Film scanner (preferably for Mac) and results

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Wonderlicious

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My mother and I want to archive a lot of our old photos in digital format. I am interested in buying a film scanner, as we have kept practically all the negatives (35mm). I thus have a few questions concerning a suitable scanner:

1. I personally have a Mac, and am having trouble finding a scanner on the Internet that will actually work with one as well as Windows computers. I should also add that whilst understand that 35mm has an equivalent resolution to 15-20MP, I don't think that my mother would really want to fork out a highly expensive scanner that would most likely give a resolution quite equivalent to that; we (well, my mother) would rather go for one under £150.

2. We have kept the negatives inside the plastic sleeves from processing in storage cupboards in my parents' bedroom. The negatives all date from between a year and thirty plus years, and I was wondering: if their negatives were scanned in today, what would the state of the pictures themselves be like? Might the colours be a bit distorted, for example?

I'm sorry if I seem a bit gormless here; I'm quite new to photography overall, and I know relatively little about the qualities of film having been caught up in the digital realm since adolescence. :gag:
 
I'm pretty sure that my Canoscan 8800F came with windows and mac software and drivers. Can't vouch for how they work, as I'm windows/linux only here...

While you can scan 35mm at 4800dpi - gives 6803x4535px image - around 30+ Mp, you can work at lower resolutions too - 2400dpi is fine for most purposes to be honest.

You should be able to pick up a new canoscan for around £185 - so £150 is eminently do-able second hand.

I've recently been doing much the same as you propose to do - I've had negs that have been developed at some nasty postal service chosen by my mother because "they send you a free film!" which the prints were horrible - all magenta and washed out. In contrast, I've rescued some highly acceptable prints from the negatives... you may need to do a little colour correction work in photoshop to get things spot on, but its very do-able. To be honest, if the negs have been kept flat, sleeved, cool and dark then they're likely to be in better nick than the photo's that were printed from them!

Here are a couple of examples - scanned from 110 neg's... just old snapshots of my dad and uncle on holiday :)
(excuse the shorts :gag:)



 
Epson's scanners work happily with a Mac and they have been consistently producing flatbeds that do a fair job with film scanning for several years.

I do quite like Epson's own scanning software too, though a lot of other people swear by Silverfast or VueScan.

I have a V700, which is a bit above your price target, but I wanted the ability to scan medium format film and it will handle up to four strips of 6-frame 35mm film in one go.

A selection of scans done with that can be found in my Flickr stream. It's certainly more than good enough for web use.

Their 4490 Photo scanner is £160 at full retail and comes with EpsonScan for OS X (PPC and Intel). AFAICT, it only scans one 35mm (or 120) strip at a time (6 frames per scanning shot).

MacUser review here

If you're only doing 35mm, there is the range from Plustek, which now support Mac OS X (they didn't used to)

The 7300 can be found for about £150 and works with anything better than a PPC G4 with 10.3.9

http://www.plustek.com/product/7300_spec.asp

As a dedicated film scanner it ought to provide better results than a flatbed with a transparency adapter. I've heard mixed reports about Plustek's quality (some of them very good) though they'll certainly be far better than the £60 ones you'll find in Maplin for example. TBH, a £150 scanner is likely not to set the world on fire.

Review: here

The big downside of any of the Plusteks is that you have to manually move the film for each individual frame you scan.

Ignore 4800 dpi claims for anything costing less than several hundred pounds. The realistic maximum is around 2400 dpi.
 
Wonderlicious said:
The negatives all date from between a year and thirty plus years, and I was wondering: if their negatives were scanned in today, what would the state of the pictures themselves be like? Might the colours be a bit distorted, for example?
Click to expand...

If they are faded and/or suffer from colour casts, there's a fair bit of restoration that can be done in software, either during the scanning process or in something like Photoshop.

BTW, undertaking an exercise like this may be a major project if you have anything more than a few films to scan. It will probably take a lot longer than you think.
 
im selling a canon 5600f and epson 4490 on the classifieds, both work with mac as i used them on mines!
 
I use an Epson Perfection V500 flatbed. I spent part of yesterday scanning in some 1920 celluloid films my Dad took as a youngster on a Brownie.

The scanner will do everything from 35MM to 1/4 plate and scan pictures as well.

The software has Digital ICE that does a reasonable job of restoration and the software will also do a good job of colour correction.

They sell for within your budget to at PeeSea World.
 
Whatever you do don't get a plustek 7300 they are absolute garbage! I had one and sent it back because the scans were so bad that I thought it was faulty. I then spent a week with the second one trying numerous beta drivers etc that they kept emailing me. The BEST result was not as good as scanning the picture using the scanner on my £100 mfd !!

Oh I had a thread about it on here.
 
I remember that one Darren - mainly as I was thinking of getting one myself, then you started posting about the problems you were having and I thought "Hmmmm Maybe not then!"
 
TheBigYin said:
I remember that one Darren - mainly as I was thinking of getting one myself, then you started posting about the problems you were having and I thought "Hmmmm Maybe not then!"
Click to expand...

It was shockingly bad !!!
 
Fair enough, I did say I'd heard mixed reviews about Plusteks in general (a friend of mine had a 7200 that he was happy with and I've seen some positive reviews) but I've been a little wary of them because of the marmite reactions I've seen.

I'll happily note first-hand experience on the forum.

ChrisH said:
I use an Epson Perfection V500 flatbed. I spent part of yesterday scanning in some 1920 celluloid films my Dad took as a youngster on a Brownie

....

The software has Digital ICE that does a reasonable job of restoration and the software will also do a good job of colour correction.
Click to expand...

Might be worth mentioning that Digital ICE will only work with colour film (but not Kodachrome) not b/w (with a very few exceptions, such as Ilford XP1). It's a technology intended to remove dust and scratches automatically.

Spotting it out is a tedious business and it's well worth getting your film and scanner as clean as possible before starting.
 
Thanks for the help guys! :D

Musicman said:
BTW, undertaking an exercise like this may be a major project if you have anything more than a few films to scan. It will probably take a lot longer than you think.
Click to expand...

I've actually finished my degree and my new job doesn't start until September/October so I'm basically going to take all summer off (or at most just do some part-time volunteering), so it would at least speed things up.
 
lovely shots there Bigyin.

I am coming to the conclusion that a well executed snap-shot has far more endearing and enduring value than those random shots of birds and bees I am often tempted to take.

Give me such snap shots any day.

(BTW, which countries are those shots taken - USA? Is it 50s? 60s?
 
My guess: somewhere in Europe in the mid 80s (what looks like a Mk2 Fiesta means after 1983). Some, but not all, of the cars are French made and look French-registered.

Judging by the presence of a Wimpy, however, my money would be on somewhere on the Costa Brava in Spain? (a bit quiet for Lloret de Mar? Tossa de Mar?). Easy for the French to nip over the border, but the Wimpy caters for the British contingent.

:)
 
Pretty much spot on Musicman - 1986 if my dad remembers right :) Even got the location - Tossa Del Mar!

Burger joint just reminded me of some punk poetry...


or you can dine and whine on stuff that's bound to give you boils
hot dogs direct from cruft's
done in diesel oil
or the burger joint around the bend
where the meals thank christ are skimpy
for you that's how the world could end
not with a bang but a wimpy.
 
I'll throw my hat into the ring for the Epson V500. I got mine a couple of weeks ago and installing on OS X Snow Leopard was fine. Drivers all on the CD etc.

Works a treat with both 35mm and 120 film. Not got any 35mm that I can upload here (it's for my sister-in-law's 18th birthday - so baby shots etc) but here's an example of what it can do with 120 colour negs...

img002.jpg
 
****would rather go for one under £150.***

Well I feel like a parrot giving the same advice:-....see if you can pick up an Epson 2480 photo for about £10, for 8X10 prints or showing on computer screens it's difficult to see the difference compared to a V750 for many scans. In fact I've posted shots showing that there is not much difference.
I got mine for £8 as he put a light bulb on the lid and melted a hollow...no prob for me as my computer room is a disgrace, the scanner is at bottom right.
http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn172/chakrata/comroom.jpg
 
onefunkypenguin said:
im selling a canon 5600f and epson 4490 on the classifieds, both work with mac as i used them on mines!
Click to expand...

How do you rate the Epson? Has yours got any guarantee left





















it can be bought new for £118 don't want to jep your sale
 
i like it, the neg holders are a bit flimsy but they seem to be like that with all scanners iv used so not like its an exclusive epson problem!
 
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