Film scanners

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Hi guys.

I'm sure this has been asked many times but i couldn't see a recent thread so figured i'd ask.

I just want to know what to look for when buying a film scanner?

what good brands are out there? / good scanners?

I've got about 15 films to be developed, (35mm film) so think it'd probs be cheaper to get them developed and scan them myself, it'll also work out cheaper in the long run I guess...

Edit:

I should probably put some sort of budget; I'd seen a canon 5600F on eBay for £90, does that seem reasonable or can I get something which will produce decent results for less?

Ideally i'd like to spend less than £100 on one.

I'd also considered something like this http://www.ionaudio.com/products/details/film-2-sd but i'm unsure how it'd stack up in comparison to a more expensive / known brand of scanner?
 
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I don't know how the 5600F compares to the Canoscan 8800F that I have but for what I paid for mine ( well under £100) a fews years ago, I have had no problems with it and the scan results have been decent ....Came with standard 35mm, 120 and slide holders!

No doubt other people will come along soon ...I know there was a thread to do with testing different scanners...if I can find it I'll link it to you!
 
If its just 35mm, the plustek scanners seem well regarded and can be had for <100 delivered used, from everyone's favourite auction site... with a bit of patience. either that or I got the epson V500 for about £100, not as good for 35mm but a little more versatile
 
ah awesome. that'd be great.

I'm not after exceptional results, but it'd be nice to get a decent scanner with good resolution.

i think it'd save a lot of cash in the long run so could be worth investing in one now

Thanks steve, I'll look into them
 
I just got the v500 in the post today.

Anyone got any tips for better scans? should i wear gloves/what kind?
 
Most scanners give good results providing you use bags of DPI and TIFF. The second is how many you can preview at one time. Epson 4870 will prescan 24 in one pass.
 
Ash (Ashley?), I've got a Plustek 7500i scanner, which was a bit over your budget. It has an infrared channel, which turned out to be important for me because I was scanning film up to 40 years old, so dust was an issue. If it's just new film, that wouldn't be such a problem.

Mine came with SilverFast SE scanning software, which is German and weird as lettuce sauerkraut... doesn't follow any of the usual UI conventions (in version 6... version 8 is an expensive upgrade). It does an OK result, but it can be problematic for some negative films, as the range of presets available for dealing with colour casts from the orange masks can be limited. For example, my first film when I came back to film was Fuji C200, and I could not get the colour right. So I've been getting my colour negs scanned by the processing house (Photo Express do process and scan at 2000 dpi for £4.50 a roll, with a possible 50p discount for TP members... but they don't do E6 or BW!). I did rescan a set that were done by a lab in Edinburgh, and the professional lab was definitely getting much greater dynamic range: more in the clouds, more folds in dark cloth, etc.

I know my investment so far has been worthwhile, as I've scanned some 100s of rolls, but from where I am now I'm more likely to upgrade to something better, maybe one of the Epsons. I haven't used them, but others seem happy. Maybe the cheaper ones are not so great for 35mm, but they do allow scanning multiples where the Plustek is definitely one at a time. Anyway I'm hoping 120 is on my near horizon!

The thing to avoid like the plague is those cheap "scanners" that are actually little cameras. I got a Veho and it was dreadful, although very quick. Horrible colours, and a dreadful light leak, so it went back.
 
Hey Chris!

cheers for the post, some good info there too take in, especially regarding the colour scanning. Perhaps it's better to spend the money for a pro to do it?

I'll take a look at the Epson range too.

Also pretty handy to know I should avoid cheap scanners! I did assume they'd not be great, but worth asking
 
Hi, I use an Epson V500, bit of a faf to get set up but once running works well.
 
Hi all,

Rather than start a new thread, I thought I would jump on this one.

I would like a scanner so I can scan in a load of old photos I have from before moving to digital.

I am assuming that the best results would be by scanning the negatives as opposed to the actual photos. Is this correct ?

If so, what is the best value (cheapest) option to go for ?

I noticed that Maplin do scanners but not sure what they are like.
 
You'll get a bigger picture from a negative as there is more detail to enlarge, a photo is printed at usually 300dpi whilst there is usually enough detail in a neg for 2400+ dpi.

The ones that Maplin sell are (i think) the web cam in a box variety and are universally hopeless.
 
steveo_mcg said:
You'll get a bigger picture from a negative as there is more detail to enlarge, a photo is printed at usually 300dpi whilst there is usually enough detail in a neg for 2400+ dpi.

The ones that Maplin sell are (i think) the web cam in a box variety and are universally hopeless.
Click to expand...

Thanks.

Which would b a good scanner to go for ?

I have noticed that Plustek (7400,7600,8100) are popular as are Espons (V4990, V700, V750) etc

Any recommendations for negative scanning ?
 
steveo_mcg said:
If its just 35mm, the plustek scanners seem well regarded and can be had for <100 delivered used, from everyone's favourite auction site... with a bit of patience. either that or I got the epson V500 for about £100, not as good for 35mm but a little more versatile
Click to expand...

:p


If you have more to spend, I'm sure someone will be along to help you spend it :D
 
steveo_mcg said:
:p


If you have more to spend, I'm sure someone will be along to help you spend it :D
Click to expand...

That would be good.

I think the best thing to do is see which is teh better scanner, pick one up used, scan my old photos and the resell it :thumbs:
 
My advise is always to start at a Epson V750 and work down the numbers until you get to one you can afford.

Older scanners can be good, but mostly have variable negative scanning.
Old scanners can be picked up cheap as Epson are not very good at upgrading drivers, however VueScan at http://www.hamrick.com/ works with many legacy scanners.

A useful site is : http://www.scantips.com/
 
Thanks. Any others I should be looking at other than the Epson range ?
 
There absolutely no difference between the Plustek 7400/7600i and the 8100/8200, the 8000 series ones just come with Silverfast 8 instead of 6.6, theres no hardware differences.

I'm going to be buying a 35mm film scanner in a week or so and I looked at the Plustek range and from several reviews found that:

  • The IR dust/scratch correction could be better
  • They have a very annoying quirk of having to scan at the 'advertised' maximum 7200 dpi to get the most detail, despite test charts showing that only about 3250 dpi is actually resolved by the sensor and if you scan at 3600 dpi because of this to save scanning time then the resolution drops even further. As so it takes forever to scan.
Because of this I looked around and found the Reflecta range, I looked at the Crystalscan 7200 and the Proscan 7200 which are cheaper/similar in price and generally much better. I've linked reviews below for both so you can look at them as well as one for the Plustek for comparison.

Proscan 7200: http://www.filmscanner.info/en/ReflectaProScan7200.html

Crystalscan 7200: http://www.filmscanner.info/en/ReflectaCrystalScan7200.html

Plustek: http://www.filmscanner.info/en/PlustekOpticFilm8200i.html

And if you want a cheaper price on either of the Reflecta's, the above websites film scanner shop is much cheaper than any place I've found in the UK:

http://www.scandig.com/

This is where I'm going to be getting my Proscan in a week or so.

Hope this is helpful
 
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Thanks Samuel, useful info.

Were you not tempted by the Epson or Canon ranges ?
 
Spy said:
Thanks Samuel, useful info.

Were you not tempted by the Epson or Canon ranges ?
Click to expand...

I looked at them at first and quickly realised that I could get much better quality out of a dedicated 35mm scanner than a flatbed for only a little bit more - I only shoot 35mm at the moment - although the V500 for instance may claim 6400 dpi if you actually measure the resolution with a '1951 USAF Resolution Test Card', it becomes apparent that it actually only resolves 1600 dpi or for a 35mm negative about a 4 megapixel image. The V700/750 fares a bit better resolving about 2400 dpi. For medium format either of those is o.k because of the larger film area but for 35mm I would want something better. The density of a V500 also only comes up to about 3.0 which is a bit low for scanning high contrast slides etc.

I was recently left some money and decided to buy a nice high quality film scanner with some of it as I've wanted one for quite a while and the Reflecta Proscan 7200 seems from reviews the best quality for the price.
 
s162216 said:
  • The IR dust/scratch correction could be better
  • They have a very annoying quirk of having to scan at the 'advertised' maximum 7200 dpi to get the most detail, despite test charts showing that only about 3250 dpi is actually resolved by the sensor and if you scan at 3600 dpi because of this to save scanning time then the resolution drops even further. As so it takes forever to scan.
Click to expand...

Sam, that's interesting. I don't have the numbers to prove it, but for me the sweet spots on my Plustek 7500i are 2400 dpi for images I really want and 1200-1800 for the rest. 2400 dpi equates to around 8.5 mp which is fine for everything I do (I don't use more than this with my digital cameras unless there's a very good reason).

I did scan a few at 3600 dpi but I'm not sure the results are really that much better and the resulting images were (then) a nightmare to edit in Aperture (slightly earlier version and only 4 MB in my MacBook Pro... spinning beachballs and a very hot Mac!).

A couple of times I suspected an interaction between the scanner resolution and the grain size (seemingly more pronounced) but I decided there was no real evidence of this, I was just grain-peeping and I stopped worrying!

One of the problems is negative profiles. I've just scanned some Acros 100, and while I'm sure it doesn't really matter for black and white negatives, I was surprised that it wasn't in SilverFast 6.6 (I used Kodak TMax 100 instead, seems OK). I had a real problem with Fuji C200 earlier. I know this is software rather than hardware, but it's a big part of the functionality you get!
 
The problem with scanners mainly is advertsing - although it may claim to resolve XXX the likelihood is that it will actually only resolve <<<XXX so the file size just ends up being bloated with excess data where no actual extra detail is resolved. The fact is that the sensor itself may be able to resolve XXX but other optics in the pathway (especially the high pass filter) limit the actual resolved resolution of the sensor.

Plustek is a classic example of this, they advertise as being able to resolve 7200 dpi or about 70 mp, when in actuallity if you measure it with a test card they only actually resolve about 3200 - 3900 dpi (depending on model) when scanning at 7200 dpi. The annoying point with Plustek models is that unlike most scanners you have to actually scan at 7200 dpi to get the measured 3200 - 3900 dpi and then resize afterwards to cut out the excess 'worthless' data. Of course this also darastically increases scan time. Scanning at 3600 dpi just cuts the resolution even further (to about 2600 dpi).

Try scanning the same image (prefrably a slide) at 7200, 3600 and 2400 and resize them to a common size. In fine detail at 100% there will probably be some more detail visible in the 7200 image although for web use etc its probably not worth worrying about.

This is part of the reason I chose the Reflecta Proscan, the scan times at 3600 dpi with ICE are quite reasonable and according to a test chart actually resolve somewhere near the actual DPI at 2250 or about 14 mp for a 35mm frame.
 
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