Scanner that can scan slides?

[Poontos]

Looking for a scanner that scan slides... and is a very good one

Budget is $250 CDN.


Thanks

 

[dkozloski]

About the best bargain for professional quality slide or 35mm scanning is a Polaroid Sprintscan in the $3000+ range. It is easy to spend upwards of $100,000 on a "good" scanner. $250 is bottom feeding.

 

[lorlabnew]

Poontos,

you can get some flatbed Canon model with film adapter; I've got myself Canon CanoScan D660U (cheapest model with resolution up to 1200DPI for 35mm film scanning), but they've got several similar but better models (with 2400 and 4800 DPI respectively), I think the 2400dpi model would fit your budget. The drawback of scanning with the flatbeds is the long scanning time; the results aren't that poor in my opinion... assuming that you're not aiming for the professional publishing work etc...

The "real" film scanners starting somewhere around $500-600, so it's comparable to buying the photo enlarger & darkroom equipment.

Good Luck with your pick.

Regards
Dave

Originally posted by: Poontos
Looking for a scanner that scan slides... and is very good one

Budget is $250 CDN.


Thanks

 

[Mavrick007]

Check out Futureshop.ca. They have several low-priced scanners that will do do slides but they will not be up to too good of quality.
There's a Canon, a Visioneer, and some HP's but most quality scanners that will do slides are more expensive, above $500-600 range.
Epson makes a good scanner, the 1250, that will do slides as well.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: dkozloski
About the best bargain for professional quality slide or 35mm scanning is a Polaroid Sprintscan in the $3000+ range. It is easy to spend upwards of $100,000 on a "good" scanner. $250 is bottom feeding.

You can get quite usable quality out of a CAD$600 dedicated slide scanner. Sure, a $3000 scanner would be better, but nobody in their right mind spends $100000 on a scanner for 35 mm film.

OTOH, even a mid-end CAD$500 flatbed scanner does a poor to mediocre job of scanning film. I have the Epson 1640SU Photo which is a higher-end model than the 1250, and for film it is junk compared to a dedicated slide scanner. (But of course I didn't buy it to scan film.)

 

[Poontos]

Thanks for all the suggestions!

For the price, this appears to be a decent product.

Anyone using the Epson 1250, that is?

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: Poontos
Thanks for all the suggestions!

For the price, this appears to be a decent product.

Anyone using the Epson 1250, that is?

Like I said, I have the 1640 which is higher end. It works, but it's not great. A dedicated slide scanner is significantly better, but at higher cost too. It depends what you need it for.

 

[dkozloski]

Eug, the Royal Zenith scanner I cut my teeth on cost $75,000 ten years ago, used. As I said, it is very easy to spend $100,000 but I should have added; if you are going to be doing serious magazine quality and commercial graphics work. The prices are slowly coming down but if you want the best you better be ready to pay.

 

[corkyg]

I am using the Epson 2450, but it is about $100 over your budget. I t comes with two carriers - one for mounted slides and the other for film strips. These fit into a hollow in the lid. It's a great photo scanner, and does exceptional OCR work as well. I believe the 1250 has similar capabilities at less resolution.

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: dkozloski
Eug, the Royal Zenith scanner I cut my teeth on cost $75,000 ten years ago, used. As I said, it is very easy to spend $100,000 but I should have added; if you are going to be doing serious magazine quality and commercial graphics work. The prices are slowly coming down but if you want the best you better be ready to pay.

First, this guy is doing 35 mm slides not large format negs or whatever, second, it doesn't sound like the guy is interested in pro quality as you know, and third, that was 10 years ago. (Not the same thing I know, but we have digital cameras that were CAD$15000 8 years ago, and now they're just about worthless.)

I'm no pro, but am I correct in thinking you'd be happy with a current US$10000 slide scanner, if you were only doing 35 mm? At least it would save smearing oil all over your film.