Slide Copier ( not a scanner)
Discussion
Before i shuffle off this mortal coil. i want to digitise all my sldes
Years ago i bought a Jessops Slide copier ( it takes the place of a lens and in effect takes a pic of the sllde. U(nless scanners can do this in less than 10 secs then it is infinitely quicker)
I have a Canon 77d And put it on the front, but due to the sensor, only copies the middle part of the slde
I understand a Canon 5D will overcome this problem
I can then set the camera up on a table, reach over from comfy chair ( making sure the Malt doesnt get spilt,) insert slde. hit shutter release, remove slide and repeat
If it does what would be the best light source behind the slde, someone told me naturall daylight, but i want to do this in the evening whilst watching TV
Years ago i bought a Jessops Slide copier ( it takes the place of a lens and in effect takes a pic of the sllde. U(nless scanners can do this in less than 10 secs then it is infinitely quicker)
I have a Canon 77d And put it on the front, but due to the sensor, only copies the middle part of the slde
I understand a Canon 5D will overcome this problem
I can then set the camera up on a table, reach over from comfy chair ( making sure the Malt doesnt get spilt,) insert slde. hit shutter release, remove slide and repeat
If it does what would be the best light source behind the slde, someone told me naturall daylight, but i want to do this in the evening whilst watching TV
I have a slide copier and use it with a macro lens and extension tube. I removed the lens that came in the slide copier as the quality was not as good as a proper macro lens.
Daylight is ok, but the colour temperature and intensity varies throughout the day/time of year.
I've found the most reliable light source, which also effectively means a very fast exposure time and consistent colour temp, as well as being able to have a standard repeatable setup is to use an off camera flashgun pointing towards the diffuser end. Depending on how good the diffuser on your slide copier is, you can also put another diffuser between the flash and the slide copier diffuser to ensure a constant light intensity across the frame.
Works very well, and as you mention, is a lot faster than a scanner.
All you'll need is an off-camera flash cable to enable TTL flash metering.
Alternatively you could use a wireless flash trigger.
Daylight is ok, but the colour temperature and intensity varies throughout the day/time of year.
I've found the most reliable light source, which also effectively means a very fast exposure time and consistent colour temp, as well as being able to have a standard repeatable setup is to use an off camera flashgun pointing towards the diffuser end. Depending on how good the diffuser on your slide copier is, you can also put another diffuser between the flash and the slide copier diffuser to ensure a constant light intensity across the frame.
Works very well, and as you mention, is a lot faster than a scanner.
All you'll need is an off-camera flash cable to enable TTL flash metering.
Alternatively you could use a wireless flash trigger.
You know how annoying it is when you get a reply that ignores the basic premise of the original post ("recommend me a laptop"/"buy a Mac")? This is one of those.
How good do you want your scans to be? The biggest investment in this procedure is your time so I always suggest that spending time to get average results is poor value. A proper film scanner will give you consistent results (eg no variation in light source colour temperture) & most importantly can perform dust & scratch removal automatically with a IR light pass. It's also a compact solution requiring just a scanner & a laptop which you can park on a table next to your armchair. Load five slides into the carrier, pop it into the scanner & load up the next five into a spare carrier ready to go.
The first step anyway is to triage the slides. Don't waste time scanning the boring ones.
How good do you want your scans to be? The biggest investment in this procedure is your time so I always suggest that spending time to get average results is poor value. A proper film scanner will give you consistent results (eg no variation in light source colour temperture) & most importantly can perform dust & scratch removal automatically with a IR light pass. It's also a compact solution requiring just a scanner & a laptop which you can park on a table next to your armchair. Load five slides into the carrier, pop it into the scanner & load up the next five into a spare carrier ready to go.
The first step anyway is to triage the slides. Don't waste time scanning the boring ones.
Mr Pointy said:
You know how annoying it is when you get a reply that ignores the basic premise of the original post ("recommend me a laptop"/"buy a Mac")? This is one of those.
How good do you want your scans to be? The biggest investment in this procedure is your time so I always suggest that spending time to get average results is poor value. A proper film scanner will give you consistent results (eg no variation in light source colour temperture) & most importantly can perform dust & scratch removal automatically with a IR light pass. It's also a compact solution requiring just a scanner & a laptop which you can park on a table next to your armchair. Load five slides into the carrier, pop it into the scanner & load up the next five into a spare carrier ready to go.
The first step anyway is to triage the slides. Don't waste time scanning the boring ones.
Whilst I'm sure that a proper scanner will produce very good results, I think that your comment:How good do you want your scans to be? The biggest investment in this procedure is your time so I always suggest that spending time to get average results is poor value. A proper film scanner will give you consistent results (eg no variation in light source colour temperture) & most importantly can perform dust & scratch removal automatically with a IR light pass. It's also a compact solution requiring just a scanner & a laptop which you can park on a table next to your armchair. Load five slides into the carrier, pop it into the scanner & load up the next five into a spare carrier ready to go.
The first step anyway is to triage the slides. Don't waste time scanning the boring ones.
Mr Pointy said:
You know how annoying it is when you get a reply that ignores the basic premise of the original post ("recommend me a laptop"/"buy a Mac")? This is one of those.
Isn't entirely accurate/appropriate.Looking at good quality film scanners e.g. Epson V800
One of the OP's original requirements was:
silverfoxcc said:
Unless scanners can do this in less than 10 secs then it is infinitely quicker.
The Epson linked to above which is one of the leading scanners has a speed performance for a single slide of:55 seconds for a preview scan
38 seconds for scanning one slide at 2,400ppi
Using Digital ICE (dust removal) increased the time for a 2,400ppi scan of one frame of film to 2:51
1:25 for scanning one slide at 6,400ppi
So extrapolating would be 6 minutes 22 seconds at 6400 ppi with dust removal.
This is significantly longer than the OP's requirement of under 10 seconds.
Your next point:
Mr Pointy said:
A proper film scanner will give you consistent results (eg no variation in light source colour temperture)
I'd suggest that using a mounted flashgun through a diffuser would also provide a consistent light source with no variation in colour temperature.Finally,
Mr Pointy said:
The first step anyway is to triage the slides. Don't waste time scanning the boring ones.
May not be meeting the OP's requirement either. He may have a large number of slides and wants to scan most of them. I know my dad has lots of slides taken over the years, many before I was born, and many of us growing up as a family. While they may not all be technically brilliant from a photographic perspective, I'm looking to digitise them, and will be doing the vast majority of them due to the memories contained therein. Triaging them will get rid of a few technically very bad ones, but will not significantly reduce the overall number, as he did seem to have a habit of getting the focussing and exposure pretty spot on most of the time with the old Kodachrome 64.The speed of using a digital camera is therefore a big factor in this case.
That's not to say that I'm against a proper film scanner - in fact I'm very likely to get one in the near future as I am starting to take 5x4 inch large format transparencies and will want to digitise them with the highest quality. Having said that, speed in this case isn't an issue as due to the nature of large format, I'm not going to be shooting hundreds and hundreds of slides.
Just a case of using the right tool for the requirements. In some cases it's a digital camera with slide copier/extension tubes and macro lens with flash, in others a proper film scanner.
All obviously IMHO.
Edited by C&C on Sunday 15th April 15:04
Simpo Two said:
My way, once set up, would take about 1/60th second. The limiting factor would be how fast you can get the next slide on. But you couldn't watch telly at the same time.
Fair point - same deal as with copier and flash.Also relevant is the lightbox provides a constant light temperature too.
I had one of those Jessops slide copiers and, strangely enough, it was one of my justifications (to myself) for buying a DSLR. Mine sounds a little different in that instead of replacing the lens, it screwed onto the filter mount with a reversing ring. Once I'd got the camera, I had a bit of a play with it and decided it was too much hassle to continue with it - as I recall, light source was one of the things.
I have the same problem - I have 1000's of negatives and slides from my Dad to digitize.
After researching the issue, I came to the conclusion that a Nikon Coolscan with an automatic slide/negative feeder was probably going to be the fastest option. Available second hand, good repair support and could be sold afterwards meaning total overall cost would be very low.
I have done the macro lens and slide copy adapter method, however you have to understand that taking the picture is the very easy part. Fiddling to setup the camera and flash, fiddling to the negatives out of the holder, then back in, keeping them all dust and scratch free, get perfect focus on a slightly non flat surface, then downloading and color correcting the pictures is what takes time. Doing more than 100+ at a time on a DSLR is an act of pure machismo.
A scanner is purpose built for the task and takes almost no time to setup, and the software means you get a closer result than a DSLR + RAW convertor which takes a LOT of the time out.
After researching the issue, I came to the conclusion that a Nikon Coolscan with an automatic slide/negative feeder was probably going to be the fastest option. Available second hand, good repair support and could be sold afterwards meaning total overall cost would be very low.
I have done the macro lens and slide copy adapter method, however you have to understand that taking the picture is the very easy part. Fiddling to setup the camera and flash, fiddling to the negatives out of the holder, then back in, keeping them all dust and scratch free, get perfect focus on a slightly non flat surface, then downloading and color correcting the pictures is what takes time. Doing more than 100+ at a time on a DSLR is an act of pure machismo.
A scanner is purpose built for the task and takes almost no time to setup, and the software means you get a closer result than a DSLR + RAW convertor which takes a LOT of the time out.
ExPat2B said:
A scanner is purpose built for the task and takes almost no time to setup, and the software means you get a closer result than a DSLR + RAW convertor which takes a LOT of the time out.
At last a voice of sanity from someone else who has actually done this. When faced with such a substantial task as this can be the key is getting the workflow as efficient as possible. Something as simple as using the scanning software to create meaningful filenames as when scanning (eg Thailand 2005 001.jpg) is a huge timesaver. Out of a camera you're just going to get DSC0001.jpg which you need to rename for every picture. Mr Pointy said:
Out of a camera you're just going to get DSC0001.jpg which you need to rename for every picture.
Or just make a folder called 'Thailand 2005' and put them in there. My biggest trip was a month in NZ - over 3,000 photos. There's a folder called 'NZ' and within that, a folder for each day named after where I went.C&C:
I won't quote your entire epic but If you're going to post a review refuting my suggestion at least find one more recent than 2015 where the reviwer admitted the PC was running Windows Vista! I can't be bothered to fire my scanner up & time the scans but the Plustek website reckons preview scans take 8 seconds & a 7200dpi scan about 113 sec with multi-sampling.
The IR dust & scratch removal feature alone will save you way more time than this (over the DSLR method) if you're going to dick around in Photoshop to get rid of blemishes. If you're not, why bother scanning in the first place?
If you're going to mess about with post-processing the files the scan time becones almost irrelevant but you need to be using the very best quality input files to make it worth spending time on them. A camera slide copier won't give you that.
I won't quote your entire epic but If you're going to post a review refuting my suggestion at least find one more recent than 2015 where the reviwer admitted the PC was running Windows Vista! I can't be bothered to fire my scanner up & time the scans but the Plustek website reckons preview scans take 8 seconds & a 7200dpi scan about 113 sec with multi-sampling.
The IR dust & scratch removal feature alone will save you way more time than this (over the DSLR method) if you're going to dick around in Photoshop to get rid of blemishes. If you're not, why bother scanning in the first place?
If you're going to mess about with post-processing the files the scan time becones almost irrelevant but you need to be using the very best quality input files to make it worth spending time on them. A camera slide copier won't give you that.
Gents
Thanks for the assistance in answering this
To narrow it down
I appreciate the light source if using the slide copier, which could sway me towards a slide scanner
no worried about doing a pre check on each slide, as i have seen what can be done with real basket cases
The main problem is time
scanner with about 300 boxes of 36 slide if each one took 5 mins that is 720 hours thats a minus as 2hrs a night it will take a year!!
however the dust removal and 'auto touch up' is less time faffing about afterwards
Camera
Quicker in copying but light source could be a problem. more time afterwards picking out any small flaws the scanner would deal with ( is that correct?)
Cost isnt a problem as i would need to buy a full frame DSLR ( Canon 5d mk 2 minimum) or a scanner
Will look at the suggestions on here about scanners and come back with a short list
Many thanks for all your input PH comes up trumps again
Thanks for the assistance in answering this
To narrow it down
I appreciate the light source if using the slide copier, which could sway me towards a slide scanner
no worried about doing a pre check on each slide, as i have seen what can be done with real basket cases
The main problem is time
scanner with about 300 boxes of 36 slide if each one took 5 mins that is 720 hours thats a minus as 2hrs a night it will take a year!!
however the dust removal and 'auto touch up' is less time faffing about afterwards
Camera
Quicker in copying but light source could be a problem. more time afterwards picking out any small flaws the scanner would deal with ( is that correct?)
Cost isnt a problem as i would need to buy a full frame DSLR ( Canon 5d mk 2 minimum) or a scanner
Will look at the suggestions on here about scanners and come back with a short list
Many thanks for all your input PH comes up trumps again
There is some discussion above about Epson scanners above that is distorting the discussion.
The Epson scanners are not nearly as good as the coolscan, despite offering higher resolution, they don't actually resolve the stated resolution. And they are very slow at max resolution.
Guide to coolscan models.
http://www.nicovandijk.net/coolscan.htm
Personally the 5000 is pick of the bunch if you just want 35mm scanning.
This has a full review and scan times table at the bottom :
http://www.filmscanner.info/en/NikonSuperCoolscan5...
Longest scan times are :
Single scan slide 4000 dpi, auto focus, auto exposure 0:38 min with ICE 1:11 min
Single scan negative 4000 dpi, auto focus, auto exposure 1:09 min with ICE 1:38 min
With the Slide feeder :
Slide batch scans with 4000 dpi 61 frames/hour with ICE 37 frames/hour
The Epson scanners are not nearly as good as the coolscan, despite offering higher resolution, they don't actually resolve the stated resolution. And they are very slow at max resolution.
Guide to coolscan models.
http://www.nicovandijk.net/coolscan.htm
Personally the 5000 is pick of the bunch if you just want 35mm scanning.
This has a full review and scan times table at the bottom :
http://www.filmscanner.info/en/NikonSuperCoolscan5...
Longest scan times are :
Single scan slide 4000 dpi, auto focus, auto exposure 0:38 min with ICE 1:11 min
Single scan negative 4000 dpi, auto focus, auto exposure 1:09 min with ICE 1:38 min
With the Slide feeder :
Slide batch scans with 4000 dpi 61 frames/hour with ICE 37 frames/hour
On a related topic if your have a scanner that doesn't have drivers for the latest Windows version then Vuescan can provide the link between the two:
http://www.hamrick.com/
http://www.hamrick.com/
ExPat2B said:
The Epson scanners are not nearly as good as the coolscan, despite offering higher resolution, they don't actually resolve the stated resolution. And they are very slow at max resolution.
Just some data to back this up :http://www.filmscanner.info/en/EpsonPerfectionV750...
States that the 750 gets only 40% of the stated resolution on 35mm film
An example scan of the Nikon 5000 vs the Epson
https://webweavertech.com/ovidiu/weblog/archives/0...
Illumitran. Built for the days when slide duplication was big business.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bowens-Illumitran-3S-Sl...
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bowens-Illumitran-3S-Sl...
I'm currently working on a project with this guy.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cycling-holiday...
100k slides in his collection.
He is currently identifying which are worth scanning/selling and which are not.
Currently about 3000 scanned into tiff files about 40MB each.
Using a Braun scanner (with calibration slide and dust "repair") using 50 slide cassettes.
I'm exploring if we can "glue" the cassettes together to reduce the machine minding time.
Mind numbingly boring.
In January he had a two week exhibition in Paris and has another planned for Berlin in May.
Quite a character too.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/cycling-holiday...
100k slides in his collection.
He is currently identifying which are worth scanning/selling and which are not.
Currently about 3000 scanned into tiff files about 40MB each.
Using a Braun scanner (with calibration slide and dust "repair") using 50 slide cassettes.
I'm exploring if we can "glue" the cassettes together to reduce the machine minding time.
Mind numbingly boring.
In January he had a two week exhibition in Paris and has another planned for Berlin in May.
Quite a character too.
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