recently uncovered some mono and kodacolor negatives i thought had been lost. would like to digitize. what would be a good choice for a film scanner? i am not going to do a large volume, so am not looking to make a big investment. i already own vuescan which will handle the software side of the scanning process.
I've got a Nikon 4000ED or something... which is first class!. First thing I'd say is how many neg's etc do you need to scan? It might be worth having them done at you local lab as decent scanners aren't cheap and are laborious to use for more than about 30 scans
i don't plan to do a lot or in bunches. it would be nice to have the capability as i have a lot of negs.
I used a Nikon V ED to convert to all digital, which I also think highly of. The Nikon line features Nikon's Digital ICE software, which deserves a lot of credit, not just the hardware.
Don't overlook a service for this, especially if you aren't prepared to spend a lot of time developing the correct scanner settings (color correction, sharpening, ICE settings, etc), only then the time to scan something for archival purposes.
The Nikon scanners are not being made anymore and are too expensive if you are not going to scan a large number of negs or slides. Also the Nikon software is no longer supported for the Mac OS and will not run on the latest versions of OSX. The Digital ICE is actually a hardware feature built into the scanner. ViewScan supports Digital ICE and does a lovely job at dust removal with scanners that have the appropriate built in hardware. ViewScan also did a better job than the Nikon software.
If you are not looking at a large investment, consider one of the Epson V series flat bed scanners that have DIgital Ice capability. You will be able to scan several images at once. It won't be as fast as a dedicated film scanner, but it won't break your bank account either!
Have fun rediscovering these old images!
film scanner?
