Hereford Loc: Palm Coast, FL

I always study UHH threads about slide scanning, because I had some 7000 35mm slides to scan. I highly respect the "Burkphoto" threads to get quality digital scans. Epson scans will be adequate for most people, but I wanted more quality for my digitalization. After much review and study, photographing them with a digital camera is likely the highest quality method and Mr Burkphoto shows a rig setup to do that.

I used what I consider the second highest quality scanning method. I went on eBay and purchased a dedicated slide/film scanner -- an old Minolta Dimage 5400 that scans up to 5400 PPI for $600.00, and scanned my 7000 slides. That is enough pixels to make a 30" print on the long side @ 300 PPI. Being a Mac guy, I kept my old Intel 24" iMac running Snow Leopard OS 10.6, which was the last Mac OS that would support the original Minolta app software. I tried using Silverfast and another third party driver for comparison, but the Minolta driver produced much higher quality scans.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Thanks...

The old Minolta Dimage and Nikon Cool Scan film scanners were great until demand died out and manufacturer software support dried up. Kudos for keeping that old Mac on 10.6! I hope it is not connected to the Internet, because that OS, just like Windows XP from the same era, is vulnerable to malware attacks.

Old Coot

Look for an older Canon "Canoscan 9000 series" If you get one complete with original slide holder, you can scan 12 slides at once up to 1200 dpi. I have one and recently used it to scan hundreds of old slides.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Scanning a slide at 1200dpi provides up to 1700 x 1133 pixels from a full 35mm unmounted film frame. That will make a photo quality 6" by 4" print... and display adequately on a 1080P (full HD) TV.

dbrugger25 Loc: Raleigh, NC

Thank you very much. This was a very comprehensive response.

Ednsb Loc: Santa Barbara

2nd on this.. best value and probably the fastest solution. .

RichinSeattle

End of discussion. Epson's the best for the money.

Steved3604

On this topic you have "about" 2 or 3 + choices. One is a flatbed scanner (Epson/Canon, ETC). Recommend Silverfast or Vuescan software and happy with my "middle/high priced models. All manual set up of each slide -- lots of "monitoring" of the process. Next is a "dedicated" 35mm scanner -- Nikon, ETC. Advantage of the 35mm scanner is automatic feed (read unattended) but usually only 35mm mounted slides and limited color negative (unmounted) -- no large format and now new stock -- all are used items -- have a Nikon 5000 with auto feed -- won't sell it at any price. OK would trade for a new Tesla Plaid. Then the most interesting way is to use a Digital camera to "shoot" the slides, large format and prints, ETC. Remember you can always buy an expensive scanner/camera/ETC -- do the work and sell it for about what you paid for it. (About -- can't take a decade to do the job and expect about the same price sale. Well, maybe same number of $$. If you don't mind handling every "unit" for the scan then its pretty much Epson/Canon scanner or DSLR. I lean to the DSLR method with a good camera/lens/light source. You can get a rhythm going with the camera method that really "cranks" through the pictures. WYSIWYG. Good setups and suggestions on line and here (Burk) on how to do the DSLR method. Whatever you decide do some tests of set up and "size" (file and framing) -- be sure everything is OK before doing big runs of pix and having to do redo's because of some "issue". Murphy will be close by at the beginning.

BebuLamar

I have the Dimage Dual Scan IV and I install free version VueScan which I do not use just install it so it install the driver. Then I can use the Minolta software and it works fine. I can't scan directly into PS like I could with WinXP so I have to save as TIFF and the open the files in PS.

imagemeister Loc: mid east Florida

This has been a very info-rich thread ! 8-) .........bookmarking

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

Epson V600 does a great job. Get Vue Scan to go with it, more options than the driver and software that comes with the scanner. I don’t let the scanner do any editing. Do that myself in PS Elements.

Bunko.T Loc: Western Australia.

Epson! I did just that with an Epson V500 Perfection flatbed scanner. Very user friendly, flexible, great job.
The V 500 is obsolete now but later models, V600 maybe up more, but they accomodate all you mentioned.

Chessysailor Loc: Southport, NC

Before you invest a lot of time and money scanning slides, film strips, and the 5 shoeboxes of "snaps", I suggest you consider the "why". Why are you doing this? --kill time, bring back memories, or give the photos to the kids...? If you are like most amateur photographers you have thousands of junk pictures. Pictures of people you don't remember, 12 photos of the Eifel Tower, 100 photos of the Arizona desert, etc. I strongly suggest you break out your old 35mm slide projector and start culling your collection. No matter how fast your scanner is, it will take more time than you can imagine just to select and scan the photos you want to keep. Secondly, give some thought to how you are going to index your photos. Do you want to integrate pre-digital travel photos with photos from the last 10 years or keep all your scanner photos in a separate "history" file. And finally, how fussy are you on quality. You may have a great scanner but it is likely that a lot of your old photos have scratches, dust, faded, etc. Fixing is no big deal but can take forever. Good luck!

MAXD

I have the Epson V600 and a DSLR setup. The Epson works great and can even do 4X5 if you do it in two passes and stitch it together in PS. My other setup is an old Bowens Illumitron slide copier I got on EBAY really cheaply. It came with film holders from 35mm to 4X5, (could also use a Honeywell Repronar). The Bowens has built in flash with variable power and a provision for color corection filters if needed,(havn't needed). I use this with my Sony A77 Tamron 60mm Macro lens. With the focus peaking on the Sony I get a grain sharp 24meg result almost instantly. Since nobody has mention how many redos they have to do with a film scanner I will. Often you will see a problem and need to do a scan over, with the DSLR setup you can see it right now and correct quickly. The only drawback is color negs which require a work around to color balance, (a discussion for another thread.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Max, color and B&W neg processing is covered in the white paper I linked earlier in this thread. Check it out!