Negative & slide scanners

[PopT 10]

Hi

I am wanting to buy a 35mm Negative & slide scanner so I can load the images onto my computer. There are so many on the market 7 the expensive ones look no different to me from the cheaper ones. Can anyone recommend one that doesn't cost the earth but does a good job?

 

Thanking you

 

Happy Days! PopT

[handypandy 14]

My brother found some old family slides from the 60's. He picked the scanner up in the Maplins sale for £15 and the results were spot on taking into account the slides would have deteriorated a bit. I borrowed it and did a few old negs. I must have binned 1000's of negs in clearouts in years gone by, I could kick myself now.

 

 

 

.

[*Wallace* 333]

One here,

 

http://www.lidl.co.uk/cps/rde/SID-FE25CA1B-D557B70C/www_lidl_uk/hs.xsl/our-offers-2491.htm?action=showDetail&id=10567&ar=10

[jezzyjj 10]

Like most things in life you usually get what you pay for. So don't expect a cheap item to be as good as pricier ones.

Not saying it always cheap=bad and expensive=good as there are always exceptions but with things like precision/electrical goods, cheap usually is nasty. Done the buy cheap, buy twice thing on several occasions. Not worth the aggro.

[januarychild 10]

Well if you have a digital camera, that in itself is a scanner. What I do with old negs trans is put them on a lightbox, glass on top then set my camera over with macro lens or extension ring. Its fiddly but if you don't want to spend on a scanner you'll probably never use again after you digitised your film then its an alternative.

cheers

[jezzyjj 10]

Which reminds me of a very effective, cheap and fast way of digitising film.

Use a slide copier, the old fashioned way of doing it. Sadly it's hard to find one.

[DaFoot 10]

I've got a negative scanner you can have for £30. I'd have to check model number.

[Jomie 30]

A lot of the cheaper ones come with dubious reviews. It's difficult to choose a good one. Of course it will become redundant when you have scanned everything. Would love to digitise my old negatives.

[jezzyjj 10]

Reminded by this thread I had another look for the Ohnar slide copier [this is not a scanner] I linked above and found one on eBay for £15, so snapped it up. Last time I looked none were to be found and I saw one this time for £150.

There were a couple of others there so worth looking.

Edited March 25, 2014 by jezzyjj

[trackrecords 10]

If you are going to buy a negative scanner to scan more than a few negs then get one with an automatic feeder - one that pulls the negative strip under the scanning head frame by frame - rather than having to position the negative yourself scan and then have to re-position it in the middle of the image.

You get what you pay for with the automatic feeder scanners as cheaper ones can 'drift' and the scan be misaligned with the frame by the 4th or 5th frame of the negative strip, so you have to start again...

[prescottspie 10]

I've tried several, and all the cheap dedicated film scanners are junk. Eventually I splooged on an Epson V500 (been superceded by several models now) and it blows the little things I used before out the water.

 

Film holds so much detail and dynamic range, do it justice with a decent scanner.

 

PS, if you have medium format negs, as I do, you need a scanner with a 120/220 module, if not you can save a bit of money by getting one without this - mine cost £80 more than the next model down just for this bit of plastic.