FILM (Slide) Scanners

[blupaddler]

Well, I must admit I feel a little out of place here. While I consider myself a bit of a gear/gadget geek. I cannot seem to get caught up with all this technology and sorts, I am still behind the times. Which brings me to my current question...

I do not have or own or have used a digital camera. I have a problem, or so it seems. Although I prefer to use my 35mmSLR. O.K. enough dancing around. Iknow that the majority of you all own and use digital cameras, my question is for the other people that use slide/transparency film. I prefer touse this film as I tend to takelandscape photographs and the such while my wifedoes the documentary photographs.

Do any ofyou use or own orhave used??? a dedicated slidescanner. I am looking for a way to store some of my slides for easier access and review. Also for a way to post some on the web, for tripsand stuff. Having the slides put on CD at the local photo lab is expen$ive.

Any thoughts/experiences/comments welcome

Thanks and sorry for the rambling, Ineed sleep.

robb

[WhiteThaiGer]

Background: my wife takes all the pics, I just get her to nice places http://www.4wdtrips.net/forum/emoticons/cool.gif </div>
We got our digital camera only recently, so the pics from the last few month are all digital. My wife was experimenting. But on our last trip she took along the SLR again and probably will in the future for the kind of shots you describe, using the digi cam for documenting the trip. Slides are still the way to go, even though showing them to others requires a little setup: dark room, projector, screen.</div>
We have a Minolta Dimage Scan Elite Film/Slide scanner. It works great, but the problem is time. It takes time to scan the pictures, even if they are just scanned and not processed. So for print films we let the labs put the pics on CD for us, the scanner is only used for slides.Originally we wanted to scan all our slides, but so far we haven't found the time to do it.</div>






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[alanh]

I have an Epson Perfection 3200 scanner. If you're not set on a slide only unit, check it out. I haven't tried any slide scanning though.I have a bunch as well so I figured (wishful thinking maybe) I would scan them in one day. I didn't wanta dedicated slide unitso thisonewill do photos, negatives, slides (12 at a time I think) and general scanning of letter sized paper as well. It has 3200x6400 dpi resolution, so you can have fun creating huge files. Its not a cheap unit (I see some sites offeringit for $299 after a $100 rebate which I wish was all I paid), but from my somewhat limited research, I didn't think I could do better all around with a single unit without paying a lot more. For the same money, I'm not sureyou can get a dedicated unit as good either. I don't remember the name, but there is asite that seems to do really in-depth reviews of cameras and related gear (over my head on the technical details) and they gave it high marks. I keep thinking I will scan in some of my color negatives (kind of given up on slides in the last few years) and see how well I can do compared to the CDs I get from the film processor that don't have that great of a resolution.
Alan

Alan

[Darren]

I use a high-end Nikon film scanner (Coolscan 4000 ED) and love it. It's definitely a more tedious process to scan stuff compared to digital, but I, too, still prefer the analog method for my better material. About a year ago, I did finally pick up a digital P&S camera, and it is very awesome for documenting trips, as ThaiGer indicated. I use this all the time for shots I know I won't want to have blown up. I just love viewing my slides on my 80' screen. I guess you can do that with digital, but the projectors cost a bit more.

As far as storage, all my stuff is currently sitting in slide boxes (http://home.comcast.net/~dekilgore/film_storage.jpg), but will soon be transitioning them all to Print File hanging archive pages (http://www.printfile.com/products.cfm?Action=Products&SectionID=21018011#product), which is the most common method amongst those who shoot slides. I would just now prefer to be able to quickly take out a page and view a number of images at once, instead of separating them all out and laying them on my light box. All of my picture data, including exposure info, is kept track of by my software that works with my camera. So, I know exactly where to find an image I'm looking for.

You may be interested in reading this very detailed thread (http://forums.naturephotographers.net/6/ubb.x?a=tpc&s=8306088241&f=25110141&m=76110334) I recently posted on colorado.naturephotographers.net. A lot of great info there on this subject.

I guess it would be nice to have all your images available anytime you want on a CD, but yes, that is an added expense, and may just not be worthwhile anyway. I just scan my stuff on an as needed basis.

Good luck with this!


http://mycolorado.org

[WhiteThaiGer]

We have a lot of slides stored in magazines (straight/'European')for the projector, but in the last few years we also went to the archive pages.Now a nice software database to go with it would be nice... It's all a guessing game here 'When did we go there?' http://www.4wdtrips.net/forum/emoticons/headscratch.gif

I also think it would be great to have every thing on CD, but the time it takes to scan makes that somewhat impractical, so it's on a need-to basis here to.

I'll have let my wife look at the post you mention.


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