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

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

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

"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

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.

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.

"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.

"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.

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.

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