Old film scanning?!?

robhullfury

robhullfury

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Hi there, I'm a regular forum reader poster on the digital forums but in terms of film im a newbie.

Recently my mother has been sorting through my grandfathers loft and has found ALOT (im talking bigboxes full) of old film shots. Both family holidays personal stuff and architecture stuff.

The question I'm asking is there anyway of making digital copies using a scanner and software or something? Not bothered about a particular timescale or time consumption. Just seems a shame to have them locked in a loft with nobody to appreciate them.

Thanks for any pointers or help guys and gals.


Rob
 
I have an Epson v700 which I use to scan films (35mm & 120). It does a good job and probably cheaper than sending out boxes of films to someone to do commercially.
Scanner came with its own s/w but I havent really had much chance to settle on what settings to use. I do notice quite a lot of dust spots (worse than when I used to wet print) on the resultant images though. I probably need to turn on auto dust removal etc. Its quite slow, a scan takes about 6/7 minutes, cant recall how many negs it does in one sweep, half a roll of 120 (6x4.5) is the maximum 120, I think it does a 36 roll of 35mm in one go, they need to be cut into strips of course.
I bought it because it was one of the few that do 120, 35 and slides at a not to bad price.

You will need a decent amount of disk space though or a seperate external hard drive for the resultant scans.

Matt
 
If they are prints any scanner would surfice and then a bit of a tweak in PS etc. should do the trick.

Andy
 
Thanks for the reply I've got a few hardrives. Do you just use the standard software which comes with the scanner. Mines a Kodak printer/scanner so it's all built in I aren't sure if I got something to scan negatives with it.
 
You need a scanner with a negative scanning adapter or a dedicated film scanner, I doubt that the scanner you mention will be able to do negative scanning.

One way would be to buy a scanner like a V500 but it might be easier (and much better quality) to send them off for scanning. One place that I would recommend would be 'Treasured Memories'

http://www.treasured-memories.org.uk/home_46.html

They'll scan at 4000dpi with a Nikon Super Coolscan 9000 (possibly the best film scanner ever made) with Digital ICE infra-red scratch and dust reduction for colour negatives/slides, and save as 100% Jpegs (TIFF files for an additional fee). They will do 50 files for £35 and then £0.45 per extra frame. For medium format they charge an extra £0.60 though. They do volume discounts though so it's worth counting all the frames that you have and asking for a quote.

It will likely end up cheaper than buying an scanner which you might not ever need again.
 
I recently bought a Plustek 7400 from Amazon for about 170 quid. It is a proper slide/film scanner (35mm) and does a pretty good job. The slide holder takes 4 slides so you scan the first, slide it along then do the next etc. There is a holder for film as well. Maybe a couple of minutes each slide depending on how much you mess with it and what resolution you use. With hindsight I should have bought the more expensive one with scratch removal built in, but there are always image editors.

Be careful if buying second hand, since the early film scanners were SCSI rather than USB, and getting Windows 7 (especially 64 bit) drivers for SCSI cards that were around a few years ago is a bit troublesome.
 
s162216 said:
It will likely end up cheaper than buying an scanner which you might not ever need again.
Click to expand...

A point to note on this though, whilst I also recommend commercial scanning for certain situations (to save money and effort), second hand film scanners and especially the Epson Vxxx series tend to hold their value well, so you could sell with very little financial hit.
 
I use an Epson V200 scanner and have done lots of 35mm negs and slides.

A lot of my old printed films are also scanned into my collection. I use photoshop to edit the odd one but some are best left as they are. The have film character and that can add to the images.
 
It really boils down to a time vs money thing. If you have time, get a scanner for 100+ quid & spend a couple of months working nearly every night (well, you did say there was a lot!). If you have money, send away to somewhere like the previously mentioned Treasured Memories & spend a lot of money, but little time.
 
I think its quite difficult to offer accurate advice without knowing what form exactly these film frames take and what the scans will be used for.
Flatbeds with film adapters will cover most eventualities.
 
its more of a project for my mum. ill put it to her ive got a child id like to see grow up rather then be sat infront of a scanner haha.

thanks for all the advice and help tho everybody.
 
I spent most of Sunday last and scanned,edited and burned to disc 50 slides from circa 1967

Very pleased with results. Only 200 more to go in this lot. ;)

The end result is so a 90 year old uncle can see his old snaps. :thumbs:
 
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