Your scanner recommendations?

PaulDK

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Hey everyone.

It's been a while since I've been on the forum. I have a question.

I got a lot of old negatives from my parents, and I'm thinking about scanning them. Most of them are printet into physical pictures, but it could be fun to see if there's a couple I haven't seen before.
It's a mix bunch of 110, 126 and 135 film. Some of them I can't quite figure out what format it is. The image it self measures about 85x58mm.

So to my main question. Besides flatbed scanners, can you recommend one that can handle those formats I have mentioned, and something that is affordable? (under $600) Maybe one that has a auto feed option.

Thanks in advance.
 

chuckroast

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Having owned a variety of scanners and found them medium terrible to awful for scanning film, I finally broke down and got an Epson V800 (used/open box - much cheaper). It's a muuuuuch better instrument for this sort of thing.

However, for your purposes, the V800 is overkill. If you never intend to scan 4x5 film, the formats above should be handled by the considerably less expensive Epson V600 which has quite good film scanning capabilities in it's own right, it just doesn't do the larger format. No auto feed though. I'd also recommend the VueScan software as a good general purpose scanning tool, though it does no automated dirt or spot removal.
 

neilt3

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Might be best asking on the scanner and scanning subforum .

Scanning and Scanners

Discussion of scanning technique and equipment.
www.photrio.com

Some might see you as a heretic asking about digital on the film only forum !

A flatbed should be sufficient for the standard formats and perhaps use a macro lens on your digital camera to convert the odd sizes .
Get a decent lightbox to put them on .
You could even do that like a contact print first and look at them blown up on screen before deciding if it's worth the effort to individually scan them .
 

armadsen

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While you can get slightly better results with a flatbed, camera scanning is much faster and more convenient for me.

There are various companies that make commercial products for camera scanning, but you can also rig up something workable with a good light table, a tripod, a digital camera, and a macro lens.

Personally I use stuff from Negative Supply, and very much like it, but I spent a decent amount on their higher end “pro” stuff.
 

Don_ih

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I can pretty much guarantee that, if you set up and scan all those old negatives using a V600, at some point the irritating lines will show up and ruin half the scans. That is the main irritant using that particular thing. And, given it takes about 15 minutes from inserting the negatives to it finishing scanning, it can really make you feel like you've wasted a lot of time.
 
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PaulDK

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Yeah, but basically it is analog, but I know what you mean. Thanks for the input.
 
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PaulDK

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In my case I'm not quite ready to pay for all the extra stuff like, macro lens, light table and so on for my purpose. If I could invest in just one thing that could take care of the job, that would be my choice.
Also scanning with a camera, in my mind I will always feel like I wouldn't get an entirely optimal scan, compared to a proper scanner. It's just me. But thanks for your input, I appreciate it.
 

chuckroast

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Can you describe this behavior a bit more? I see none of that with the V800. I was under the impression - perhaps incorrectly - that the V600 was just a scaled down V800 with similar scanning behaviors, albeit without the same top resolution as I recall.
 

armadsen

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Understandable. I do think you might be surprised at the quality you can get out of a good camera scan. It’s easier to dial in focus, and you have more control over exposure. Plus, the DPI you can get with a modern camera sensor is higher than ~any flatbed (and higher than the film’s effective resolution). It is definitely not cheaper than a used flatbed. For what it’s worth I have a V600 that I use to scan 6x9 negatives, and previously used for all my film, and aside from being very bad at scanning Velvia, I’ve been happy with it.
 

neilt3

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PaulDK said:
Yeah, but basically it is analog, but I know what you mean. Thanks for the input.
Click to expand...

The trouble with new affordable 35mm film scanners is they don't have autofocus and you ha e to manually feed the film in , one frame at a time.
So apart from shimming up , you can't lower the film to adjust focus .
So if the focus is off , tough .

I have a Minolta Scan duall IV for 35mm and APS , but I'm having a problem as my Windows XP PC is acting up to run it off .
Modern scanners run on modern operating systems .
you can buy a copy of Vuescan to run older scanners if you need to .

I needed to scan some film at the weekend so I set up my Sony a6600 with a 30mm macro lens attached , mounted it on a copy stand with the negatives held in the film holder off my scanner .
Focus is 100% spot on , and it was quicker to scan the roll of film than with the dedicated scanner .

It was just a bit of a pain converting the negatives to positives as I used Darktable and I'm not familiar with the software .

For medium and large format film I have an old Epson scanner, a 4990 or something IIRC.
Does a decent job .
 

neilt3

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It needn't be an expensive setup .
Depending on what your digital camera is , a basic set of manual extension tubes (£15) and an old 50mm enlarger lens ( £15-£25 with an adapter) a few bits of mounting board and wood etc to make a film holder to stand vertically in line with the camera and lens , with a bright light behind the negative reflected of a white board for even lighting .

Most modern cameras have higher resolution than any film you'll use , and more dynamic range than the film your planning to scan .
If you want more dynamic range , bracket the exposures and merge HDR style in processing .
But I can't imagine you'll have to do anything like that .
 

koraks

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neilt3 said:
I have a Minolta Scan duall IV for 35mm and APS , but I'm having a problem as my Windows XP PC is acting up to run it off .
Click to expand...

I'm running that scanner on Win10. No doubt it works on 11 as well. You need to do a very simple driver hack and in Win10 you have/had to run in Test Mode (which works fine for everything so it's not a problem) to disable the driver signing circus. That way you can run on modern hardware and you don't have to keep an old beat-up pc alive just to use your scanner.
 

Don_ih

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chuckroast said:
Can you describe this behavior a bit more?
Click to expand...

It's a scanning artifact that results (apparently) from some dust in the calibration area of the scanner. The result is an odd coloured straight line going through the image from top to bottom (in portrait) or side to side (in landscape). The main problem with it is you don't know it's there until after the image is scanned. So, if you don't review every image, you'll miss it until much later and potentially need to rescan the entire roll.

Or, if you're scanning a backlog of photos, you won't notice it until you've scanned 10 rolls worth of negatives, all with the lines on them.

Epson's faq says "Clean the document table."
 

neilt3

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It's Windows 10 I'm running on .
I'm OK installing software, and given time I can figure out how to use it .
But altering software as its installed , I've no idea on .
It would be handy though .
 

Andrew O'Neill

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My experience is with Epson V750 (mine) and V600 (schools). The V600 is more in your price range. We use it at school for scanning in 35 and 120 negatives. It does a great job, but can only do a few negatives at a time, compared to the V750. I would be weary of auto feed, as it might not easily feed odd formats... but I'm only guessing as I have zero experience with these types of scanners.
 

chuckroast

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Yeah, well cleaning the glass surface before scanning film should be a default behavior. I'd hardly call that a weakness of the scanner design. Or are you talking about interior dust?
 

blee1996

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I would recommend a second hand Epson V700, V750 or Microtek M1. If they are used carefully by amateurs, they can last a long time. My V700 bought new in 2008 still looks and works like new. They have better dmax/resolution and negative carries, for faster batch scanning at good quality.

I eventually went for Nikon Coolscan for 35mm, but that is much slower scanning speed for better quality. I still use V700 regularly for all medium and large format film.
 

chuckroast

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I got my open box V800 from this guy for $450. He just offered me one of these used for $400, but I'll bet he'd take less:

Epson V800 Photo Scanner for sale online | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Epson V800 Photo Scanner at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com
 

Don_ih

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chuckroast said:
Yeah, well cleaning the glass surface before scanning film should be a default behavior. I'd hardly call that a weakness of the scanner design. Or are you talking about interior dust?
Click to expand...

The tiniest speck of dust in the correct location can cause it. I generally can't actually see what causes it - I just clean the calibration area whenever I notice the line and it tends to not be in the rescan. I also clean the entire surface of the glass before scanning. The last long scanning session I had (end of last year when I scanned the year's worth of negatives. I used three scanners and two laptops.), I cleaned the calibration area with every strip I put in but it still happened.

I have 3 v600 and 1 v500. It happens with all of them. It's a very common problem and dust on the underside of the glass can cause it.
 

blee1996

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Yes if OP can get a V800 under the budget, definitely go for the newer V800.
 
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PaulDK

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So far, thanks everyone for all your replies, I appreciate a lot.
 

geirtbr

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I think epsons are the best ones of the flatbed scanners, but technology didnt progress the last 15-20 years so you might get an older model.
If you want to digitize with a digital camera, a cheap and light camerasetup would be an old Nikon 1 or an old olympus pen ep cameera, a cheap fujian 35mm c-mount lens, a c-mount to nikon CX or micro 4/3 adapter, and some extension rings. This will give you result in 12-bit raw format.
 

Alan Edward Klein

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I have both an Epson V600 and then upgraded to a V850 when I bought a large format camera. The v600 scans film from 2.7" x 9.5" but wouldn't work with my new 4x5" camera. Since your largest film is 58x85mm or 2.28x2.56", the V600 should work for you.

Standard film holders are for 135 and 35mm slides, as well as medium format. You might have to Jerry rig a holder to keep it a little higher off the glass. But it probably would give you decent image scans if placed directly on the glass which you do when scanning a print.
 
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