Scanning 35 mm slides on the cheap!

[Colin Wilson]

I`ve already emailed a colleague who might be interested

[Peter]

Hi All,

I've just found this NG... the subject is exactly what I am after.

I have about 3000 35mm slides, mostly kodachrome 25/64, ektachrome, cibachrome and lately Fuji Provia. I would like to scan the lot, to a standard which fully preserves the quality.

In 1999 I bought, for about £600, a Canon FS2710 slide scanner. This is 2700dpi which in theory should give fantastic results compared to any digital camera - but it doesn't. The uncompressed file format from it (e.g. a BMP) is the right size for the res, about 25MB. But saving it to a Jpeg yields an 800k file - much too small and comparable to a

2 megapixel camera. However if I scan direct into say Photoshop (and then I get a 25MB file in there), save the file in PS at the highest quality Jpeg setting it offers, and compare the resulting ~ 3MB file (on screen, max zoom) with the 800k one which came straight from the scanner's software, I can't see any difference. BOTH are pretty naff.

It is as if the scanner compressed to a jpeg on the transfer to the PC! Even if going straight to an application.

The scanner went back to Canon very recently who charged me £150 for replacing the scanner unit but nothing has changed.

The scanner had always been used for scanning low quality product pics for a business website so its quality was never tested on outdoor pics.

Most of my pics are landscapes and similar. Some of the pics are here

where those with the 'click to see a larger pic' option are scanned slides. The colours are way off! The rest were taken with a Casio Z4 (4 megapixel) which is a tiny camera but is basically better than the

2700dpi Canon scanner!

The other thing is colour management. The scanned image is very dark. I have to do (in PS)

Assign Colour Profile (choose the Canon 2710 profile) Convert to Colour Profile (as above)

and that makes the image a lot better. But I don't see why these steps should be necessary - the scanner software should just return the "right" colour... Any colour management should be available for the display device.

The software was developed before Windows 2000 which is what I am running under, but it does the same under NT4.

Whatever is actually wrong with it, it is clear that this scanner won't do for scanning slides which one might then want to dispose of afterwards.

I've read some reviews of scanners and Nikon do one for about £3000 which is way too much. I contacted a lot of scanning bureaus and they want a min of 50p a slide and one wanted £10 a slide, for scanning them in oil, apparently!

A friend has another 3000 slides and we could put them all together...

I suppose what I want is two things:

1. a scanner which is really excellent and which I can rent for a month or so

1. a scanner which is a lot better than the 1999 Canon...

I would really appreciate any suggestions...

Peter.

-- Return address is invalid to help stop junk mail. E-mail replies to [e-mail] but remove the X and the Y. Please do NOT copy usenet posts to email - it is NOT necessary.

[Phil Addison]

Err, which one?

[snipped saga of poor transparency scanners]

It seems early scanners weren't much good at colour matching. I got bitten by that with both a Canon LS-20 (Colorscan II) and a Minolta Dimage Scan Multi II. Neither produce acceptable scans from colour film and I am still looking for a solution.

Computer Shopper Oct 04 (issue 200) has an interesting review of scanners. The Mustek BearPaw 4800TA Pro II at £60 inc VAT was highly rated for FILM scanning although it is basically an A4 flatbed. It will take 2 strips of 6 by 35mm.

"It's an A4 2,400x4,800dpi flatbed scanner that produces high-quality results from photos, negatives and slides and costs much less than we'd expect for such results."

"2,400x4,800dpi optical resolution, 48-bit colour depth, USB Hi-Speed interface, transparency adaptor. Part code 98-155-00010"

The review is at

'm not sure if you need to subscribe to view it (I have).

I am coming to the conclusion that to get good results from my scanners I need to buy some colour calibration targets and colour matching software - not a cheap option, and as you say, the damn things should do it as sold anyway.

Phil The uk.d-i-y FAQ is at

NOSPAM from address to email me

[Rick Dipper]

JPEG is a compressed format. The compressors remove detail in order to compress further, most software allows you yo alter the "quality" of the JPEG. I would scan to a BMP, and then use some photo processing software to save as JPEG.

Some scanners scan at say 600 dpi, and then use come clever maths to essentiall guess what is is the missing dots for 1200dpi, and then claim to be 1200 dpi. I suggest you look for this feature when you choose your scanner. this is a feature you probably don't want.

Rick

[Peter]

Rick Dipper wrote

Indeed - but

a) saving it as a BMP, or scanning direct into Photoshop, does not produce any better results, and

b) the Canon software does not give any options on jpeg quality.

Peter.

-- Return address is invalid to help stop junk mail. E-mail replies to [e-mail] but remove the X and the Y. Please do NOT copy usenet posts to email - it is NOT necessary.

[Rick Dipper]

Then I would suggest your scanner is somewhat less than 2500dpi, and its got some clever maths in the software that guesses what colour the dots inbetween should be.

Rick

[GwG]

I have just scanned an image from a 15 year old Kodak Gold 100 negative, using the Minolta Dimage Scan Dual 2, it is straight from the scanner, except for a slight correction for a green cast, and was scanned using the Minolta software. The original bmp file size was 26MB, but it has been saved as a jpg on 'High quality' (8), giving an uploaded file size of 1.6MB The image is on the following link, (can you recognise the face), but it needs saving, and opening in an image programme to view properly.

would give a 12" x 8" print at 300 pixels/inch, which is not bad from a full frame 35mm negative, or 18" x 12" at 200 pixels/inch.

[Gordon Moat]

I think you are confusing the file formats with quality. JPEG is very compressed. PhotoShop native files (PSD) or TIFF files retain more information. You also need to be aware that what you see on any computer monitor is a poor representation of the actual file. You should only compare results on final prints.

Most computer monitors are 72 to 96 dpi, and very limited in the colour range they can display. You only get a representative image on a computer monitor, not a reality of a final print. If you only need the scans to go to the internet, then that scanner is more than enough to meet your needs.

If you are only doing scanning for images to use on the internet, then you do not need to scan at 2700 ppi. You can get away with much smaller initial scan sizes. To use images on the internet, you should just scan at 72 ppi at the final large file size you want to use (1024 by 768, 800 by 600, etc.). Scanning at higher resolutions would just take you longer.

Not better, but easier for you to use. You should understand that getting colours correct is a skill that takes a great deal of experience. It can help to have a calibrated monitor, but even then some colours will just be a guess. Also, viewing an internet ready JPEG on a Windows, MacOS, or Linux system would give you at least three different combinations of colour results, with a good chance that none of them look much the same. The basic idea for internet images is to play it safe, and hopefully hit somewhere in the middle of the operating systems display characteristics.

The default settings for that CanoScan FS2710 will not give you the best results. Also, the Canon software does not give a very good preview image, so that could be another problem. If you wanted to spend more money on SilverFast AI scanning software, the results would improve by a huge margin, or you could spend just a small amount more and get Vuescan, for a slight (but noticeable) improvement.

Don't take this as a slam, but accurate colour on Windows is tough to get consistent. It helps if you have a good proofing printer, or some calibration devices, and profiling devices (like MarkSpyder, Gretag EyeOne, etc.). All those devices add expense, and should be judged against time saved in your scanning. Same goes for SilverFast AI software, which is basically a great time saving application (little to no need of PhotoShop adjustments).

The Canon software is likely the biggest let down, though your overall working methods could also be improved. I don't mean that to insult, just a comment since I do this for a living.

You do not need oil mounted drum scans for images going onto the internet.

Almost any newer scanner running SilverFast AI, or even higher spec software (Creo, Heidelberg, et al). You can check at to see if a scanner might be supported. Since you have 3000 scans to do, the cost of SilverFast would save you a great deal of time. You can even download a trial version, and try it on your FS2710 first, then get the full version for whatever next scanner you buy.

Several choices, but all at greater expense. I still have an FS2710 in service, though it has been modified by an engineer friend (no, he does not want to do any more). Though it takes some patience and care with the settings, I have many prints in publication that were done with this scanner.

Not knowing your level of experience, it is tough to recommend things for you. Many scanning devices are just not that user friendly, and often do not give the best results at the default settings. You might look into Kodak ProPhotoCD (not PictureCD), and see if anyone in your area still offers that, and can make you a deal for so many scans. The time and aggravation you save might be worth the cost in the short run.

Ciao!

Gordon Moat A G Studio

[John Rumm]

reading you loud and clear on uk.d-i-y ;-)

I have done similar job scanning 1000s of slides for my father in law on a Nikon LS2000 with a SF200 slide feeder. The LS2000 itself makes a nice job of the scans, even with relatively old and slightly colour shifted slides (most were 35 years or more old). However all in not plain sailing, even with a feeder, since they seem to have difficulty reliably feeding the cardboard mounts on the old Ektachrome etc. With some slight (temporary) modifications to the feed path I managed in the end to get reasonably predictable performance and was able to set it off with a batch of 40 - 50 slides at night and have them ready by morning. (scanning with oversampling and digital ICE turned on can push the scan time up to several minutes per scan)

Not having any experience with that scanner, I can only hazard the guess that the software that comes with it is likely to be your problem. Have you checked the canon web site for any updates? If not consider a third party driver like a Silverfast one if they do one for the scanner.

If only it were that simple ;-)

I would have thought you could get something like a LS2000 with feeder for much less these days.

With the volume of work you have, why not buy it and then sell on once you are done?

Also don't rule out a flatbed scanning option. Some of the better flatbed scanners with transparency hood can achieve very respectable results as well as being able to batch scan 20 slides in one go.

[Peter]

Gordon Moat wrote

Thank you Gordon for all the suggestions!

I think my #1 problem here is my poor explanation of the problem. I know the file formats, which is lossy and which isn't (been doing DTP/graphics since the earliest days of "PCs").

My bulk slide scanning requirement is for a quality high enough to enable me to **dispose of** the original slides. Resolution itself is easy to get (just read a review of the Plustek 7200 for £170) - the problem is dynamic range. Tranny film is contrasty enough already! The

2710 doesn't have enough dynamic range even on the 36-bit setting. I would guess the res needs to be at least 5000dpi, and the general quality needs to be a lot better than what I can get with the 2710.

The problem I see is that while the 2710 returns the correct *size* BMP for the max resolution (25MB), its actual quality is a lot poorer. In fact resolution alone probably isn't the problem, though I have no obvious way of checking that either. It is just poor quality of the images. A blue sky has blotches on it - the sort of thing I would see on excessive jpeg compression - but this exists when I can either to a bmp or direct into e.g. photoshop so no compression should be taking place.

I suspected the software so reinstalled it a few times, even downloaded the latest version (which is pretty old) from the Canon website.

The scanner's previous use, web images, is nothing to do with my present requirement, but it could explain why this problem has never been detected before. The previous subjects were pretty and brightly coloured injection moulded electronics products that I design for a living. I was never able to get true colours with a CCD camera so I used 35mm film, standard halogen lights, and scanned the slides, and got very good results. Today I could probably get better results with the Nikon 5700... although for the web one probably does want slightly over the top colours!

Indeed. However one can zoom in. At 100%, pixel for pixel, the artefacts are pretty visible. This isn't the monitor.

This is what I do not understand. I am not a Windows software developer and don't understand the windows colour management model / process. I would expect that a scanner, together with its software, should deliver 24-bit (or 36 or 48-bit) RGB (let's forget CMYK for the moment, the gamut is a real issue there) data which is quite simply "correct".

Then there should be the separate issue of getting the monitor (or whatever output device one uses) calibrated.

But what people appear to be doing is calibrating the whole chain in one go, i.e. twiddling the scanner settings to make it look good on the screen, or to make it look good on the printer, or whatever. This is bizzare. The scanner should deliver accurate data according to some ISO colour model, end of story.

The above may sound nonsense to you...

Could you suggest something I could try? There are very few options. I know I am not scanning to a jpeg but there are NO jpeg quality settings at all (bizzare). There is a "single scan" option, "auto focus" option (surely this *has* to be used) and not a lot else.

Are these programs which support the 2710 directly, via the SCSI interface, and give more accurate results?

For scanning the 3000 or 6000 slides, what I would want is something which prompts the person to stick the next slide in, and automatically generates incrementing filenames. Even if I wanted to use the 2710, the software that Canon do doesn't do this.

Out of interest, what was the mod?

I did use the PhotoCD service a few years ago. The quality was pretty good but it's very expensive for a few thousand slides. I did extensively contact firms about this a few months ago and the cheapest quote was 50p a slide. I want to get something in house, possibly rented, and give my kids a chance to earn some pocket money :)

Peter.

-- Return address is invalid to help stop junk mail. E-mail replies to [e-mail] but remove the X and the Y. Please do NOT copy usenet posts to email - it is NOT necessary.

[Pete C]

Naff in what way?

Again, better in what way, better colours? The scanned pics there aren't at 2700dpi resolution though, more like half of that on each axis.

As well as colour balance, there's dynamic range, as long as you can lighten the scan and return detail in the shadows it's not a problem. In fact it's better that than to have scans with washed out highlights and over saturated colours.

Getting a decent scan out of old scanners is a bit of an art, but not impossible.

One way to get an idea of colour rendering would be to take a slide photo of a colour chart in different lighting conditions, then scan it and compare the colours on the monitor to the projected slide. Also get an enlargement printed from the slide and compare this with a printout of a scan from the same slide.

This isn't very scientific but would give an idea of how to boost the gamma among other things to get a better match.

The main aspects are resolution and dynamic range, these can't be improved upon later unlike colour matching.

There's a 5400dpi Minolta for about £460 that gets good reviews and should get pretty much all the detail out of the slides. Scanners have come a long way in the last few years, so this should give better color balance than your existing scanner in any case.

I posted a couple of 4800x2400dpi scans a little while back here:

Have a look and let me know what you think.

cheers, Pete.

[Peter]

Pete C wrote

For example areas of the sky contain splodges of different shades of blue - the sort of thing one sees in excessive jpeg compression. But there is no compression - this is scanning direct into the app.

Yes, they are low res but the colours are often way off and that much is visible even in those. The scanned slides are those where one has the option to click on the image to see a bigger one; the others are from a Casio Z4. The Sitia harbour pic which is particularly nice is from the Z4.

I ought to try this one then. £460 is OK to buy for this amount of stuff. Does anyone know off hand whether this comes with software which can automatically generate incrementing filenames?

That's an impressive pic in terms of resolution, but I cannot judge the colour accuracy (the night lighting is sure to be coloured) or the dynamic range.

Peter.

-- Return address is invalid to help stop junk mail. E-mail replies to [e-mail] but remove the X and the Y. Please do NOT copy usenet posts to email - it is NOT necessary.

[John Cartmell]

How many colours are you viewing this in?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Sorry to hijack this thread, but there seems to be expertise coming from newsgroups I didn't even know existed!

I have about 400 negs on 120, but shot '16 to a roll' . I want to get them digitised at top resolution.

The small number probably doesn't justify a specialised scanner. But a specialsed rental or agency that does things like this would be highly welcome?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Ta muchly.

I'll see if one is obtainable 'over here'

[nsj]

TIFF and PSD employ lossless compression, don't it?

Really? RGB gamut is far and away better than that of CYMK. How does it compare to hexachrome?

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes. £149 from Jessops.

That is cost effective versus 50p a negative alright.

Thank you again.

[McLeod]

I have had very good results with the Epson 3170 photo scanner. It cost about $300 Canadian and with some tweaking does an excellent job on 120 negatives.

[Pete C]

The banding is due to the limitations of the monitor, the speckling is probably due to film grain. Excessive JPEG compression shows up as blockiness, but there is none of that there.

By way off, do you mean less saturated or with a colour cast? Digital cameras can boost the colours as part of the image post processing, at the consumer end of the market this is more evident with Kodak cameras than Canon.

Also digital cameras can vary the white balance so can cope with different lighting conditions better.

Might be worth finding someone or a scanning lab that has one and send them a few slides with a variety of colours, lighting and exposure levels and have them done as raw scans.

OK there's a couple more here in daylight, one scanned from a negaitve and one from a print.

The one from the negative shows that scanner has less dynamic range, being less detailed in the darkest and brightest parts of the picture.

However this is from a cheap flatbed scanner, and a mid range film scanner would be worlds apart.

cheers, Pete.

[usenet]

Cibachrome isn't a slide material, it was for making prints from slides - excellent too.