slide scanner
 

I've got a few hundred of my Dads old slides that i want to catalogue, can anyone recommend a good slide scanner? The ones on amazon and jessops seem to get mixed reviews.

I have seen this question asked before and from what I recall, the scanners that you mention are not scanners at all but poor quality digital cameras. Most of what I remember recommends a flat bed scanner.

I tried to scan my transparencies a few years ago using a flat bed scanner fitted with a dedicated 35mm adaptor but the results were not very good at all.

Personally I would look at one of the film scanners that are available.
[URL="http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=35mm+slide+scanner&tag=googhydr-21&index=office-products&hvadid=7382245625&ref=pd_sl_2lv8tovu3n_b"]http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=35mm+slide+scanner&tag=googhydr-21&index=office-products&hvadid=7382245625&ref=pd_sl_2lv8tovu3n_b[/URL]

Never had a problem with a Epsom flatbed scanner, in fact in the commerical world they use a drum scanner, which is the same as a flatbed but round and runs at a fantastic speed. :D

The flatbed slide and film scanners have come a long way. I have had the Canon 9950F which is a bit old now by electronics standards, but still does an incredible job. It's built like a tank, though the modern versions are almost wafer thin. Epson, as OldBoy says, is a good one.

It will take a while to understand what settings are best for slide work. The shot below was a slide I took in 1996 and scanned sometime ago.

[img]http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3086/3123050638_cd6ca2b777.jpg[/img]

You obviously had a lot better luck that I did, Keith.

I used one of these:
[URL="http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/scanner/hp-scanjet-4670vp-see-thru/details/"]http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/scanner/hp-scanjet-4670vp-see-thru/details/[/URL]
It came with a transparency adaptor but even with this the results were not very good at all. A bit strange really as otherwise it was a great scanner, the only reason I replaced it was because there were no 64 bit drivers for it and I could not get it to work with Windows 7.

I deleted all the scans and kept the transparencies. I might have another go sometime as I can't see myself getting the projector and screen out ever again. :D

You have to use the software, supplied with the scanner, to get the best from a scan. Some allow you to do a basic scan and I wonder if you accepted this instead of getting it to do the full scan? :D

You could read through a few tutorials on how to get the best from scanning. These links will take you to two of many across the web.

[url]http://www.jimsdigitaldiary.com/scanning-tutorial.html[/url]

[url]http://genealogy.about.com/od/digital_editing/a/scan_slides.htm[/url]

Like everything else in life, the best results always come out of the amount of effort you put in.

EDIT. Do remember that you will get tons of dirt and scratches show up that will need cloning out. You will also get artifacts that will look like blobs of dirt. If you get a clean scan first off you will be very fortunate. You have to factor all this in when you start scanning as well.

I personally love flatbed scanners. Let us get one thing straight first. For quality print outs you have to use a lorra bytes. I find between 5 and 10 mb`s. That is use tiff and not jpeg. Whether old slides with their scratches and scuffs will merit this, I doubt it. I have three Epson scanners, two of them are scan/print combos and the last one is the 4870 scanner. This model scans 24 film shots at a time ,the others take 6 shots. Just did a scan of a lovely girl on the cover of Windows magazine,10mb`s and tiff. At A4 you cannot see any difference in the original and the print out.

I made my own with a box and a daylight bulb behind and photographed them with my 70/300 in macro, saved as NEF's then able to tidy them up in Ps. Then again I'm a cheapskate with plenty time on my hands.LOL.