NickGee Loc: Pacific Northwest

I have a couple of thousand B&W negatives in sleeves from my early days in photography (we're talking 70s) and I've decided to begin digitizing and reworking some of them. I've been doing a lot of reading on the subject and decided that a dedicated negative scanner (rather than flatbed) is the best approach and I'm considering the PlusTek 8200i SE. I wonder if many of you digitize your B&W negatives using this or similar scanner, or if you have other digitizing techniques that you use.

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts and experiences on the matter of digitizing B&W negatives. Thanks!

sgt hop Loc: baltimore md,now in salisbury md

i tape mine to an x-ray viwer and shoot 'em....not high class but works for me

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

The 8200i says it can output files up to 69MP. Alas, it's just 1 frame at a time. That's going to be a long slow process, with possibly wonderful output files to then pass onto a digital editor. The PlusTek is not a flatbed scanner like the Epson v600 and similar models that can 'batch' process around 6 frames at a time.

If you open consideration back to the Epson ideas, here's a summary of my process from a few years ago, with an output in the 10MP range: https://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-689142-1.html

NickGee Loc: Pacific Northwest

Yes, I've considered this but am leaning towards accepting the tradeoff in time vs. quality. Most guidance I've received suggests that going full 7200 dpi scans is not necessary with greyscale, that I should be good with somewhere between 2400 and 3600. I'll experiment though. Agreed that scanning old B/W negatives is a slog. In my view, it's nonsense to undertake unless the payback is worth it. By all accounts, a dedicated 35mm scanner is the best option, albeit time consuming.

There's this, too: I intend to be selective and have no intention of scanning entire pages of six-neg sleeves, nor even entire six-neg strips for that matter. Most are junk.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

10MP proved fine for me. It matched to the resolution of the DSLR I was shooting at the time and gives plenty of pixels for editing. I just don't edit the images that are inferior in my 6 at a time scanning process of historical negatives. I have a lot of images that I'm happy to 'have back' in a digital form, but nothing was intended for print nor needed a higher pixel resolution than 10MP. My newer work I have scanned to around 17MP that I'm much happier with. If you're still shooting 35mm, here that scanner and possible resolution would be a benefit.

Tote1940 Loc: Dallas

Have used Minolta and Canon film scanners, both now dead after over 200000 scans.
Important thing is Vuescan from hamrick.com
Allows 6 negs to be scanned automatically after individually adjusting cropping, exposure etc
Much better than scanning software that came with scanners
Remember there is a learning curve with any scanner, do not attempt to use IR dust removal, does not work with monochrome negs.
Good luck and much patience.

NickGee Loc: Pacific Northwest

Thanks. Yes, VueScan is the best option since I'll be outputting TIFFs and doing all of my editing in Lightroom. While SilverFast is the primo app, its value is adjustments and editing that I'll be doing in Lightroom anyway.