35mm scan images for Aperture

I will put in another vote for considering ScanCafe if they will accept orders from Australia. I sent about 1000 slides of varying age and condition to them for scanning a couple of months ago. The scans were online for review a couple of weeks ahead of schedule and they looked very well done from what I could tell. My originals and the DVD with the scans on it are now on their way back to me so I will know more when I receive them.

During the process, I received an email asking how I wanted them to proceed with some slides that were in pretty poor shape. I appreciated the effort to make sure I was satisfied.

Like you, I was nervous about sending the slides off, but in the end I decided that it was less risky than the risks of leaving them to deteriorate further or worse (be lost in a house fire/tornado/flood) It was easy to track where the slides were at all times. And even with the best scanner available, I don't think I could have gotten them done in the amount of time that it took ScanCafe to do it.

Not a guru, just an Aperture user with an extremely common and usually already taken first and last name, so it's always a challenge to come up with a user name.

I agree totally about the secondary screen background.

I will try to remember to put a little update here as soon as my slides and scans arrive at my home and I can look at them in full resolution and let you know how they look.

Let us know what you end up deciding and how it works out.

If you find the cost of Silverfast a little steep, VueScan http://www.hamrick.com/ is fully compatible with the Nikon film scanners (and over 1200 other scanners) http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/vuescan.htm#supported.

The digital ice, auto feed, raw scanning and IT8 calibration functions are supported as well. Purchasing the pro version for $79.95 entitles you to unlimited future upgrades. I'm not sure how it compares to Silverfast in terms of gradation capture, but you can test it out and see if you like it. I've been using it for years and find it far better than the proprietary scan software provided by Epson or Nikon.

Cheers,
Bob

Does VueScan support all the bells and whistles on Nikon film scanners such as ICE, ROC, GEM and DEE?

On a related topic, one thing you might want to consider is adding an Image Creation Date when you scan the slide. Most scanning programs only have a File Creation Date, which is normally the date the slide was scanned. Aperture and most other image management programs look for an Image Creation date in the EXIF data to sort images chronologically.

There is a very helpful, freeware program called SetEXIFdata that adds an Image Capture Date field to image files that don't have them. So if your slides have (even approximate) dates you can preserve that information in a form useable by Aperture.

Doing this adds a step to the scanning/importing process, but I have found it worth it.

I really agree with this step. I scanned 2000 slides this winter with a sony scanner. The slides were thoroughly mixed up, some in teaching sets, some in bulk boxes, some in processing boxes, etc., and sometimes parts of 2 or 3 sets in each small box. What I did is name each image with the year and month stamped on the slide frame, and let the scanner append a continuous serial number through the whole process. The continuous serial number assured that there wouldn't be duplicate names over time. I tried to separate them as best as I could before scanning each batch so I wouldn't constantly have to be changing the name of the image. I placed the year and month on the outside of the slide boxes to aid in reconnecting the scans and slides later if I wanted to.

Once they were scanned, I created smart albums in Aperture that would look for 1964-, 1965-, etc. and they would magically be sorted by year and month. I assume that most software you use would allow you to append the serial number. Anyway, if you can do something like this from the start, it will save you huge amounts of work later. Bill

I am planning to scan my old 35mm film library and archive in Aperture. I also have decided on a Nikon SuperCoolScan 5000ED. My wife picked me up a book on scanning film, and I have found it excellent. I have read most of it in the last few days, and I highly recommend it.

It is called "Scanning Negatives and Slides", by Sascha Steinhoff, c2007 by Rooky Nook Inc., Santa Barbara, CA, 93101. ISBN 13:1-978-933952-01-7.

http://www.amazon.com/Scanning-Negatives-Slides-Digitizing-Photographic/dp/19339 52016

I just received my completed scans back from ScanCafe. I have not used any other scanning service for a bulk order before, so can't really compare, except that I liked the simplicity of ScanCafe. I'm still debating about whether to buy a scanner for my negatives or send them off, but I am very happy to have the slides finished. If you are interested in seeing the results I got from ScanCafe, I put some samples up at:

http://awaytome.wordpress.com/