Any suggestions on a scanner that can scan negatives & slides?

[Aquaman]

Well....... after over 60K+ scans my old Canon Canoscan 670U finally kicked the bucket.

Scanning 800+ magazines.

Any recommendations on a scanner that can also scan negatives and slides.

I am looking into making digital copies of my negatives and slides.

Cheers,
Aquaman

 

[RebateMonger]

You'll probably be happier with a dedicated film scanner. They aren't that pricey nowadays. The resolution is tons nigher than a modified page scanner.

If you want, buy one, use it to scan all your slides and negatives, and then sell the film scanner on eBay. If you get a good deal on it originally, you can likely get a high percentage of your money back. Just don't wait forever to sell it.

 

[Paperdoc]

I've never done this and cannot recommend anything specific. However, two things I have picked up which you may know already.

1. It's REALLY important that the unit provides uniform lighting from the back of the neg / slide - no "hot spots" or poorly-lit edges.

2. Resolution is a big problem. A slide has an exposed area of about 23 x 34 mm. Even at 1200 dpi (47.24 pixels per mm) scanner resolution, that makes an image of 1086 x 1606 pixels - that's about a 1.6 megapixel image, hardy enough to do justice to a good slide! So either you need a extremely high res scanner (and that's REAL hardware resolution, not software-generated interpolation), or you need a different approach. I think the most promising is a projection system. It projects a much larger image on the scanner sensors so you do get good image resolution. But that, again, needs pretty good optics and lighting.

 

[MadAmos]

I have the canon CS 8600F if you are not trying to scan "lots" of slides it works well, high quality but it is not fast to load/unload the holder. The included software is great at separating files from individual slides when scanning multiples at the same time. Works ok with negatives as well but I have not done this much. I do not remember if Vista drivers are available for it as I use it with XP.

Amos

 

[Blain]

Epson Perfection V500

 

[corkyg]

My Epson Perfection 2450 Photo is getting longer in the tooth, but it still works great. Can do 4 35mm slides at one time or a 6-in film strip, or 2 1/4 film. I have already scanned most of my good slides, so that project is behind me.