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Auto Slide Scanners
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Auto Slide Scanners
On Jul 10, 4:27 pm, john wrote:
I want to scan a bunch of family slides. The Nikon 5000ED scanner with the SF-210 auto slide feeder retails for about $1500. Are there no other brands? How does one find used ones that are reliable? Respond to John, When I was faced with the same question, I decided against the Nikon automatic slide feeder since even my camera store told me they are prone to jamming. I opted for a Konica-Minolta D'iMAGE 5600-2 instead and am very happy with it. Unfortunately they are not available new any longer, but I think my decision process and experience still has value for you. The time to load slides into a four slide holder is small compared to the other time elements involved, so an automatic slide feeder wouldn't save that much time. It takes time to air clean the slides, scan, categorize, notate, etc. Unless you do that, what you end up with isn't all that useful. I have had an outside scan service scan some of my slides with mixed results. Compared to what my time is worth, it was a very cost effective way to see what I had and, if warranted, rescan the best ones on my own. Interestingly, the first scans the service did for me were much poorer than the ones I obtained directly, even though their Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED was a more expensive scanner than mine. These were old slides and had many scratches that my digital ICE cleaned up nicely. I asked if they were using digital ICE-4, which is what I have, and they said they were. But, whereas my ICE is either on or off, he had settings and only after he tweaked his settings did he get scans comparable to mine. I did invest in an extra slide holder so I could be loading four new slides while the other four were being scanned. Having an extra laptop that can do the scans somewhere away from your normal work area also helps -- it's a bit distracting to have the scanner grinding away on my desk. BTW, don't believe the manual when it says not to use ICE on Kodachrome film. Try it and you may well like it. In my case, some 65 year old Kodachromes were unusable without ICE, but quite beautiful with it. I've really enjoyed having my family's old slides in a form that I can view and share so easily. (Look into Phanfare.com as a way to share with your family. They cost a bit, but allow full resolution downloads.) Hope this helps and good luck. Martin |
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Auto Slide Scanners
john wrote:
I want to scan a bunch of family slides. The Nikon 5000ED scanner with the SF-210 auto slide feeder retails for about $1500. Are there no other brands? How does one find used ones that are reliable? Respond to John, To pay $1500 for a scanner would be ridiculous unless you have thousands of really good slides to scan. I recently bought a Plustek Optikfilm 7200, admittedly not automatic, but with excellent optics and software (Silverfast SE) for around $150, and have scanned all the decent slides I have had since the sixties. There are many in-between slide/negative scanners which are semi-automatic, and the Minoltas are worth considering, but unless you are a pro, the Nikon is really overkill. Of course, I am retired, and therefore have lots of time to spend on each slide, but be aware that unless you do so, the results will be disapointing, even with the Nikon, as some post-processing is essential if you want to show your slides to other people, which presumably is one of the objects of the excercise! Dennis. |
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Auto Slide Scanners
On Jul 10, 7:27 pm, john wrote:
I want to scan a bunch of family slides. The Nikon 5000ED scanner with the SF-210 auto slide feeder retails for about $1500. Are there no other brands? How does one find used ones that are reliable? Respond to The slide feeder on the Nikon film scanners are very good with plastic mounted slides, poor with old cardboard mounts, these cause a lot of jamming. 50 slides is a lot to scan at once, could test the memory of all but the most robust computers. The Minolta 4 slide holder is the other way, a little short on capacity, I have a Minolta Scan Multi with a 4 slide holder. Minolta scanners are discontinued by Sony and only the latest had Digital Ice. Right now I am using an Epson V700, I find it better in all ways than my older Nikon LS2000, and a little less sharp but much more dynamic range than my Minolta. This scanner is a flatbed designed for film, Epson came close with earlier models but the V700 and V750 are comparible with the available film scanners. Takes 12 slides, which is a good number, and has Digital Ice 4. I don't use Digital Ice much because my slides are kept in sleeves, in file cabinets. But if I see slides coming in carousel trays I will use it, very effective. This is compatible with Kodachrome, I don't get many Kodachromes so I don't know of any special procedures, the results have been very good. Digital Ice doubles the time of a scan. Tom |
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Auto Slide Scanners
On Jul 11, 12:10 am, wrote:
On Jul 10, 4:27 pm, john wrote: I want to scan a bunch of family slides. The Nikon 5000ED scanner with the SF-210 auto slide feeder retails for about $1500. Are there no other brands? How does one find used ones that are reliable? Respond to John, When I was faced with the same question, I decided against the Nikon automatic slide feeder since even my camera store told me they are prone to jamming. I opted for a Konica-Minolta D'iMAGE 5600-2 instead and am very happy with it. Unfortunately they are not available new any longer, but I think my decision process and experience still has value for you. The time to load slides into a four slide holder is small compared to the other time elements involved, so an automatic slide feeder wouldn't save that much time. It takes time to air clean the slides, scan, categorize, notate, etc. Unless you do that, what you end up with isn't all that useful. I have had an outside scan service scan some of my slides with mixed results. Compared to what my time is worth, it was a very cost effective way to see what I had and, if warranted, rescan the best ones on my own. Interestingly, the first scans the service did for me were much poorer than the ones I obtained directly, even though their Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED was a more expensive scanner than mine. These were old slides and had many scratches that my digital ICE cleaned up nicely. I asked if they were using digital ICE-4, which is what I have, and they said they were. But, whereas my ICE is either on or off, he had settings and only after he tweaked his settings did he get scans comparable to mine. I did invest in an extra slide holder so I could be loading four new slides while the other four were being scanned. Having an extra laptop that can do the scans somewhere away from your normal work area also helps -- it's a bit distracting to have the scanner grinding away on my desk. BTW, don't believe the manual when it says not to use ICE on Kodachrome film. Try it and you may well like it. In my case, some 65 year old Kodachromes were unusable without ICE, but quite beautiful with it. I've really enjoyed having my family's old slides in a form that I can view and share so easily. (Look into Phanfare.com as a way to share with your family. They cost a bit, but allow full resolution downloads.) Hope this helps and good luck. Martin Well if you're done with it, sell it to him and you'll both be happy. |
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Auto Slide Scanners
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