35mm Negative Scanner..... for a mac?
Discussion
The old man is showing his age and moved to Mac.
He used to do a lot of photography and has a lot of pictures on film.. Having moved to digital when everyone else did, i have decided to get him a scanner to scan in his old negatives.
Criteria:
Easy to use
Mac friendly
<£80
Not so laborious that he gives up
ETA: not flat bed, want a dedicated scanner
What say you?
He used to do a lot of photography and has a lot of pictures on film.. Having moved to digital when everyone else did, i have decided to get him a scanner to scan in his old negatives.
Criteria:
Easy to use
Mac friendly
<£80
Not so laborious that he gives up
ETA: not flat bed, want a dedicated scanner
What say you?
Edited by Chucklehead on Tuesday 16th June 21:43
Chucklehead said:
The old man is showing his age and moved to Mac.
He used to do a lot of photography and has a lot of pictures on film.. Having moved to digital when everyone else did, i have decided to get him a scanner to scan in his old negatives.
Criteria:
Easy to use
Mac friendly
<£80
Not so laborious that he gives up
ETA: not flat bed, want a dedicated scanner
What say you?
Less then £80 kills the idea really but more significantly I suspect that 'easy to use' really means 'just works and produces brilliant results for all originals with no user input' and that simply is not going to happen.He used to do a lot of photography and has a lot of pictures on film.. Having moved to digital when everyone else did, i have decided to get him a scanner to scan in his old negatives.
Criteria:
Easy to use
Mac friendly
<£80
Not so laborious that he gives up
ETA: not flat bed, want a dedicated scanner
What say you?
Edited by Chucklehead on Tuesday 16th June 21:43
Maybe cull the selection heavily and consider using a scanning service.
If you really want a dedicated scanner look for late model Minolta or Nikon unts on eBay but don;t expect to find drivers for the latest Mac OS releases. On the upside you could buy, make it work somehow, scan and then sell on and probably do that for around £80 with luck.
I don't want to sound negative but you do have to be realistic with this subject.
ok, no problem - is it the budget that kills it?
i saw things like the Veho VFS004 and thought that this would produce acceptable results? I appreciate these things go up to £XXXX in price, but thought something around the £80 mark would be enough him to play with?
i saw things like the Veho VFS004 and thought that this would produce acceptable results? I appreciate these things go up to £XXXX in price, but thought something around the £80 mark would be enough him to play with?
LongQ said:
I don't want to sound negative
see what you did there Edited by Chucklehead on Wednesday 17th June 07:10
Chucklehead said:
ok, no problem - is it the budget that kills it?
i saw things like the Veho VFS004 and thought that this would produce acceptable results? I appreciate these things go up to £XXXX in price, but thought something around the £80 mark would be enough him to play with?
Hehe.i saw things like the Veho VFS004 and thought that this would produce acceptable results? I appreciate these things go up to £XXXX in price, but thought something around the £80 mark would be enough him to play with?
LongQ said:
I don't want to sound negative
see what you did there Edited by Chucklehead on Wednesday 17th June 07:10
I guess it was a transparent comment.
I have yet to hear anyone sing the praises of the very low price dedicated scanners and similar items from the past decade, even carrying higher price tags, seem to have been less than enthusiastically reported on.
For playing with the expectation of it becoming a 'back of the cupboard' toy your budget is about right. For a little more than that you can probably pick up a current flatbed scanner with a dedicated 35mm slide/negative film scanning head that should do a better job of scanning but will require some commitment to completing the task.
I would suggest some of the older models, pre-owned, via eBay since scanning standards have been high with little breakthrough development for a few years now but I am not sure about future operating system compatibility, especially for Macs. So the newer products are likely to be a better investment.
The Canon CanoScan 4400F is a flatbed with a film/slide adapter head and should be available at your budget price. I'm not sure about the results it produces, I don't recall reading any reviews, but to play with it would probably be a worthwhile investment since it can be used as an ordinary scanner as well. Canon have a couple of other lowish cost flatbeds with film capabilities. Epson's products, so far as I can see, start at over £100. In both cases their more expensive offerings tend to be the ones that get greater attention for photo scanning applications.
There is a review of the Canon Lide 700F here:
http://www.macuser.co.uk/reviews/250896/canon-cano...
Hope this is of some use.
tog said:
LongQ said:
If you really want a dedicated scanner look for late model Minolta or Nikon unts on eBay but don;t expect to find drivers for the latest Mac OS releases.
I use a Minolta Dimage 5400 on the latest Mac OS and it works fine. A lot more than £80 though, even on Ebay.Therefore it would be marginally safer to buy a current product from a well known brand.
Maybe.
LongQ said:
tog said:
LongQ said:
If you really want a dedicated scanner look for late model Minolta or Nikon unts on eBay but don;t expect to find drivers for the latest Mac OS releases.
I use a Minolta Dimage 5400 on the latest Mac OS and it works fine. A lot more than £80 though, even on Ebay.Therefore it would be marginally safer to buy a current product from a well known brand.
Maybe.
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