Slide Scanners

Author
Discussion

EJH

Original Poster:

932 posts

208 months

Thursday 29th September 2016
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I would like to digitise my late father’s slides of which there are probably a few thousand taken from the late 1960s to the early 2000s and was wondering if anyone could recommend a slide scanner for the job?

From looking online, the Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 (and SF-210 slide feeder) would look to produce excellent results…but also look to have been discontinued.

Another (slightly mad) option is to buy a Reflecta DigitDia 6000. These are over £1k (but I would hope have some resale value!) and have the advantage of loading a magazine to scan 100 slides per go…although I would need to transfer the slides from the Leica magazines they’re in to proprietary magazines (which some reviews suggest are made of chocolate).

At the more sensible end, a Plustek OpticFilm 8200i Ai would seem to do the job but can only accept batches of 4 slides at once.

Any feedback anyone has would be gratefully received

djsmith74

371 posts

149 months

Thursday 29th September 2016
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I use a Plustek 8100 scanner for scanning my 35mm films. It may not be he fastest but it does produce excellent results. The bundled Silverfast software is also excellent with a multitude of options, but it does have straightforward film presets that you can apply and then fine tweak afterwards if need be. If you're after a recommendation then at that price you can't go wrong for a dedicated film scanner - just put he kettle on and open a pack of biscuits and scan away!

An alternative is to get a decent flatbed scanner and scan the slides that way? You'd be able to scan more than one slide at a time.

NJH

3,021 posts

208 months

Thursday 29th September 2016
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If you have a DSLR and macro lens then the cheapest and fastest decent quality thing will be to mount the camera on a copy stand, slides one a time on a light box and just photograph them. Ideally one would have the camera tethered to a computer to make the whole process as slick as possible.

I have an old Minolta 5400 film scanner, incredible results but it is painfully slow taking up to several minutes to scan a slide of which it can only do 4 at a time mounted or a strip of 6 for film strips, but its native software doesn't support batch scanning so it literally means focusing and then setting the thing off to scan each image, then come back several minutes later and move on to the next frame. Scanning has been the bane of my life the past two years as I have been shooting film, really enjoy every other part of that process but in the near future I am accepting a drop in IQ from the MInolta 5400 to a DSLR and macro lens set up in exchange for a big increase in speed. The 5400 will then only get used for those rare cases I am trying to squeeze the absolute maximum out of 35mm film.

paul.deitch

2,086 posts

256 months

Friday 30th September 2016
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I had the same job to do a couple of years ago and bought a second hand (batches of 50 slides) Reflecta 4000 on Ebay for about 900. Scanned, I think, 20k slides including lending it to several friends. I sold it about 8 months later on Ebay for about 100-150 less than I paid. So the cost per slide ignoring the time element was almost nothing. Having scanned so many slides I spent the "saved" money on multiple backup hard-disks.For that quantity, if I had to do it again, I would buy two or three of them to reduce the work time.

Robertj21a

16,475 posts

104 months

Friday 30th September 2016
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djsmith74 said:
I use a Plustek 8100 scanner for scanning my 35mm films. It may not be he fastest but it does produce excellent results. The bundled Silverfast software is also excellent with a multitude of options, but it does have straightforward film presets that you can apply and then fine tweak afterwards if need be. If you're after a recommendation then at that price you can't go wrong for a dedicated film scanner - just put he kettle on and open a pack of biscuits and scan away!

An alternative is to get a decent flatbed scanner and scan the slides that way? You'd be able to scan more than one slide at a time.
I've been using the previous model, Plustek 7200, for some years and am very happy with the results. Not the fastest, but quite good all the same, and ridiculously cheap for such a useful piece of kit.

bernhund

3,767 posts

192 months

Friday 30th September 2016
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paul.deitch said:
I had the same job to do a couple of years ago and bought a second hand (batches of 50 slides) Reflecta 4000 on Ebay for about 900. Scanned, I think, 20k slides including lending it to several friends. I sold it about 8 months later on Ebay for about 100-150 less than I paid. So the cost per slide ignoring the time element was almost nothing. Having scanned so many slides I spent the "saved" money on multiple backup hard-disks.For that quantity, if I had to do it again, I would buy two or three of them to reduce the work time.
I did the same thing a few years back on a much smaller scale. I bought a Nikon Coolscan off Ebay, scanned all my slides, lent it to some friends to do theirs and put it back on Ebay. Sold it for what I paid for it.

C0ffin D0dger

3,440 posts

144 months

Friday 30th September 2016
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Interesting this has come up. I have an Epson RX620 Printer/Scanner (flat bed) that can do slides. It has an extra light in the lid specifically for scanning transparencies and a plastic frame that you can put either four slides or a strip of negatives in. Seems like they still sell a similar product, this is the bottom of the range equivalent: https://www.epson.co.uk/products/scanners/consumer...

My Mum gave me a couple of boxes of slides to digitize ages ago. Problem is the printing side of the scanner gave up quite while back and I was all set to take the thing over the tip when we cleared out our loft but then remembered the slides.

I hooked it up to my Windows 10 laptop, not a hope in hell of getting the thing working, no drivers etc. I then fired up the Windows XP machine (also from the loft) that it used to be hooked up to, no problem with this and was able to scan my Mum's slides four at a time. I had it set to the highest resolution so it was taking upwards of 10 minutes for four photos, I'm guessing I can scale this back a bit for speed. Did all the slides my Mum had given me over a couple of evenings. Now the word has got out (thanks wife!) and my father-in-law turned up them other week with a massive box of slides. My Mum has given me some more too.

I'm hoping I can put a Windows XP virtual machine on my laptop and use the scanner through that however information on the 'net as to whether this will work or not is a bit vague and it seems like I have a 50:50 chance. I got as far as installing VirtualBox and a Windows XP install but have yet to try plugging in the scanner. Would be great if I could get this to work as it's a PITA having to setup the desktop everytime I want to scan, unfortunately I haven't got anywhere I can set it up semi-permanently otherwise I would.

The adapters for DSLR cameras look like another interesting option and would certainly be a lot faster. The problem I see is that I have a Canon 450D with an APS-C sensor so it would seem like this will crop the slides slightly compared to a more expensive DSLR with a full frame sensor. Not sure if this is really a problem or not? Anyone got any experience of using these, specifically on an APS-C camera?

droopsnoot

11,810 posts

241 months

Friday 30th September 2016
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djsmith74 said:
An alternative is to get a decent flatbed scanner and scan the slides that way? You'd be able to scan more than one slide at a time.
On that, would it not be better to project the slides onto a clean white wall (bedsheet, proper screen) and take the photo of the projected image? I'm just thinking that a projected slide would be enlarged by the lens in the projector (so no pixellation) and you'd be taking a photo of a larger image. I can't explain why I think that might come out better. Presuming no marks on the screen, of course. Just thinking that a projector is probably a couple of pounds on a car boot sale these days.

I have a fascination for old slides and pick up the few I see on car boots. I bought a Maplin scanner and while it's OK for scanning old street scenes to pick out interesting cars in the background, it's no better than that. If I had a lot of good quality slides it would be disappointing. Still, it was only £20.

pilbeam_mp62

955 posts

200 months

Saturday 1st October 2016
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For a dedicated slide scanner, take a look at the Nikon Super Coolscan 5000. You can scan slides one at a time, or you can buy the multi-feed attachment which allows you to load 30-50 slides at once (depending on the type of mount - cardboard or plastic) and then "batch" scan them and save them all. As an example, if you want a file size of say 6-7 MB, then each scan will take approximately 1 minute, so the ability to set it running and leave it is very good.

If you have strips of negatives, you can buy an attachment that allows you to scan these as well. A review of that machine can be found at http://slidescannerreview.co.uk/nikon-super-coolsc...

An alternative is a flatbed scanner. Check out a review of the Epson V750

This one comes with several plastic holders that allow you to scan slides or negatives - both 35mm and medium format.

I own both of these machines and have achieved good results. As I said, it depends how much material you need to scan, and the results that you want. I was happy to spend more as I have a huge archive of my grandfather's material to scan - approximately 30,000 negatives and slides - he was a well known amateur photographer in the 1940-1960 period. Examples can be seen at http://www.sdjouhar.com/

A third alternative is to have them professionally scanned and have the raw scans saved to a CD for you to colour-correct individually (which you will probably need to do if the material is particularly old) - I have colour slides from the late 1930's which have turned out well with a bit of post-scan processing. Good Luck.



C&C

3,281 posts

220 months

Thursday 6th October 2016
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I went for one of the old style slide duplicators.

Bought a set of adapter/step up/down rings and put on the front of a 24-105 zoom, itself sitting on a set of extension rings. Note - it would probably be less cumbersome and more effective to use a macro lens - also likely better quality images. Definitely remove the cheap plastic "macro lens" supplied with the duplicator from the equation.

Lighting was via off-camera flash unit pointing back at the diffuser on the slide duplicator.

The resultant images needed a little cropping/straightening but the results were pretty ok for what I needed.

Couple of points - some of the reviews say that the diffuser on the slide copier was scratched/damaged. When mine arrived it also looked a bit dodgy - until you remove the (not very obvious) plastic protective film stuck to it.

Also - need to ensure slides are dust-free (as in any slide copying solution).

Although you can only do one slide at a time then have to re-load, check focus etc, it's a lot quicker than a scanner as taking the photo is instant so you can get through quite a few quickly.

Other advantage is that if you've already got a macro lens/extension tubes/off camera flash, trying this option out costs less than £50.

Below are a few examples taken ages ago (around early 1980s) originally I think on a Praktica MTL3 with Fujichrome 100 film:

Boat by conradsphotos, on Flickr

Sign by conradsphotos, on Flickr

Buoys by conradsphotos, on Flickr




Edited for spelling.

Edited by C&C on Thursday 6th October 05:21

S6PNJ

5,157 posts

280 months

Thursday 8th March 2018
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I know this is an old thread, but as I had it in my bookmarks, I thought I'd use it as a basis for my question.

Both my wife and I have loads of old slides from family and relatives and at some point it would be nice to see what's actually on them. Rather than projecting, we'd like to scan and save to disk so is the Lidl offering any good does anyone know?

https://www.lidl.co.uk/en/Non-Food-Offers.htm?arti...


covboy

2,573 posts

173 months

Thursday 8th March 2018
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S6PNJ said:
I know this is an old thread, but as I had it in my bookmarks, I thought I'd use it as a basis for my question.

Both my wife and I have loads of old slides from family and relatives and at some point it would be nice to see what's actually on them. Rather than projecting, we'd like to scan and save to disk so is the Lidl offering any good does anyone know?

https://www.lidl.co.uk/en/Non-Food-Offers.htm?arti...

Might be some Maplin ones going cheap soon !

Robertj21a

16,475 posts

104 months

Friday 9th March 2018
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S6PNJ said:
I know this is an old thread, but as I had it in my bookmarks, I thought I'd use it as a basis for my question.

Both my wife and I have loads of old slides from family and relatives and at some point it would be nice to see what's actually on them. Rather than projecting, we'd like to scan and save to disk so is the Lidl offering any good does anyone know?

https://www.lidl.co.uk/en/Non-Food-Offers.htm?arti...

At that price you can hardly go wrong.

droopsnoot

11,810 posts

241 months

Friday 9th March 2018
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Other than the slide feeder, that looks remarkably similar to my old Maplin scanner that I mentioned above. Same 5Mp resolution, the film strip holders look identical, but mine has one of those with four positions to hold mounted slides. I'm still using it now, scanned some slides the other day with it.

I'm happy with what it does for the stuff I'm scanning but as I said before, if you have some great images, the quality leaves something to be desired - for holiday memories it's probably fine though. But for the money, you can give it a go without losing much, and see for yourself.

ETA - actually it's a bit taller than mine, which might mean it has more differences under the skin. Mine claims "3600dpi interpolation resolution" against the Lidl one at 1800dpi, but the two may be the same. Interestingly it talks about 5x5cm slides, it would be good to know if that means the negative size, or if it's talking about a 35mm slide in a 5x5cm mount - I suspect the latter.

Edited by droopsnoot on Friday 9th March 10:55

sgrimshaw

7,311 posts

249 months

Friday 9th March 2018
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Essentially it's a (cheap) 5mp webcam in a box with some led illumination.

Keep your expectations low and you might not be too disappointed.

For £25 it's probably worth a look, you can always return it if you're not happy with the results.


Mr Pointy

11,146 posts

158 months

Friday 9th March 2018
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Scanning slides or negatives is a very labour intensive process so it's a poor investment of your time to do it using such a low spec scanner. A good scanner such as a Plustek can be easily resold when you have finished to recover a good percentage of the initial cost. I found that the most important feature was automatic dust & scretch removal as this made a huge difference to the appearance of the final scan. You'll need a scanner that supports this (usually by means of a separate infra red scan channel) although it may do it in the same pass as the main scan.

If anyone has an older scanner that doesn't have windows 10 drivers then take a look at Vuescan. It acts as a driver interface between the scanner & the OS:

http://www.hamrick.com/

One last suggestion is to triage your slides. You may well find not all of them are worth scanning.


Robertj21a

16,475 posts

104 months

Friday 9th March 2018
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Mr Pointy said:
[Edited]

One last suggestion is to triage your slides. You may well find very few of them are worth scanning.

Corrected that for you.

biggrin

droopsnoot

11,810 posts

241 months

Monday 12th March 2018
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It all depends on what you're scanning though - if your slides are memories of holidays from years ago, being a bit dark or a bit scratched doesn't really matter. Mine (sadly) aren't incredible images, so the cheapo scanner is plenty for that.


Simpo Two

85,148 posts

264 months

Monday 12th March 2018
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I tried the 'Happy Shopper' style scanner and it was largely useless with bad vignetting.

I got far better results with a lightbox, tripod and a macro lens.

Mr Pointy

11,146 posts

158 months

Monday 12th March 2018
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If anyone is looking for a scanner keep an eye on Gumtree. There was a Nikon Coolscan on for £320 which didn't last long before it went.