Digitizing slides

[Papa Bear]

Having jumped into Digital photography about 5 years ago and slowly "moving up" to better cameras and (hopfully) better technique, I find my self with hundreds and hundreds of slides.

Is there a way to get these digitized? Comercial services? Some neat gizmo?

Are there options or price points such as

- modest number of slides, perhaps manually loaded?

- large numbers perhaps from a carosel?

- levels of resolution and color quality?

I'd like to start with a few and work the bugs out of any process I go in for.

Thanks

 

[Mongoose]

I use a Canon Canoscan FS4000. It works well for me, all the photos on my website are scanned with it. Canon must have stopped making it a while ago because I can't find it anywhere.

It looks like the current model in the series is the CanoScan 4400F. Here's a link

 

[Papa Bear]

I use a Canon Canoscan FS4000. It works well for me, all the photos on my website are scanned with it. Canon must have stopped making it a while ago because I can't find it anywhere.

It looks like the current model in the series is the CanoScan 4400F. Here's a link

That looks interesting, since it's also a high res general purpose scanner.

Question: when scanning mounted slides, how does it manage the "focus" where the cardboard of the slide keeps the slide surface a fraction of an inch off the scanner glass?

 

[NewHampshire]

Try this Papa Bear:

Canon Negative scanner

It will scan up to 4 slides (or 12 35mm frames) at a time. This is a little more expensive then some on their site , but it is the one with the higher resolution. I am planning on picking one up when I get some extra cash.

This will be waaaay better than a flatbed scanner.

Brian

 

[Peakbagr]

http://www.vftt.org/forums/showthread.php?t=15393

 

[Papa Bear]

http://www.vftt.org/forums/showthread.php?t=15393

Thanks for that link. I'll read through it.

Try this Papa Bear:

Canon Negative scanner

I use a Canon Canoscan FS4000. It works well for me, all the photos on my website are scanned with it. Canon must have stopped making it a while ago because I can't find it anywhere.

It looks like the current model in the series is the CanoScan 4400F

NewHampshire's link is for the Canon 8600F. The specs for this (at $170) and for the Canon 4400F ($90) are almost identical:

4400F
8600F


All the resoluttion specs look the same. The only differences I can see are the slightly wider ability of the 8600 to scan strips of negatives (3" vs. 1.5") and the fact that it's faster (2 sec. vs. 2.6 sec) and heavier (9.3 lbs vs. 6.2 lbs). This means I could scan 12 negatives at a time instead of 6. But I don't have any negatives, only slides. Both models will scan 4 slides at a time.

So why should I spend the extra $80? Are there some "hidden" qualities I'm missing?

 

[Mongoose]

It looks like the 8600F is a little bit faster and can scan 120 roll film. Since you're only scanning slides all you'll be getting for the extra money is more speed.

 

[psmart]

Nikon LS-2000

I've finally gone digital (Olympus C-8080), but I had about 6000 slides to scan, so I needed an automatic feeder. This reduces the number of candidates - and increases the price considerably. I went with a Nikon LS-2000 plus the SF-200 slide feeder. It takes a little while to get used to the software, but it works very well. Focus and exposure are automatic, athough there are extensive manual controls as well. Color balance takes the most time, since it really needs to be fine-tuned for each type of film and light source. I've got all my slides notched to be sure they go in the feeder (or projector) the right way. This is especially important with batch scans, since its a real pain to have to re-scan individual slides. I believe there are less expensive models now, but if you need an automatic feeder this still bumps you up to a "professional" model.