Slide scanner

Jewelry Discussion
1

While on the subject of slide scanners, does anyone know of a digital
camera that will scan in 35mm slides? I can’t think it can be too
difficult a concept, as the ‘chip’ used must be very similar in both
a camera and a slide scanner. It seems silly to have two pieces of
equipment with the same (expensive at the moment) chip in them. David
Kelsall Jeweller UK

2

David, By golly! That’s a really clever idea (scanning slides with a
digital camera). I don’t see why it wouldn’t work just fine. Any camera
that has a 1:1 Macro capability should work with no modification. The
following site shows the macro capability of a bunch of digital
cameras…Bob Williams
http://www.imaging-resource.com/IMCOMP/COMPS01.HTM

3

I need to scan my entire collection of 35mm slides. These images
include those of my work and a large number of instructional slides.
I have a small Smart Scan slide scanner that I have used for several
years. It has been adequate in communicating with clients and
galleries, but I really need a much better machine that will allow me
to obtain quality, accurate images for publication and for
presentaions and lectures.

Anyone have any experience ?

Thanks ahead of time!
Andy Cooperman

4

Andy,

Just so happens I have been working with a friend of mine to
accomplish the same type goal. I have lots of slides and negatives my
friend has scanned using a Nikon film scanner to create digital
archives. While the results from the Nikon equipment are my only
exposure (pun intended) to film scanning gear, the results are quite
good. The.JPG files usually range between 4-5M in size (when maximum
scan rate is selected for the #2000 model my friend has) and these
images show no degredation when enlarged to 11 x 17 on my CRT.

The equipment is not cheap ($400-$900 for the initial unit, depending
on the features; film strip feeder and slide units are extra $$).
There are services available that charge in the neighborhood of $1
per image. When you factor in the time to scan and archive each image,
that is a reasonable price - factor close to 4 minutes per image.

Mark

5

Andy, I have a Nikon Cool Scan V ED and can not fault it. I also
have an older Nikon CoolPix 950 Camera with the accessory slide
copier. It screws on the lens. Hold it up to the light and shot. It
also allows you to zoom in some and reframe the slide. Great for
copying slides on the road.

Bill

6

Hi Andy,

I have some experience with film scanners.

Basicly there are 2 kinds of semi-professional scanners:

  1. Film scanners
  2. Flat-bed scanners.

I’ve tried both. A year ago I borrowed from a friend a Nikon
Coolscan film scanner.

This scanner was for 35mm film only, slides, negatives and mounted
dias. It worked very well, and I recommend it if you are sure that
you will never need to scan larger format than 35mm. It has a high
resolution; my Black/White negs made up to 65 MB files, and the
density was superb. But the scanning was slow. Nikon makes other
scanners, much faster, but at a cost.

Then, for a week ago, I purchased a flad-bed scanner, Epson
Perfection 4990, because I have a lot of medium format films to be
scanned. Epson had recently launched two new flat-beds, V 700 and V750
professional, so the 4990’s price became more human, and I decided
for it. This Flat-Bed scans all film-formats up to 8"x10", and
reflective photos too.

Even if I have only scanned 6x6 and 6x7 B/W negs, I feel competent
to say that this scanner is absolutely a beauty for quality scans, and
I don’t really need anything more.

The difference?

Well, if you have a lot of heavily underexposed dias, you might want
to go for the Nikon Coolscan. But the Epson 4990 is quite adequate for
me, although I aim at making digital files large enough for prints
for exhibitions, and I’m a fanatic about quality.

Other considerations: Epson is much cheaper than Nikon, and a bit
faster than the cheapest Coolscans.

Hope that this will help,
Jon Holm
Bornholm, Denmark

7

Andy and Fellow Members,

I have used the Nikon LS2000 slide scanner for years and have no
regrets. There are two tips that I can give you for this project. 1.
Don’t use the software supplied with the scanner. Use VueScan, It’s
well worth the money and effort. 2. Don’t save scans in JPEG. Save
all the scans in TIFF format then convert to JPEG if you need to
compress the image for transport.

Neal

8

Andy,

I have a Minolta DiMage Scan Dual III that I’ve been very pleased
with. I’ve scanned slides with it at a high enough resolution and
quality to use on the cover of Studio PMC. I believe our art
director has one too: he was sufficiently impressed at the time with
the scans he was getting from me that he added one to his equipment
line-up. It’s several years old now, but it was only a couple hundred
dollars when I bought it. There may be better options available now:
I haven’t checked into it for a while, since the Minolta has been
doing a fine job for our needs.

As an aside, I do all the slide scans for Studio PMC, although
that’s becoming rarer as more artists send me digital images instead
of slides. I love it when artists send GOOD digital images: it saves
me a step and I don’t have to worry about returning them. But they DO
need to be good images: for those who don’t do a lot of scanning, be
sure to check your resolution AND image size. I get lots of images
that meet either our minimum size OR our required 300 dpi
resolution, but not both! A 72 dpi image at 5" x 3" becomes a
fraction of an inch across when you increase the resolution. There
are things you can do in Photoshop to bump it up a bit, but the end
results are never as good as you’d like, and it takes way more of my
designer’s time than I like to spend. Unless I absolutely HAVE to
have the image, I won’t bother – and I almost never HAVE to have the
image. Just a word to the PR-wise. :slight_smile:

Suzanne

Suzanne Wade
Writer/Editor
suzanne AT rswade.net
(508) 339-7366
Fax: (928) 563-8255
www.rswade.net

9

My husband is a digital photo restoration expert, and he has always
used Microtek scanners. When we recently replaced his scanner as
part of a general equipment upgrade, we researched scanners
extensively and decided to buy another Microtek. He needed a large
format scanner that would do a professional job on everything from
slides and negatives to large pieces. Microtek had exactly what he
needed at a very good price, and the color and scan quality are
superb.

I also have a low end Epson for scanning sketches and stones, since
no stone will ever scratch his scanner bed, and the difference in
scan quality is striking when you magnify the images to look at the
rendering on a pixel level.

Janet Kofoed
users.rcn.com/kkofoed