than you need. (It does 5400 dpi and is
pretty much a top-of-the-line consumer-level scanner.) Minolta and Nikon
have been duking it out for king of the consumer scanner market. Other
brands certainly have capable products, though, so I wouldn't count them
out. There's no specific brand I'd recommend avoiding.

--
Rod Smith,
http://www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking

In article ,
Peter Chant wrote:

John wrote:

BTW, if you are going to post the same item to several newsgroups then it
does make sense to cross post, provided there is a legitimate reason for
posting in each of the groups. Posting the same article separately to
rec.photo.darkroom and rec.photo.equipment.35mm and presumably several
others does not make much sense.

It is also worth noting that this item is probally off topic for both of the
above newsgroups.

Pete

I agree its off topic never the less we can be patient and answer
his question, can we not?

To the OP you probably want a dedicated film scanner and probably just
a 35mm one correct? Well Nikon and KonicaMinolta make good ones in that
realm.

The Nikons offer batch scanning, which if you just want a visual record
makes sense. Also the scanner can do outstanding scans on an image by
image basis. Nikon Coolscans range from 575-1,000

Konica-Minolta range from 300-575,...give or take on these two brands.

--
LF Website @ http://members.verizon.net/~gregoryblank

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President,
or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong,
is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable
to the American public."--Theodore Roosevelt, May 7, 1918

"John" wrote

I've decided to scan my thousands of 35mm negatives and slides.

I would send them to a service bureau with a fast scanner
and a bulk feeder.

I have an old scanner that takes about 5 minutes / slide for
a decent scan - 5,000 slides * 5 minutes = ~400 hours (== 10 weeks
(== 2 1/2 months)) of sitting in front of the scanner.

The largest they will usually be be is 640x480,
occasionally 800x600.

Oh, hell, put them on a flat bed and scan at 300 - 600 dpi. You
can fit 20 slides or 35 negatives on a 'page'.

if they do get printed, the largest I print is 8x10.

What sort of quality are you looking for:

480 pix / 8" = 60 pix/inch;
common wisdom is you need 300 pix/inch when you print;
300dpi on an 8x10 means a 2400 x 3600 dpi scan of the negative;
see first sentence above.

With a 640x480 scan your max print size is 2 1/8" x 1 5/8".

Now, how do I choose a scanner? Obviously it should be USB 2.0 due to
its universal ease of use.

If it were me, the interface would be the _last_ of my considerations.
I would choose on D-Max, _real_ resolution, dust removal (ICE), does it
work with Kodachrome, stack feeder/unattended operation, time/scan, $$$ ...

I never use APS film.

I don't think anybody else does, either.

Resolution. How do I decide how much resolution I need. I don't want to
purchase more scanner than I need.

Most any modern scanner will do a sort-of acceptable job at
producing a 2400x3600 scan - that's 8.6 Mpix/scan, btw. 5,000
scans x 8.6 Mpix = 43 Gbytes, so look for scan software that
does a whole lot of compression on the fly.

Brands. Brand names only? Any brands to avoid?

I didn't know there were any 'off brands' in scanners ...
JC Penny's Penncraft, K-Mart 'Focal', Cambron?

Konica/Minolta and Nikon would be safe bets. There are plenty
of others.

John

Nick

Thank you everyone for all the on-target information. You all made a
tough decision a lot easier!
John

In article . com,
"John" writes:

I always see others crossposting and getting flamed for it. So, I
decided to keep my questions answered by avoiding the distracting
flames that cross posters suffer.

Cross-posting is posting a single message to multiple groups. Although
some people object to this in all cases, I don't see why. Assuming it's
non-spam and is actually on-topic for all the groups, it does no real
harm; the message consumes no extra bandwidth or storage space on servers,
and the vast majority of mail readers display it only once, so even if you
read multiple groups to which a message was posted, you'll see it only
once.

The alternative, to which Peter Chant objected, was multi-posting, in
which a single message is posted multiple times to multiple groups.
Multi-posting results in wasted network bandwidth, wasted storage space on
servers, and wasted time of readers who see the same message (the title,
at least, and maybe the whole message) in multiple groups. I don't know of
anybody who's knowledgeable in newsgroup protocols and etiquette who
advocates multi-posting as an alternative to cross-posting. Unfortunately,
those who jump down the throats of cross-posters often leave the
cross-posters thinking that multi-posting is preferable, but it's not.

As a general rule, if you must post to multiple groups, cross-post. If you
find yourself cross-posting to more than two or three groups, chances are
you're posting too broadly; the message is most likely on-topic in only a
subset of groups. THAT is really the harm in cross-posting, because it
wastes the time of those who read the groups in which the post is
off-topic. Unfortunately, in which groups a given post is on-topic is
often a judgement call.

--
Rod Smith,
http://www.rodsbooks.com
Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking

Gregory Blank wrote:


I agree its off topic never the less we can be patient and answer
his question, can we not?

Well, I had a ago as have several others. It was just a friendly hint, not
a flame. :-)



--
http://www.petezilla.co.uk