bw79st Loc: New York City

Check the title of the thread.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Yes, the variable height flatbed scanner film holders are worth it, if you care about getting the most from your scanner. One of the reasons I use a camera and macro lens is that inexpensive (sub-$1000) scanners in general are not super-sharp. If I had access to one of these holders before I ditched the scanner, I would probably have kept the scanner!

Ekeeton

There are several development labs that scan 4x5. Without recommendation here is one you might check: https://processonephoto.com

Rich1939 Loc: Pike County Penna.

Thank you very much, I will contact them

David in Dallas Loc: Dallas, Texas, USA

I've checked this topic for several years and so far have not found anything other than a flatbed type scanner that will handle size 127 superslides. I have quite a few of those still awaiting digitization.

Sidwalkastronomy Loc: New Jersey Shore

My family vacations when a child were always shot with 35 mm slide film. Now 50 years later we have 5000 slides. Most in cardboard mounts. Problem in scanning them is dust from old cardboard leaving spots on slides. Camel hair brush/compressed air not helping and at times making things worse. For the #of slides photo shop the dust not practical.
Any easy solutions?

Saxguy Loc: Plano, TX

I also use the Epson Perfection V600 scanner. My late parents took LOTS of photos, slides and negatives. The scanner comes with templates for using on slides and film negatives. Once you get the software slightly figured out, it is a breeze to use. I import them into Lightroom and finish a few edits. If you have a lot of images to do, this may be more cost effective than a service.

Sidwalkastronomy Loc: New Jersey Shore

5000 slides with cardboard dust would take years to fix

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

There are easy solutions (send them to a service), but it will cost thousands of dollars. My suggestion is to get a slide projector or viewer and go through them and cull down to 10% of that number. The fact is that no one will ever look at 5,000 digital images, even if you successfully archive them digitally. After you get it down to a usable number, you can have them professionally cleaned/scanned or scan yourself using some of the scanning SW to remove some/most of the dust.

Sidwalkastronomy Loc: New Jersey Shore

That's the real solution. Slides are in the Kodak cube system so will have to look for a working projector.

rfmaude41 Loc: Lancaster, Texas (DFW area)

It's Better Scanner, not Batter Scanner.

rfmaude41 Loc: Lancaster, Texas (DFW area)

There are DRUM Scanners, but their cost is "prohibitive".

AndyH Loc: Massachusetts and New Hampshire

You're so right (as was my link). I must have been confusing it with my baking app...

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

Hi Boone,

If your friend has a relatively small number of images that need digital conversion, I'd recommend having a service do the work.

It also depends upon the quality needed. If it's only moderate to low ("Internet") quality that's needed, a scanning service will be relatively inexpensive on a per image basis.

If it's extremely high quality that's needed, but only for a few images, that's a lot more expensive per image to have done but still might be best left in the hands of a pro scanning service.

However, if your friend has a large number of images and wants better quality they may be better buying a scanner and learning to use it... doing the scans themselves. What they choose for this purpose depends upon how high quality they want the digital files to be. There are inexpensive scanners ($100 to $200), but they're generally only make relatively low resolution, 8-bit JPEGs that might be able to make 4x6 to maybe5x7" prints, at best. These files will not have a lot of flexibility for adjustment in post-processing.

More advanced... and more expensive... scanners are available. There are both dedicated film scanners and flat bed scanners.

Film scanners have the highest image quality potential. Some of them scan 7200 ppi to 10000 ppi. They can make 16-bit TIFFs (48 bit scans), which are much more versatile for post-processing work and able to make much larger prints. I've made 11x14" and 12x18" prints from 16-bit TIFFs scanned with a 4000 ppi dedicated film scanner (I use a Nikon scanner, but they no longer make them).

Film scanners for 35mm film (and some smaller formats) aren't terribly expensive these days.

It's when you get into medium format.... or batch scanning mounted slides... that it gets pricey.

Very high-end flat-bed scanners like the Epson V800 come very close to the quality of dedicated film scanners.

With both types of scanners, high resolution 16-bit TIFF files are big... really big! They will fill up hard drives FAST. My Nikon scanner at 4000 ppi produces 130MB 16-bit TIFF files! The higher resolution scanners will make even larger files. Tell your friend to take this into consideration. A lot of images at high resolution are going to require a lot of hard drive storage space! I only get approx. 8 files per gigabyte (hence, I have many terabytes of storage!)

Also, with both types of scanners the software that's used to control the scanner is important. The best software is Silverfast AI. It's designed for specific scanners is expensive... and costs about $400 to buy separately. The best way to get it is in a bundle with the scanner, where the cost is much more reasonable.

Currently all I could find Silverfast bundled with three Plustek dedicated film scanner models... their 8000 and 8000i come with Silverfast "SE", which is a "light" version, and sell for $349 and $399 respectively. The difference between these two is that the "i' version has integrated dust detection and deletion feature (which can be handy). They also offer an 8000 AI version for $499, which is the same as the 8000i, except it's bundled with Silverfast Studio software, which is the more robust and full featured version.

The Epson V800 and V850 are also bundled with Silverfast. Both are 6400 ppi resolution. The V800 is currently selling for $899 and the V850 for $1149. One of the differences between these models is the software... the V800 comes with Silverfast SE, while the V850 includes Silverfast SE Plus along with X-Rite calibration software. A flat bed scanner such as these may be more versatile. It can more easily accommodate a variety or film sizes: 35mm, medium format, even large format 4x5 or 5x7. It's also able to scan printed materials, as well as able to "gang scan" several images all at the same time.

The dedicated film scanners mentioned here can handle up to 35mm (mounted slides), and probably some smaller film formats (there are medium and even large format capable, but they are much pricier). They are usually manually fed images one at a time, unless it's a negative strip which some models can auto-feed to scan consecutively. However there are some that can scan an entire, uncut roll of film... And some more expensive models that can automatically load 35mm mounted slides. I have an accessory for my Nikon film scanner that allows up to 40 mounted slides to be batch scanned.... but it's very time consuming (the highest resolution scans can take 10 minutes per image... so 40 slides can take close to 7 hours to scan).

There are other software. I've used Vuescan, which sells separately for under $100. It's pretty basic, but is okay and works with most scanners. Both flat bed and dedicated film types also might come with the manufacturer's own proprietary software.

I mentioned dust and scratch detection and deletion above... some scanners use do a special scan to find these flaws and will then automatically "clone" them out of the image. This usually works well, but occasionally an image is effected by it. Of course it's always best to get the slide or neg as clean as possible and avoid scratching them!

Slide and color negs are both fully transmissive... dyes that allow light to pass through for scanning.... and scan well. "Chromogenic" black & white film is and does, too.

Silver-halide B&W film can be difficult to scan. By far the most common B&W neg film, it uses grains of silver to form an image by actually blocking light passing through the film. As a result, scans of this type of film (), tend to get contrasty and lose fine detail in both shadows and highlights. I preferred to print an enlargement from the B&W image in the traditional way, in a darkroom... then scan that on a flat bed. Newer scanners and their software are better handling B&W negatives, but it's still not perfect.

If I were shooting B&W today with the intention of scanning it, I'd make a point of using the chromogenic film. It requires C41 processing (like most color neg film) and prints from it tend to be a bit low contrast... however it scans much better than silver-based B&W film and contrast can easily be adjusted in the digital file.

Some old slide film types are also a bit challenging to scan. Kodachrome, in particular, can give some strange results at times.

Finally, if your friend is still interested after all this, wants the higher quality type of scanner but is concerned about the cost... consider buying used. A lot of people buy a scanner to convert a film archive to digital, then when they finish the job, sell off the scanner. After all, if they don't plan to continue shooting film, once everything has been scanned they have no reason to keep the scanner. In fact, if this is what your friend is doing, they could do the same and quite likely recoup a lot of the cost of the scanner.

Hope this helps!

albartos Loc: Riverside, CA

I've used two services and they both worked very well.
www.scancafe.com and digmypics.com

ScanCafe is out of India and Digmypics is in the USA