Negative Scanners?
Discussion
I seen a negative scanner that can do slides and negatives.
This seemed like a good idea to get rid of lots of the old negatives, slides etc that are hanging around the house.
Digitising all the old photos from the 70s, 80s and 90s (so buying more junk, so I can get rid of junk...
).
Anyone ever used one, what I should look for?
What sort of quality are the resulting pictures? (guess that would depend on the device...)
This seemed like a good idea to get rid of lots of the old negatives, slides etc that are hanging around the house.
Digitising all the old photos from the 70s, 80s and 90s (so buying more junk, so I can get rid of junk...
).Anyone ever used one, what I should look for?
What sort of quality are the resulting pictures? (guess that would depend on the device...)
I have an old Canon one that I bought used ages ago.
Look out for decent resolution, speed and connectivity.
But IME, consumer ones that give decent output are slow.
If I were you, I'd use a bureau to do it for you.
I've used this place before - https://www.mr-scan.co.uk/ - with great results. When I get round to it, I have a load more to send to them.
Look out for decent resolution, speed and connectivity.
But IME, consumer ones that give decent output are slow.
If I were you, I'd use a bureau to do it for you.
I've used this place before - https://www.mr-scan.co.uk/ - with great results. When I get round to it, I have a load more to send to them.
I bought a cheapo Maplin one, I seem to recall about £30 at the time, and it's OK. One of these where you feed either a strip of six negatives of three slides in a plastic holder into the bottom of the device - it's basically a close-focus webcam in a box. I did look at some of the photos, recall thinking they were pretty good when I first took them, and that they're now terrible. But while I don't like to blame the tools, I think some of the blame lies with the scanner as I've since found prints that I made shortly after taking the photos, and the prints are far better than the scans. We're not talking about photographic masterpieces here, just snapshots mainly. I've recently acquired what seems to be a better scanner, but haven't tried it yet.
On the plus side, the Maplin cheap one is pretty quick, so could be used to digitise the run-of-the-mill stuff, and then anything great put to one side for a higher quality scan.
On the plus side, the Maplin cheap one is pretty quick, so could be used to digitise the run-of-the-mill stuff, and then anything great put to one side for a higher quality scan.
Something in the region of 15 years ago I need the same piece of equipment to digitize all the slides my late Grandmother left when she passed.
A post on here lead to a PHer loaning me a Minolta slide scanner that took 4 slides or a negative sheet and scanned the images to my PC.
As I recall it cost around £1k new and fetched about the same used at the time and the results were excellent, we still look at the images now.
I would suggest buying the most expensive negative scanner you can, do the job you need to do and then sell it on, even if you lose a little, it'll still be cheaper than having it done professionally.
As to the actual model to buy, things seem to have moved on in that 15 years but a google search still revealed present day test comparisons with available units so Google would be where i would start.
A post on here lead to a PHer loaning me a Minolta slide scanner that took 4 slides or a negative sheet and scanned the images to my PC.
As I recall it cost around £1k new and fetched about the same used at the time and the results were excellent, we still look at the images now.
I would suggest buying the most expensive negative scanner you can, do the job you need to do and then sell it on, even if you lose a little, it'll still be cheaper than having it done professionally.
As to the actual model to buy, things seem to have moved on in that 15 years but a google search still revealed present day test comparisons with available units so Google would be where i would start.
If you are only scanning occasional slides from a set, then get a scanner.
If you are wanting to do bulk scanning then pay a bureau to do it for you.
Slide scanning using a consumer device is slow and painful and requires a person full time to feed in slides and handle the images. You will get bored/annoyed by the 3rd box of slides.
If you are wanting to do bulk scanning then pay a bureau to do it for you.
Slide scanning using a consumer device is slow and painful and requires a person full time to feed in slides and handle the images. You will get bored/annoyed by the 3rd box of slides.
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