Negatives scanners

[jgrobler]

Hi all,
Since I know we have a number of photographers here, I want to solicit some advice again.

I have several negatives (35mm) that I'd like to scan. However, places locally only scan to the equivalent of about 2MP. I don't want to go digital at that low resolution, so on-line I found a few places that will scan up to about 4MP, for around 40 to 50 cents per image. That's going to be a lot of dollars to invest, so I started looking at diy scanners. I found a few for less than $150, that can do up to 5MP. But I don't know about the quality.

Do any of you have experience with either using a service that you can recommend, or one of the scanners that you can recommend, or advise me to stay away from.

Appreciate any and all feedback.

Johan

[Tom Slick]

These links might be helpful but are usually talking about slides;
http://www.outdoorphotographer.com/c...big-print.html
http://www.outdoorphotographer.com/c...s.html?start=1
http://www.outdoorphotographer.com/h...o-digital.html

[Raffi]

Look into an epson perfection photo scanner that has a transparency option. They are inexpensive, but get the job done with very good results in my use. Caveat: they are slow when scanning negatives.

Good Luck.

[jziegler]

Minoltaused to make a series of low cost film scanners. I have one (dImage sacn dual III) and it scans at 2800 or so DPI, which gives a resolution of around 3000x2500 for a 35mm negative or slide. They were discontiuned years ago, but might be available used. Nikon and others make/made better scanners, but for more $$$. I'd avoid the cheaper scanners sold today, I have heard bad things about them.

Some of the Epson (and possibly others now) flatbed scanners can do transperanceis and are said to do a good job, which is what Raffi is suggesting. They might not have as good of a feeder as a dedicated film scanner, but should get similar quality results.

Look up digital ICE (missing from my Minolta) which is a scratch removal feature.

Jim

[jgrobler]

Thanks for the comments and links.

[LCHIEN]

A special film scanner will do both pos and neg images, the reversal is managed in Software.
A film scanner has the advantage over a large flat bed scanner, that it is optimized for high resolution over a small image area and also will probbaly have a better light source, again, optimized for the small area.

[Hoover]

One caution about buying used scanners, the software they ran on was Windows 95 or 98, some up to Windows Millenium. My scanner would not run on Windows XP (Agfa Scanner).

[richtw]

try vuescan with your older scanners

I have a microtek scanner that I am not willing to get rid of

I got it to work with xp (even though the drivers were for 95).

It's SCSI, and while I was able to find a driver for the SCSI card for Vista that worked in Windows 7, I was having no luck getting the scanner up

then I tried vuescan. http://www.hamrick.com/vsm.html.

I had seen it before but didn't need it. It worked and the scanner was happily making images in windows 7, so before you give up on the older scanners try the free download.


It lists AGFA scanners among the supported models