As I type, I am scanning. Well, the 'pooter's scanning. Four frames, one strip of 35mm, and whilst it's doing that, I'm finding something else to do.
Yesterday, ALL DAY, I managed 50 frames. Today... ALL DAY I have managed to do an extra page from the binder... haven't counted them yet, 'cos I am still waiting for the machine, but I'll be lucky to have got 70 frames done. I will admit, I am scanning them at a pretty high quality level; 2700 DPi and 64 bit colour depth. with 12 times over-scan & multi exposure to get the 'best' I can from the job. AND... this is the good bit for you, this high end scanner only cost me £30 off e-bay..... well, actually it originally cost my just shy of £500, back in Y2K... but I was having trouble getting new computer to recognise it & spotted same model 2nd hand, which came with an SCSI card I wanted top 'de-bug' and a bunch of spare strip carrier's that are handy.... So 'cheap' doesn't have to be 'nasty'..... BUT, good scans DO take time... lots and lots of time, and not all of it's in the machine being none to fast, but in the 'handling'. Organising the negs, so you dont do the same one five times; dusting them off before scanning, putting away. Then saving you scan and any post-process clean and tidy work you may want to do, which can make the scanning seem rather quick!
Whether its all worth it, only you can say; BUT, if you have more than a hand full of old images to do, it is likely to be a mamoth task, and you MAY want to consider professional scanning services, or it could be many many years before you have them all up on screen to look at.
If you are prepared to sacrifice quality for cost/convenience, then the web-cam type USB scanners, that are usually under £50 new, can actually be half reasonable..... 'scuse me a strip just finished and needed changing!.... where was I? Oh yeah. The slide viewer box USB type scanners; work much like those old battery operated slide viewers; LED light in the bottom, shines through slide or negative, and a web-cam above takes a picture of it when you press the button. Suggested resolution they offer is actually nowhere near; they usually quote the web-cams pixel out-put, and say things like its a 14Mega-pix scanner, rather than quote the DPi resolution it offers.... and the out-put is often an 'interpolated' one; the camera only actually scans at maybe 1Mpix and inflates that 10x sub dividing the grid and making a best guess at what should be in it! But, for all that, sized back down to around 1Mpix for web display or screen view, they aren't too bad; and they are cheap, they are fairly compact, and the work flow can be reasonably 'quick'.
I bought one, with the idea that I could get through my back archive reasonably fast.. and treat the scans as a sort of digital contact sheet to cherry pic frames to make high quality scans from.... I will say, the project did get frames to file fairly fast..... I could do maybe two films 50-60 frames or so in an evening.... but the plan went to pot in keeping track of them to go back and find the negs to make HQ scans of, and as you still have to load the entire strip...you can get to a point where its just 'easier' to bite the bullet and do the lot!
Dedicated film scanner though, doesn't have a huge foot-print; its as wide and about 1/3 as tall as my PC tower case and happily sits on top of it... binders full of negatives, on the other hand, rocket blower, space to load the carriers... its a little more than you can do on your lap! Add shoe-boxes of loose negs or the single sleeve that came in the pack of prints, and a few of the individual cellophane strip sleeves, dumped on me by relatives, "OH, I think there's some of Auntie Dot in here; we found them when we cleared out Floss's when she went in 'the home'... I'll leave them with you... you can e-mail them to me"...... Take heed... the few you have now are likely ONLY the START! And of course they always think that you'll be able to 'knock'em off in an evening.. 'Wont you?' My own 'archive' has mushroomed, with negs dumped on me in this way from two sets of grand-parents, a number of aunties, and a few of thier freinds who's just like to have a look, so I told them you'd love to do them... you will.... wont you!
And, it's not just the scanning; you have to have somewhere to put the scan-files. Compressed jpg files might only take up 1Mb a frame. But the scan file, in better quality, uncompressed TIF format is likely to be 10Mb... it doesn't sound much, but when you have a lot of them, soon mounts up, and you wont be burning them all onto one DVD.... scanning direct to Photo-Shop, scans Idoing at the moment, at 2700Dpi, and 64bit colour, come out just shy of 10Mpix and weigh in at about 55Mb a frame.. and start dressing those up in PS, the modification layers can see that 'inflate' drastically. By the time I have done a quick touch up to restore any scratches or marks; adjusted colour balance, and contrast, they are usually around the 80Mb mark.... skoozie... strip just stopped... where was I.... Oh yeah.... Hard drive space.... they can take a lot; especially sat in the 'work in Progress' folder, before you make an archive version, which might not be a lot smaller, depending on format and compression you save in.
So you need to think a bit beyond the scanner; will you need a hard drive to store them on? Will you need CD/DVD to send out 'copies' to all the interested parties? What about the negs themselves? Will you be preserving them after scanning? (It is wise; you'll often find 'duff' scans in the batch) What about strip sleeves and binders, will you need to buy them to keep them organised during operations?
SKN1702.psd!!!!! Just finished a page from the binder, and that's the last frame from the file. One thousand, seven hundred and two!!! Since this time last year!!!! It's no small job! And I still have to dab and stab'em all! Arhgggggggg!!!!!!!!! But I detract....
35mm, is as said, 'easy'. Most dedicated film scanners only take 'up to' 35mm, they dont take 120 roll film. And that 'up to'. If they have a holder that will take a 110 cartridge neg... they are still restricted by the scanner resolution; so like taking a 'crop-section' from a 35mm neg, you will only get something with about 1/4 the pixel count, which, especially from a high interpolation scanner like the light-box web-cam type, can make them pretty dire.
I have done a chunk of old 110 cartridge, and even a roll of minox sub mini spy camera negs using a slide duplicator lens on the electric picture maker. I have a crop sensor DSLR, so it gives a 1.5x magnification before you start, so I cant get a 35mm neg 'full frame' 1:1, I can only take a sectional enlargement; but does work well for the little 110's, which I can get to fit the frame nicely..... BUT boy is it a ballache!
Using LCD monitor as back-light illumination; takes a bit of chimping to get decent exposure settings; then working in negative, you have to do a lot of the processing manually in post-process; inverting to poss, and sorting out the colour balence and removing the orange neg cast. ANd once you have it looking a bit like; you may have to go back to the neg and try alternative settings to get the dynamic range better centred and sort out your contrasts etc. Once you have got it 'ball-park' you can run off a whole film or five, which don't vary by much and keep applying the same adjustment layers; so you can get through them fairly... Ah! until you hit the googlie, 'cos a lot of 110 cameras were cheap key-ring things, with fixed shutter and aperture, and relied on film lattitude and process correction for the print... and this one needs a BIT more work..... and you then discover its not grossely under exposed.... some-one had thier thumb half over the lens!
Slide Duplicator lenses again, come up reasonably cheap on e-bay; and if you want to make crop section enlargements, or mess around stitching crop sections for huge mega pixel count images, can be 'fun'. But, it is one of the few ecconomical ways to get 'good' scans from small negs... but it is a chore.
My advice from the go get, is to think long and hard how much the jobs worth; more how much your time is worth. 1702 pictures 'done' in a year, working in and around, but pretty deturmined to get it done. If I had to go to work, and I was using my weekends and holiday time doing this.... I'd pay some-one else to do it! I wouldn't be going to work every day to pay the bills. So I could come home and spend all my life 'scanning'!!! No matter HOW much 'Cheaper' it is DIY or how much 'better' I might do it DIY!
So have a good hard appraisal; how much are these pics worth? and how much can you afford to get them digitised? How much is your time worth? How much time do you HAVE, you can devote to this? And forget the cost of the kit; how 'good' do you want the results to be? Because as soon as you go beyond that aprox 1.3Mpix web resolution, you'd comfortably get from a web-scanner, or from a commercial lab at 'low quality', the cost and time will ramp drastically, and the improvement may not actually be all that beneficial, IF most of them are only ever going to be looked at like a pack of prints, to see what's there; and pick only one or two from a roll of 36 'for the album'.
Then.. cost the whole job... not just the scanner, but file space for scans, any archive materials for dealing with the negs; and possibly things like a rocket blower or concervators gloves etc etc, depending how diligent you are going to get.
Oh Kay... Scan 1703.... time to turn the page and load up the carriers for another go..... oh what 'fun' this is...... ;-) Masochists only, need apply!
members will be along soon to offer advice
