Hi, I'm looking for any personal recommendations for a copier that will copy from normal 35mm neg's, slides and small glass plate neg's. Looking around the web there seems to be a multitude of these, all with glowing reviews! But does anyone here have any first hand experience of them? I've scanned many photos before, but this will be my first time with negatives, it would be good to get a few personal experiences before diving in.
Doing the same as you, I looked at loads of reviews. One guy offered to take your Ion copier in part exchange and give it a decent burial. Eventually, I just made my own out of cardboard and a piece of translucent white plastic sheet that I already had, and the whole thing sits on my tripod and uses my compact Canon. I have digitised about
1500 slides for a History Club with this system. Not much help, I'm afraid!
Check it supports the negative sizes you have.
35mm is standard, but if you have bigger ones, your options come down. Might also be an issue with the panoramic formats.
SWMBO has been scanning a *lot* of her dad's old slides...over the last couple of years. She says the software does lots of different, useful things. She is doing hi-res which is not incredibly fast, but she's very satisfied with it.
It's a Plustek Opticfilm 7500, with Silverfast software. Probably a later model now. Free upgrades on the software. It was about £400 she thinks.
Snap! (or 7400 in my case). I didn't buy it, but I suspect mine was very much less than that.
Slight annoyance is it means I have to have a Windows system.
One problem I had with slides is that the thickness of the cardboard or plastic holder means that the slide itself is a mm or two above the glass, and my scanned copies always came out a little blurry. Don't know if it's a focussing issue, or reflections due the small gap. Tried taking a few slides out of the holder and laying them directly onto the glass, much better result, but fiddly and time consuming!
In message , Davey writes
Interesting Davey, I had looked at Ion, I was worried when I saw that PC World sold them though :-)
In message , Andrew Gabriel writes
Most are 35mm roll film negatives, with some slides in card carriers, but I also have some glass negatives which I may just put into a normal scanner and play with later.
In message , Andrew Gabriel writes
I don't mind Windows, my computer knowledge is limited, so Windows does just fine. The software is important, the more it can do the happier I will be. Just off to have a Google on Plustek.
In message , Bill writes
They can't be worse than the Maplin's one!!!
That is my situation, a minimum of 4 biscuit tins of envelopes full of negatives and slides, plus numerous albums of photos that hopefully I will find the neg's for, dad was an avid photographer! Speed is not too important, quality is more so.
£340 on Amazon. The 8100 is at £177.50
For top class results you need either a Nikon dedicated negative/slide scanner (can't remember the model number) or an Epson V700/V750. The perfectionists argue endlessly about which is better. :-)
I have an Epson V700 which I used to scan a mix of 2.25" square and
35mm negatives and I also use as a general purpose scanner. I've been very pleased with it over the years.In message , Mark writes
I've just had a look on Ebay at the Nikon, I see why you were pleased with the £20:00 price!!
for 35mm i have a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED which is superb
I bought this at a boot sale, relatives were clearing out their fathers house and thought it was some kind of old computer, they asked ?20 so thats what i paid them.
buying new now i would have a look at something like the Epson Perfection V370
good compromise between price/performance
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Pardon my ignorance, but what is the point of digitizing negatives?
They're not digitised as negatives, the scanner software turns them into normal positive images which you can then view on your PC, tablet, TV, phone, etc. It also means that one no longer worries about physical deterioration or damage (though of course you do need to make sure the digital images are carefully backed up).
At least with mine, I know where to go to complain if it doesn't work. And the cost was zero. I use daylight, so I don't even have to pay for lighting. The camera conveniently has its USB cable port on the side, so it stays plugged in, and every so often, I download the images to the PC. I do a little cleanup using GIMP, as I take the image a little oversize, and then trim to fit, and rotate if needed. Now, if I was doing this for a business, I would look at the professional scanners.
Here's a thread from 5 years ago, so I don't know if it's still relevant. The prices of some of the recommendations were too much for me - I'm still 'thinking' about buying something.
I would suggest that it could be quite a low resolution scanner as the quoted specification can be interpreted as 14M (interpolated) and 22M (interpolated). It doesn't specify the level of JPEG compression. It could be a cheap 640 x 480 USB camera sensor packaged into something unsuitable for any serious film scanning.
It gets a 4 star (of 5) review for one person "Looks Ok but I haven't used it yet"
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