Scanning film and slides

[Duffy Pratt]

I've got a few thousand negatives and slides hanging around, and I'm thinking about culling out the better ones, scanning and reprocessing them with Photoshop.

I see that Affordable Scans in Sugarland is a sponsor here. Does anyone have any actual experience with them? Willing to recommend?

The other option is to get a scanner myself, do the work on my own, and then sell the thing when I'm done. It looks like the scanning learning curve is pretty steep, so I'm not sure I want to go this route, unless I decide to start shooting some Velvia again with my K1000, and keep the scanner for the longer haul. If I go this route, how much am I looking at spending, and how well do these things hold their value and how fast are they likely to move (if, for example, I tried to resell it here)?

Basically, I just want to get my whole collection together, presentable, and printable by myself. I never look at the older pictures anymore because they aren't on my printer, and I'm beginning to think thats a shame.

Thanks,

Duffy

[venchka]

I'm thinking about the same thing. Affordable scans uses a Nikon CoolScan 5000 ED. They go for less than $1,000 and are highly regarded. I reckon a low mileage CoolScan 5000 would be worth $500. It would be to me for sure! At $0.49/per scan, do the math.

Shoot lots of Velvia! Process/scan/print. You could do worse. Or don't and sell the scanner to me when you're finished with it.

[Duffy Pratt]

The math is pretty simple. If you are right, it looks like about 1000 scans on the break even point, using the same equipment. I would probably get higher quality doing it myself, but at the cost of a whole bunch of time, and I would be less selective about what makes a good photo. Realistically, if I only picked the great pictures, and the ones I think have a shot with PS post-processing, its hard to imagine that I would come anywhere near 1000 scans. I've got a pretty big ego, but even I don't think that I've taken that many pictures that I can't live without.

Duffy

[BobbyC]

If they have a nice clean scanner it may be worth paying them. I went the scan my slides route before I went totally digital and even with a dedicated film scanner it just became too much to handle. The scan time would just eat me up, not to mention the time to clean up the scans in the computer. It didn't matter how much I blew off the slides, there was always dust to be removed and software that did that just degraded the image too much. I have thousands of underwater slides that I'd love to scan, just don't have the time or the money it would take to pay someone to scan that many. At least I still have my old slide projector :o)

[edwarda]

I use a Epson Photo Scanner (1650 I think) at home it great for slides and negatives. I think it was around 199.00 a couple of years ago and it still worrks great it comes with a plastic holder to place your sldes in, then you just remove the top cover and select that you want to scan slides. Ready to go. I like it a lot.

Edward

[venchka]

Nikon also makes the CoolScan V ED for half the price of the 5000 ED.

http://www.nikoncoolscan.com/main.html

Once you get the hang of it, shoot new slides.

[lucian]

I remember, in the good old days, of using a slide copier and a 35mm SLR to copy negatives and slides.

I saw a post on another forum where the person was copying his aunts' Kodachrome and Ektachrome slides to digital using a dSLR and a digital slide duplicator. I would think this would be faster but I don't know about the qualitiy.

I found a similar, if not the same, duplicator on www.porters.com.

http://porters.com/Merchant2/merchan...Category_Code=

Anyone ever use one of these?

Also I had seriously thought of doing scanning/copying part-time but I found out that our local SAMS will do up to 200 slides for a flat fee of $2.40 (yep, that's right two dollars and forty cents). Tax is extra. I called the Super-Center, right across the street from SAMS. They are more expensive - $0.28 per slide. Guess I'll need to find another part-time venture.

[BobbyC]

I've always thought that may be a way to do it but just never had time to try it. What sized file do you get from the scans at Sams?

[basefare]

Do scanned slides work okay on a computer? You get a usable picture? If so, that may be the way to go. It makes me want to look up my Sam's store.

[Patti Edens]

Duffy,

My husband and I are also planning to do the same thing - one of these days. We just haven't had time to go through the boxes of slides and negatives we've accumulated over the years. Once we get over that hurdle, we'll use Rick Barrett Enterprises in the Woodlands.

I have an electronic copy of his brochure and can e-mail it to you if you like. His prices are competitive with the on-line services and they offer pick-up and delivery in this (Houston/Sugarland/Mo City) area. I was impressed with his in-depth knowledge of what it takes to get a good quality digital file.

During the scanning process, they can use some processes that automatically correct problems like dust, scratches (Digital ICE), and restore color (Digital ROC and Epson Color Correction.) They also do other corrections if needed or requested.

You might want to check them out before you make your decision.

Patti

[basefare]

Thanks Duffy,

That's good to know.

[Duffy Pratt]

Patti:

I'd appreciate it if you would e-mail me a copy of his brochure.

Thanks.

Duffy

[ascans]

Hi Duffy,

This is Mike from Affordable Scans. We've been offering discounts on whole collections for TPF members. I'll send you a PM with what we can do for you. And I think I'm going to post a better description of exactly what we do in our sponsor forum tonight so people can get a better handle on who we are (we do a lot of things that I haven't put on our web sie) and what differentiates us. Maybe you can join that thread and help us on our messaging.

I'm obviously biased because I own a scanning service. But since Affordable Scans started not too long ago with my effort to do something similar to what you're doing (we bought a Canon F4000US film scanner on eBay to scan our negatives with, then sold it when we were done) I'll offer some input. We have a completely different setup now, but I'm intimately familiar with the decisions you're trying to make.

Scanning a collection is hard work and you'll find that a lot of the time spent isn't even on scanning. It's more like problem solving, making decisions and getting organized. Our personal stuff probably took about 2X to 3X longer than the time I calculated before I started scanning based on raw scan times.

A lot of that was caused by weirdness in the scanner software, cropping (flatbed scanners mis-crop a lot, film scanners like the Canon F4000US and the Nikon 5000 ED don't crop at all, you do it yourself) and figuring out if the scan was good or not (what I got off the scanner was sometimes really different than prints because of photo-lab post-processing). But part of that is also the reality that you can't keep the same concentration and focus after 50 hours of scanning as you do in a 10 minute test run. So your overall rate drops and you start having to fix up errors. What's safe to clean the scanned bed with when the gunk from a photo album gets on it, how do you get the scanner to recognize the frame on the negative strip that was mis-cut, do you want to crop inside the corners on a slide or do you want to see the whole image with black rounded corners. How do you make sure you get every single image. There are just a ton of little decisions to be made and it gets really hard when your kids are running around, people are calling and you've already spent a long day at work.

So here's my advice. Look at it from a different point of view and examine your personality. If you're looking for a challenge or a problem to solve, do it yourself. The cost (in time and money) will always be larger than you think at the beginning, just like a home improvement project. But in the end I think you'll find it rewarding. But if it's something you just want to get done, use a service or it's probably not going to get done (again, just like a home improvement project). Honestly, even on our own project I basically gave up after it was about 25% done and tried to find any local service that would keep me from having to mail my collection away and risk loss. And I liked it enough to start my own scanning company. :)

Here are a couple of other things:

1) If you want a Nikon 5000 ED, start your project now. They started disappearing around when Nikon accounced that they were getting out of the film business earlier this year and if even though they show up in online listings, they're out of stock a lot of the time. If you wait a few years, it'll get hard to find them on eBay and probably won't be compatible with the operating system flavor of the year on your PC. That's probably the biggest factor in their long term value, the price will drop off if it doesn't work with new PCs.

2) We're turning all of our personal photos into photo books, the goal is to get about 8,000 to 10,000 photos into two roughly telephone book sized books at coffee table book quality. We also scanned in all of our greeting cards, wedding invitations and loose stuff like that to turn into another photo book so we can clear them out of the closet. We're using our own photos for process development. The end result is a lot smaller than our shelves of photo albums, the photos look a lot better than a printer and it'll be cheaper than printing them yourself. If you're interested in something like this, let me know and I'll contact you when our production process is ready to go.

Mike

[Affordable Scans]

I've decided to offer special pricing for all TPF members who place an order in July. Please see the Affordable Scans sponsor forum for details.

Thanks,
Mike