Rare to find something that hasn't already been discussed but I checked and there isn't anything on it. I NEEEEEEED to start scanning my own negatives at home because it costs too much. And I'm about to start developing my own black and white film.
I have a small budget! But eBay has a real wide selection.
HP and Epson flat bed scanners with slide holders (2nd hand)
Plustek dedicated slide and neg scanner, looks the job (2nd hand)
Little Veho and Logik cheap scanners from china for £50 new
So any advice please. I've spent the day reading reviews and each has an equal number of loves and hates.
@chewyteeth Ha! I'm in the market for a scanner myself - I want one that does both 35mm and 120, though. I have my eye on the Epson Perfection line, as they seem to do both. Either the V600, the cheaper model, or the V700, which is amazeballs, but costs about 3x what the V600 does.
@chewyteeth Hard to say - I lean towards those because I follow a couple of people on Flickr that have them and they seem to do well with them, and also because they do it "all" - both types of film and prints, should I decide to start scanning those up again. My dream would be a Nikon scanner but, um, yeah. I don't have $6,000 to spare. :)
@beautifulthing
Shit load on UK ebay. People seem to buy them, scan their back catalogue of negs in from their film days or their parents day, then sell them....so don't buy new if you're gonna get one. I just can't tell which to bid for.
yeah started to lean more towards the flatbeds while i was looking at them before - they seemed to be the ones with higher ratings, thing is i was trying to avoid a flatbed as i already have a normal scanner
i have a canoscan 8800f;i scanned slides (taken since 1960-i have hundreds!),negative colour films,negative b&w,paper potos...i live in romania,i bought it at about 300 dolars 3 years ago!
With scanning ther are really two schools here. One is scanning the prints and the other is scanning the neg or slides.
While a flatbed will do both they do it with crappy add on( they need to bounce the light through the image) and in realit don't do a good job. If I was you I would buy one that does just negs or slides. They will take longer but I feel the image quality will be worth the extra effort.
@agima Agreed. Flatbed scanners are the pits for scanning negs / slides, and consumer level flatbed scanners are mostly rubbish anyway.
It's been years since I've done any scanning, so I couldn't recommend any particular models. At uni we had a range of flatbed and film scanners that dealt with everything up to large format film, but we barely used them (everything was digital after the first year). I used to get some heavy use out of a 4000dpi Nikon film scanner at my old work, but a) that was 8-9 years ago now, b) I can't remember the model, and c) I didn't know what I was doing at the time anyway. Not much help, sorry :)
NOTE: If you can get hold of one, especially if you have any intention of editing your images at all, go for a scanner that allows you to output as 16-bit tiffs.
@chewyteeth For $2.99 US, I take my negatives and positives to a graphics place in town, and they scan with a very high end Nikon scanner, of which I would never afford, as it is $3,500 US.
@cluvlj Yeah, the prices I've seen in the UK for scanning in aren't that nice, and they'd be postal labs not shops. I'm gonna keep an eye out for a Nikon or Plustek 2nd hand like the other guys said, I only need them slightly bigger than the supermarket does them.
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Shit load on UK ebay. People seem to buy them, scan their back catalogue of negs in from their film days or their parents day, then sell them....so don't buy new if you're gonna get one. I just can't tell which to bid for.
While a flatbed will do both they do it with crappy add on( they need to bounce the light through the image) and in realit don't do a good job. If I was you I would buy one that does just negs or slides. They will take longer but I feel the image quality will be worth the extra effort.
It's been years since I've done any scanning, so I couldn't recommend any particular models. At uni we had a range of flatbed and film scanners that dealt with everything up to large format film, but we barely used them (everything was digital after the first year). I used to get some heavy use out of a 4000dpi Nikon film scanner at my old work, but a) that was 8-9 years ago now, b) I can't remember the model, and c) I didn't know what I was doing at the time anyway. Not much help, sorry :)
NOTE: If you can get hold of one, especially if you have any intention of editing your images at all, go for a scanner that allows you to output as 16-bit tiffs.
@chewyteeth @pete21 @dmortega @agima @toast @cluvlj @beautifulthing @jasehoad @sdpace