35mm slide scanner and a drawing tablet

[silverfoxcc]

Having heard the 'ads' for fake reviews, i throw myself at the mercy of the PH collective

Looking on Amazon there are 5 i lke the look of
Kodak Digital scanner 3600 dpi at 150.00
Then the plustek family

8200 i Ai 7200 dpi 394.00
optic 8100 7200 dpi 230.00
optic 135 3600 dpi 208.00
optic 8200 i SE 7200 dpi 260.00

Then a choice of 3 drawnig tablets

Huion H420 25.00 thescreen is 110 x 50 mm

Graphic drawing tablet 46.00 250 x 150mm screen

UGEE M708 10 x 6 screen 57.00

Anyone has working knowledge on any of these?

[Mr Pointy]

I have a Plustek scanner & can recommend it. I suggest you get one with IR scanning for dust removal so either the 8200 SE or Ai. The Ai seems to be exactly the same hardware with a more advanced version of the Silverfast software & a calibration target. I'm not sure if it's worth £130 more though.

Lots of poster will now come along & say you can use a camera.

[timmymagic73]

Like this?



I made it myself - worked really well. Time consuming to double check the camera focus for each slide (very small DOF) and clean it up afterwards in software though.

[Mr Pointy]

Exactly. The IR dust removal saves a huge amount of post processing time & effort.

[droopsnoot]

I bought a cheap one, though it was quite good, but recently scanned a load of 35mm negatives and it's actually quite poor. I think it's down to the negative holder, which just doesn't get it quite in the correct location, where a mounted slide doesn't have the same issue.

I was looking at some images from scanned negatives recently, wondering how I hadn't noticed how bad the focus was when I took them, then found some prints I'd done when the photos were taken, and they're pin-sharp. So obviously my scanner has a very short depth of field as well, and the unmounted negs aren't in it. Off to experiment with some thin sheets of clear acrylic to sandwich the negatives.

[dmsims]

https://www.filmscanner.info/en/PlustekOpticFilm82...

https://www.filmscanner.info/en/PlustekOpticFilm81...

[randlemarcus]

Just been looking at slide scanners, and for 30 quid less, you could hire a 5000dpi scanner with a magazine feed for a week. One off job or ongoing?

[silverfoxcc]

About 80+ cases of slides... on going methinks unless i can go 168 hours without sleep!!

[silverfoxcc]

Mr Pointy

Would i notice a lot of difference between the 8200 Ai and the SE

Got permission to go for either, but is it like hi-fi, once you dont notice any more improvement ,why bother spending more??

[dmsims]

silverfoxcc said:

Mr Pointy

Would i notice a lot of difference between the 8200 Ai and the SE

Got permission to go for either, but is it like hi-fi, once you dont notice any more improvement ,why bother spending more??

Hardware is identical

[Mr Pointy]

silverfoxcc said:

Would i notice a lot of difference between the 8200 Ai and the SE

Got permission to go for either, but is it like hi-fi, once you dont notice any more improvement ,why bother spending more??

The hardware is the same, the difference is in the supplied software - either the SE Plus or Ai versions of Silverfast:
https://www.silverfast.com/scanner-software/en.htm...

I think the main difference is the abilty to calibrate the scanner using a target slide but for me £169 extra is a lot to pay (it's showing as £414 for me on Amazon). I don't know what the intended use is (scanning family stuff of selling your work) but if you were going to spend that much I'd start looking at a better scanner like a Reflecta.

You can also use Vuesan from Hamrick:
https://www.hamrick.com/

Scanner software can be a bit idiosyncratic so you might find you get on better with one than the other.

The first law of scanning is to triage the material: not every picture is worth saving.

[dmsims]

Mr Pointy said:

The first law of scanning is to triage the material: not every picture is worth saving.

This saves a lot of time, I bough a simple LED slide viewer which works well

[silverfoxcc]

Mr P

Would you put the reflecta above the plustek? if so what model?


And i do like the look of the cine scanner.....no more sitting in a darkened room with the camcorder next to the projector!

Also with photoshop being able to salvage pictures ranging in exposure from 'the black cat in a cellar' to 'something like the output of a nuclear explosion at 6ft' there could well be some transparencies worthy of a reprieve

[Mr Pointy]

silverfoxcc said:

Would you put the reflecta above the plustek? if so what model?

And i do like the look of the cine scanner.....no more sitting in a darkened room with the camcorder next to the projector!

Also with photoshop being able to salvage pictures ranging in exposure from 'the black cat in a cellar' to 'something like the output of a nuclear explosion at 6ft' there could well be some transparencies worthy of a reprieve

I was going by the reviews on this site which I found extremely useful:
https://www.filmscanner.info/en/FilmscannerRanglis...

He seems not to rate the Plustek but to be honest I didn't want to commit more money than the Plustek cost & I was happy enough with the results. I suspect the Reflecta 10T or maybe the 10M would be better but both of these need the additional Silverfast software as the supplied Reflecta software is said to be pants. That really pushes the cost up as you can see:
https://www.scandig.com/filmscanner/reflecta/index...

This page & its links is well worth a read:
https://www.filmscanner.info/en/Filmscanner.html

It's not just about the picture exposure as Photoshop can't improve what the scanner can't extract (related to the CCD dynamic range) but the picture content. I found many pictures were of unknown people in an unkown place or were badly framed or not well focused. Unless it's the one existing picture of Uncle Bert I'd suggest being a bit ruthless with anything not up to scratch. The most interesting pictures we had were actually shot by my Father on glass slides & I haven't yet scanned those properly.