Like, I suspect, many people I have moved to digital photography in recent years but have a major legacy (30 years' worth) of negatives. How can I get these transferred to digital? I want high quality scans but the entry level for a good (4000 dpi) scanner appears to be about £400 and I'm unlikely to use it again after scanning the legacy negatives. Harrisons charge £1 a frame (God help us!) so even buying a Nikon scanner is cheaper. The digital darkroom facilties that used to be available at the Site Gallery appear to be non-existent now. There appears to be no organisation locally that will hire me a scanner for the week or so I will need to do the work. What do you recommend?

Have a look at the Plustek OpticFilm 7200i I picked the SE model up for £159 (inc VAT) earlier this year.

Prior to this I had a Nikon Coolscan IV, but when I brought it out to do some scanning a few months ago it refused to focus, so rather than return it to Nikon I ordered the Plustek which does a decent job, at a very reasonable price.

Thanks, Grinderman. I've seen the Plustek on Amazon but I'm a tad worried that it won't give the performance I'm looking for. This is archiving after all.

A thought has just struck me: there must be others like me out there, what say we get together and buy a Nikon between us? And when we're done sell it off on Ebay to others like us?

See if you can win this auction.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Epson-Perfection-4870-Slide-Brownie-35mm-Film-Scanner_W0QQitemZ190135545971QQihZ009QQcategoryZ44 977QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

I have the same scanner, it's pretty good.

Thanks, Grinderman. I've seen the Plustek on Amazon but I'm a tad worried that it won't give the performance I'm looking for. This is archiving after all.

A thought has just struck me: there must be others like me out there, what say we get together and buy a Nikon between us? And when we're done sell it off on Ebay to others like us?

If you have a reasonable collection of film to scan don't underestimate the amount of time it will take to scan it all.

You could be looking at a project which will take years, so the potential for either sharing or selling a film scanner is limited.

If you have a reasonable collection of film to scan don't underestimate the amount of time it will take to scan it all.

You could be looking at a project which will take years, so the potential for either sharing or selling a film scanner is limited.

Yeah, that's the only problem with mine. You can scan at normal values reasonably quickly, but as soon as you turn on digital enchancement or similar functions (dust removal, damage fixing etc), it can take ages. (20 minutes per negative. sigh.)

I'll only repeat what others have said, I'm afraid. I went through this process with just a couple of dozen rolls of slides and that took me a couple of weeks doing an hour here and there. Of course slides are the slowest thing to scan because you have to take them out of the mounts, place each one carefully and then re-mount them afterwards.

With strips of negatives you could probably speed up a fair bit if you leave as much as possible on automatic. I was a bit obsessive about it and cropped each one manually before doing all the adjustments myself.

The only moral of the story I can think of is: don't worry about the cost of the scanner, because you'll be investing much, much more in terms of your time and effort! Plus there's always ebay or members of the forum to sell it to afterwards :)

Thanks for this. All useful stuff. As it happens I've got the next two months free as I'm on a career break from work. So maybe I'll buy something and then sell it on. I'll keep you posted.

Interesting opportunity for a budding part-time entrepreneur here perhaps, can't believe that £1 a frame can't be undercut considerably and still turn a profit.

Question I'd still like answered, if anyone knows, is what, if any, digital darkroom facilties are available in Sheffield to casual users? In colleges perhaps or the CIQ? There used to be some attached to the Site Gallery but they seem to have ditched them, not suprised as I did a so-called 'course' there a few years back and it was a complete waste of time and money - not least because half the equipment didn't work (a problem you didn't have with things like film tanks back in the chemical days). At least they had a decent scanner though.

Thanks again.

Jessops seems to advertise scanning at 50p per picture (or 20p if it's part of one roll, I guess they can just go straight through if so). Trouble is, it really does take a few minutes per photo to get it just right, and if you work out an hourly rate you're never going to earn much. Plus don't forget to factor in the psychiatric bills from the state you'll be in after doing such mind-numbing repetitive work! :)

Plus don't forget to factor in the psychiatric bills from the state you'll be in after doing such mind-numbing repetitive work! :)

That's OK, I'm used to having a numb mind. I'm a civil servant.

Like, I suspect, many people I have moved to digital photography in recent years but have a major legacy (30 years' worth) of negatives. There appears to be no organisation locally that will hire me a scanner for the week or so I will need to do the work. What do you recommend?
A week!!!!!:o:o I wish it were that easy. The main reason I stopped using film was the sheer awfulness of scanning in images. Like others said above, it's a very, very big job. Though something like this could posssibly ease the pain.
http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Epson%20V700/page_1.htm
As with this scanner you can batch things more easily.

A week!!!!!:o:o I wish it were that easy. The main reason I stopped using film was the sheer awfulness of scanning in images. Like others said above, it's a very, very big job. Though something like this could posssibly ease the pain.
http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Epson%20V700/page_1.htm
As with this scanner you can batch things more easily.
A link to Amazon uk with £ price http://www.amazon.co.uk/Epson-Perfection-V700-Photo-Scanner/dp/B000F2CAO2/ref=sr_1_1/203-0344414-5816770?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1187721263&sr=1-1#moreAboutThisProduct

Thanks for this. Looks good.

I bought a canoscan 5200f for under 100 quid, which batch scans negs and trannies at 4800 dpi and is pretty nifty.

There's no IR scan for dust/scratch removal, but this shortcoming speeds things up a great deal.

If you use your copy of Adobe Lightroom to do mastermind the scanning process, you can create develop presets (noise reduction, anti-vignetting, colour temp etc) and batch apply them to scans of similar negatives.

Lighroom would indeed be ideal for this as suggested above. Shame it's so buggy, painfully slow, unreliable. Just like Bridge, Adobe's other image 'management' software.

old thread....same question :)
any recommendations for slide scanning service?
what resolution is needed for reasonable image?

I've installed an old hp scanjet 3570c, but it's taking ages and scans are horrible, although admittedly my slides aren't great quality. However I still need reasonable digital images of the slides of paintings and drawings.

The scanner's got weird marks on underside of glass so reckon it's had it as can't see any way to open it up.

anyone used this place? http://www.picturelizard.co.uk/index.php?cPath=289&ref=2

thanks

Don't buy the plustek optic film. The scans are horrendous and useless for any slides which originally have lots of shadow detail as every type of noise will creep into your scan. Even scanning at the max resolution 350mb files and higher still leaves a lot to be desired plus the bundled silverfast software has a mind of its own and can give totally unwanted results. Now I've made the transition to digital, best results are obtained from an old jessops slide duplicator attached to the camera via a t2 mount. Below is a scan from the plustek. The banding and noise in the cloud shadow was so bad in this slide that I had to sacrifice the shadow detail by turning up the blacks in adobe raw cs3 and the sky had to be masked to allow for the main area to be sharpened without added noise. This film is fujichrome 100, velvia is better for scanning but results still look muddy and have to be "revived" in photoshop.

http://i586.photobucket.com/albums/ss308/corkneyfonz/jpegviewfromingleboroughydalessmall.jpg