Travel Photography - film\slide converter

Saw this over at Buy.com VuPoint Film and Digital Slide Converter (http://www.buy.com/prod/VuPoint-FSC1VPBX2-Film-Digital-Slide-Converter/q/loc/111/212651540.html?adid=17654).

My folks have a boat load of 35 mm stuff
Anyone have this or used one similar?
Thoughts

it's a 5 megapixel camera with a cheap lens. it's just as easy (and probably cheaper) to buy a slide copy attachment and hook it up to a digicam. results are ok for web use, but certainly nothing with which you'd want to archive film.

a good film scanner will produce much better results, but it won't be $49. you get what you pay for.

keep in mind that the market for used film scanners is strong, so you could actually buy a used scanner, scan your film and then sell it and probably not end up spending much more than $49. you might even luck out and come out ahead.

Do you have any recommendation on particular film scanner models?

See if these "old" threads would help:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-technology/388511-slides-digital-format.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-technology/565466-i-have-zillion-pictures-hawaii-but-i-dont-know-how-scan-them.html

Do you have any recommendation on particular film scanner models?

I have a "Nikon Coolscan V ED" film scanner, which was expensive (approx EUR600 when I got it), but has very good quality. I've scanned a lot of different film types and am happy with the results. PM me for some samples.

I find Ektrachrome scans really well, while Kodachrome (soon to be stopped by Kodak) not so good. Fuji Velvia and Provia are also good. C41 neg is OK, and BW is also good, but you have to disable much of the fancy scanning technology for BW.

I have thousands of rolls of film to scan, so getting a good film scanner was important to me. I shared some of the cost with a friend who has also used it for his collection.

The Nikon will take individual mounted slides, or 35mm strips up to six frames. It's still a very time consuming process*, with a roll of 36 exposures (6 strips) taking up to 90 minutes to scan - you do get 13 mega-pixel out though. The Nikon UI is not the easiest to work with, but you do get great results.

The Nikon scanning is so detailed that I can spot the scratches on the base negatives caused by poor handling when the film is being processed.

I have not tried to use flat bed scanners with film adaptors, so cannot compare.

Aidan

PS - Should this thread be over in the travel photography section?

PPS - * When I say time consuming, I mean it. I've had my scanner for about four years, and access to one for about eight, and am only 25% through my films. Have been totally digital for about four years.

i would recommend one of these epson scanners:

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/ProductCategory.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=-8172

i got a V500 for my wife. it's great. i haven't seen her in almost two months, as she is scanning her way through thousands of slides.

if you pm me with an email address, i will either send to you, or post on my website a few of the images.

$160 including shipping.

PS - Should this thread be over in the travel photography section?
Indeed, and it is here now.

As a reminder, if there is a thread that appears out of place please use the Report Bad Post button (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/images/buttons/report.gif) to alert the mods.

Here's another link. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/travel-photography/921091-converting-slides.html

Here are a couple of scanned slides using fairly low resolution (maybe 400-600 dpi) - okay for web and maybe 8 x 10 blowups; I'd scan at a higher resolution if I wanted to print/crop or do larger enlargements. But it's certainly within the capability of my scanner.

Bukhara, Uzbekistan (Agfachrome, 1974)

http://gardyloo.us/uzbekstorksm.jpg

Mirror Lake, nr. Anchorage AK, 1979(?)

http://gardyloo.us/akmirrorlake800.jpg

The Nikon Coolscan V is very nice. Kodakchrome issue is due to thick emulsion in these slide images. The Nikon Coolscan 5000 is reported to be better for Kodakchrome.

I made a few conversions using a Nikon Coolpix 5000 camera and a ES-E28 slide, negative copier. It took a lot of setup time and trial with the light source for illumination. Output is nowhere close to digital but probably close to what a slide projector could do.

Do you have any recommendation on particular film scanner models?

CanonScan 8600F, about $169 was the cheapest flatbed I found decent reviews on its slide/negative scanning ability - about 3 years old, so it's probably been since superceded. Quality for medium-resolution (2400DPI or about 8MP from a 35mm negative slide) is surprisingly good but slow as hell (multiple minutes per slide.)

But for casual use, something similar is a good call - there are a few equally cheap slide/negative-only scanners (look up "Pacific Image" on B&H) but did not look at them as I needed something to get old medium-format negs.

I would first check commercially available scanning services before I embark on doing it myself. Its a real time consuming task. You might even come out ahead $$ wise.

Are there any 'domestic' scanners which will do 6x6 negs as I have a pile of old Rollei film sitting around?

Are there any 'domestic' scanners which will do 6x6 negs as I have a pile of old Rollei film sitting around?

The above mentioned 8600F will. Very slowly, but the quality is decent. There were, as of when I bought it, several other flatbeds which will do so, some in the same $170-200 price range (which will do a single strip) and some in the $400-$500 range which have a full-platen transparancy area and could do more than one strip.

I believe the Epson 4990 was an example of the latter; no idea if the speed is any better.

Both that and the Canon I mentioned were then-current models 2-3 years ago(or whenever I got it - my memory is hazy) but there should still be similar ones if those are no longer produced.

I've got an old Canon 2700 DPI slide/film scanner that I really need to part with - it uses a SCSI interface, and I don't know about the availability of drivers for XP/VISTA/etc (I haven't used it in several years). It worked well enough, not as much detail as I'd like for semi-pro stuff, but good enough for most work.

I replaced it with a Minolta/Konica Dimage 5400 that has worked quite well. Minolta has dropped the line entirely. It will not be supported in Vista and beyond. I still use it - very good on Ektachrome, OK on Kodachrome, and good on print (negative) film.

I've scanned about 1000 slides from my parents house & distributed the files to siblings. Sure is convenient way to do it. The Minolta tends to be slow when the ICE image system is on - using a 2.8 GHz computer it sucks up a LOT of resources. When ICE is off, the system gets close to rated speed.

I also use Vuescan in place of the scanner software. Editing with Photoshop and/or Irfanview.

Were I buying another scanner today, I'd opt for the Nikon. In the meantime, I'd part with the older Canon 'cause I don't use it.

I replaced it with a Minolta/Konica Dimage 5400 that has worked quite well. Minolta has dropped the line entirely. It will not be supported in Vista and beyond. I still use it - very good on Ektachrome, OK on Kodachrome, and good on print (negative) film.

If it's USB, there's some chance that it could be used (albeit slowly) on XP Mode in Windows 7 or using a Windows 7 VM on Vista (or lower-end-Win-7 or Linux or MacOS X) within a VMWare/VirtualBox.

If it's USB, there's some chance that it could be used (albeit slowly) on XP Mode in Windows 7 or using a Windows 7 VM on Vista (or lower-end-Win-7 or Linux or MacOS X) within a VMWare/VirtualBox.

It's firewire (1394). So, we'll have to see. If the driver is not a problem, then I'd expect Vuescan to work.

I completely skipped Vista - I'm looking at assembling a box for 7 in the not too distant future, and we'll see then whether Vuescan will work.

It's firewire (1394). So, we'll have to see. If the driver is not a problem, then I'd expect Vuescan to work.

I'm not aware of any of the VM platforms doing for fireware what they can do for USB - being able to connect a bit of USB hardware up as if it were directly connected to the guest (virtual) machine, without having to have any driver on the host machine.

Then again, they might be able to do that; I've done relatively little with firewire.

I completely skipped Vista - I'm looking at assembling a box for 7 in the not too distant future, and we'll see then whether Vuescan will work.

Good luck with it.