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Curious about Slide Scanner
Hi. My mom has 3000 slides and wants to digitize them. She can't afford
to have a store do it. I just found a cheap scanner on Amazon that scans slides: http://amzn.to/9K7DHs It's even cheaper on buy.com I can't find any reviews of it anywhere other than Amazon. I'm a little skeptical that the quality of the scans will be good, but I'm not an expert on scanners and scanners are much cheaper than they used to be. So, I'm looking for some opinions on whether it's worth buying the scanner. It's cheap and mom can afford it. I just don't want her to spend lots of time scanning if the quality of the scans isn't any good. Thanks, M |
#2
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Curious about Slide Scanner
On 05/08/2010 03:52, Mirsky wrote:
Hi. My mom has 3000 slides and wants to digitize them. She can't afford to have a store do it. I just found a cheap scanner on Amazon that scans slides: http://amzn.to/9K7DHs It's even cheaper on buy.com I can't find any reviews of it anywhere other than Amazon. I'm a little skeptical that the quality of the scans will be good, but I'm not an expert on scanners and scanners are much cheaper than they used to be. So, I'm looking for some opinions on whether it's worth buying the scanner. It's cheap and mom can afford it. I just don't want her to spend lots of time scanning if the quality of the scans isn't any good. It isn't really a scanner, its a low quality camera so it's fundamentaly the same as a slide duplicator on a camera. But you camera may be lot better. -- Bertrand |
#3
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Curious about Slide Scanner
Mirsky wrote:
Hi. My mom has 3000 slides and wants to digitize them. She can't afford to have a store do it. There was a recent thread ("Digitizing Slides") on this very topic. Perhaps some of it will be applicable to your circumstances. BugBear |
#4
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Curious about Slide Scanner
"Bruce" wrote in message
... [] It's junk. There are many of these cheap Chinese-made scanners around. As you say, they can be bought even more cheaply than the one linked to. They have poor resolution and very low dynamic range. Dynamic range is very important when scanning slides - it is slightly less important with negatives. [] Agreed. I had the chance to use something similar for an evening and could never get satisfactory results. I don't think the country of origin matters, it's the spec to which it's made. Cheers, David |
#5
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Curious about Slide Scanner
On Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:52:52 -0700, Mirsky wrote:
Hi. My mom has 3000 slides and wants to digitize them. She can't afford to have a store do it. I just found a cheap scanner on Amazon that scans slides: http://amzn.to/9K7DHs It's even cheaper on buy.com I can't find any reviews of it anywhere other than Amazon. I'm a little skeptical that the quality of the scans will be good, but I'm not an expert on scanners and scanners are much cheaper than they used to be. So, I'm looking for some opinions on whether it's worth buying the scanner. It's cheap and mom can afford it. I just don't want her to spend lots of time scanning if the quality of the scans isn't any good. Thanks, M As mentioned in the recent "Digitizing Slides" thread, you can indeed buy a decent flatbed scanner with film/slide capabilities for around $100 (a refurb from the Epson online store would do). But - it's going to take a LONG time to digitize 3000 slides - at any level. If you pursue that approach, I'd make a first pass at a fairly low resolution - about equal to 800x600 pixels. It will go a lot faster and allow viewing to see which ones you want to do at a decent resolution. |
#6
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Curious about Slide Scanner
David J Taylor wrote:
"Bruce" wrote in message ... [] It's junk. There are many of these cheap Chinese-made scanners around. As you say, they can be bought even more cheaply than the one linked to. They have poor resolution and very low dynamic range. Dynamic range is very important when scanning slides - it is slightly less important with negatives. [] Agreed. I had the chance to use something similar for an evening and could never get satisfactory results. I don't think the country of origin matters, it's the spec to which it's made. Cheers, David Same experience here. Couldn't get a decent color slide copy, no adjustment provided. Did a little better on negative strip. Definitely do not purchase. |
#7
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Curious about Slide Scanner
"Mirsky" wrote in message ... Hi. My mom has 3000 slides and wants to digitize them. She can't afford to have a store do it. I just found a cheap scanner on Amazon that scans slides: http://amzn.to/9K7DHs It's even cheaper on buy.com I can't find any reviews of it anywhere other than Amazon. I'm a little skeptical that the quality of the scans will be good, but I'm not an expert on scanners and scanners are much cheaper than they used to be. So, I'm looking for some opinions on whether it's worth buying the scanner. It's cheap and mom can afford it. I just don't want her to spend lots of time scanning if the quality of the scans isn't any good. How's she going to view the scans? The level of quality you actually need, may not be that great depending on the quality of the viewer. I've got a similar one (4.2M px) and, yes, the output quality isn't great (you'll probably find that the results are very contrasty), but a bit of workflow on the slides in your photo editing software should probably bring them up to a presentable standard. After all, if you're waiting for a perfect copy, they'll never get done. It's worth spending a bit of time getting the slides as dust free as possible before you scan them of course, and make sure you put the slides the right way up in the holder before you scan them - you can flip the image before writing it to the SD card, but it's easier to get the slides the right way around before you start. |
#8
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Curious about Slide Scanner
"Bruce" wrote in message news On Thu, 5 Aug 2010 20:08:52 +0100, "OG" wrote: "Mirsky" wrote in message ... Hi. My mom has 3000 slides and wants to digitize them. She can't afford to have a store do it. I just found a cheap scanner on Amazon that scans slides: http://amzn.to/9K7DHs It's even cheaper on buy.com I can't find any reviews of it anywhere other than Amazon. I'm a little skeptical that the quality of the scans will be good, but I'm not an expert on scanners and scanners are much cheaper than they used to be. So, I'm looking for some opinions on whether it's worth buying the scanner. It's cheap and mom can afford it. I just don't want her to spend lots of time scanning if the quality of the scans isn't any good. How's she going to view the scans? The level of quality you actually need, may not be that great depending on the quality of the viewer. I've got a similar one (4.2M px) and, yes, the output quality isn't great (you'll probably find that the results are very contrasty), but a bit of workflow on the slides in your photo editing software should probably bring them up to a presentable standard. No, it won't. The scanner doesn't have sufficient dynamic range to produce acceptable scans of slides. The situation with negatives will be better, of course. After all, if you're waiting for a perfect copy, they'll never get done. With a cheap scanner, it doesn't matter how long you spend in post-processing, it will never produce an acceptable scan of a slide. I refer you to my first sentence. |
#9
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Curious about Slide Scanner
Dave Cohen wrote:
David J Taylor wrote: "Bruce" wrote in message ... [] It's junk. There are many of these cheap Chinese-made scanners around. As you say, they can be bought even more cheaply than the one linked to. They have poor resolution and very low dynamic range. Dynamic range is very important when scanning slides - it is slightly less important with negatives. [] Agreed. I had the chance to use something similar for an evening and could never get satisfactory results. I don't think the country of origin matters, it's the spec to which it's made. Cheers, David Same experience here. Couldn't get a decent color slide copy, no adjustment provided. Did a little better on negative strip. Definitely do not purchase. A little update. The one I used is not the one shown on Amazon site. That one will work as a standalone and does seem to have adjustments. Amazon are very good at accepting returns, the reviews on it are positive so for that model I change my negative comment to don't know. |
#10
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Curious about Slide Scanner
On 2010-08-04 21:52:52 -0400, Mirsky said:
Hi. My mom has 3000 slides and wants to digitize them. She can't afford to have a store do it. I just found a cheap scanner on Amazon that scans slides: http://amzn.to/9K7DHs It's even cheaper on buy.com I can't find any reviews of it anywhere other than Amazon. I'm a little skeptical that the quality of the scans will be good, but I'm not an expert on scanners and scanners are much cheaper than they used to be. So, I'm looking for some opinions on whether it's worth buying the scanner. It's cheap and mom can afford it. I just don't want her to spend lots of time scanning if the quality of the scans isn't any good. Thanks, M That device is crap. It isn't worth the shipping price much less the cost. The quality you get will be abysmal. -- Michael |
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