Scanning: 35mm slides, a variety of negatives and prints.

[Polar Bear]

There is a lot of family history sitting in various formats and I'd quite like to do a project and bring as much as I can into the digital realm enabling easier sharing and long-term preservation.  Mostly there will be just a copy but some images I would like to tinker with and this a quality scan as oppose to a mobile phone and light box type image would be preferred.

I have been looking at flatbed scanners with the ability to deal with this project and seem to have settled on an Epson V600 for the job.  A reasonable compromise between absolute quality and reasonable cost in my assessment.

Before I hit the buy button does anybody have any other currently available recommendations or know of somebody looking to offload something suitable please?

Note:  I was considering sending piles to a third party processor but as #2 cub has got into 35mm photography and has already amassed a decent collection of compact and SLR cameras I suspect that he might wish to use the scanner too.

[Canardly]

Daughter No2 has just scanned a couple of thousand family photos, some in very poor condition, on an Epson Perfection V39. These are now all stored on the Interwebby. Some pretty amazing improvements have been made to faded colour and old B and W pics. Not sure about slides/negs though but. Lower res than the one you highlight.

Edit. Seems you can.
https://www.ceedo.com/scan-a-negative-with-an-epson-scanner/

[Pickled Onion]

I have been looking at flatbed scanners with the ability to deal with this project and seem to have settled on an Epson V600 for the job.  A reasonable compromise between absolute quality and reasonable cost in my assessment.

Before I hit the buy button does anybody have any other currently available recommendations or know of somebody looking to offload something suitable please?

I used the predecessor, the V500, which I picked up some years ago second-hand in nearly-new condition. A lot of people will buy new, use for all their old stuff then sell on, so it's worth looking around.

It was a bit fiddly to get the settings right initially (I would assume newer versions are more user-friendly) but the scan quality is excellent for the price. I don't know the specs of the one Canardly mentions, but you do need high resolution for slides and negs. Real resolution, not interpolated. I would say your assessment is right.

[StuAff]

Also got a V500. Did want the slide/transparency capability, had an idea to scan a load of negatives...never got round to that, but the one or two I did try turned out very nicely. A great bit of kit.

[Polar Bear]

Reassuring folks.  Thanks.

Looking around for a V600 I find that I can buy new for about £20 or so more than an eBay purchase.  On a £300 purchase I'd prefer a warranty for the sake of £20.

[IanDG]

I've had a V600 for a number of years. Used it to scan negatives when I was developing black and white film. Have used it to scan slides too. Very satisfied with the results.

[slope]

Timely thread. I'm considering the same, in that I have a huge stash of 25-40 year old mounted 35mm slides, some of which are of precious dead people and past good times, etc.

BUT, they've not been stored at all well - just in open slide projector trays in unsealed boxes. There's a lot of dust accrued and some serious signs of dulling and possible light mould

Any suggestions on cleaning physical slides/negs? How well does the Epson V600 software help recover blemished stock?

What about a professional clean and scan service? What format do the scans come out digitally? It would be good to able to use big RAW or TIFF files? And so have the option of really working with the images?

Any tips/info? Happy to fork out £300 for a scanner to attempt to preserve these images

[Polar Bear]

I'd probably use a puffer and then I read that distilled water on a lint free cloth can be used.  Might be worth an experiment on a slide or negative that you can identify perhaps as sacrificial.

The V600 allows you to save in a few different formats but iirc RAW is not one of them. 

[Polar Bear]

I've had a V600 for a number of years. Used it to scan negatives when I was developing black and white film. Have used it to scan slides too. Very satisfied with the results.

Thanks Windy.  You've definitely tipped the balance for me knowing how much of a film photographer you are.

[sojournermike]

I’ve got a v800 or 850 - can’t remember which - that I bought to replace a failed v700.

My last project was scanning about 1,000 kodachromes from 1995 trip and it did a good job actually.

I mix and match with camera scanning using an old enlarger set up as a copy stand and my digital camera. However, for colour neg and Kodachrome the epson is miles ahead in terms of ease.

Don’t know how many you have. It can be quite time consuming but once you get a rhythm is satisfying. I’m happy to scan for people but, sadly, haven’t time to run 1,000s through. Otoh - if you want to see the output send me a em and I can share a file or two with you.

Mike

[IanDG]

These are some of my B&W scanned negatives from L'Eroica 2011

...and a selection of old cycling photos that are scans of slides, negatives and prints


Mostly using the V600 AFICR

[Polar Bear]

That's a wonderful selection there Windy and a great social history commentary to boot.  One picture in b&w of the agony and effort written all over the face of the rider giving their all is possibly my favourite of the bunch. 

If a V600 can produce results like that then it's definitely a good choice.

[slope]

A friend recommended Image Keepers

I haven't seen the results, but might try a minimum order?

[DaveJ]

My family has quite a lot of slides taken in the 60s.  They've not been well stored, and there's quite a bit of dust and mould on them.

I bought an Opticfilm 8200i that came with Silverfast software.  I've been pretty pleased with the results, but you need a lot of patience.  I'm not a photographer, I just wanted to have a decent picture at the end of it, one not covered in little black marks.

The scanner has an infrared mode that can pick out mould and dust, and then the software tries to work out what should be there instead and replaces it.

It has a go at fixing parts of the pictures that are dark.  It does a couple of scans at different brightnesses and then merges them.

Did I mention that it takes forever?  Well maybe only about 8 minutes or so per picture.  If you have a lots of slides it just feels like forever.

If you are interested in seeing the results, pm me and I'll send you a link.

[DaveJ]

I had some slides scanned by Revive Studios and I was pretty happy with them too (126 from an Instamatic, so the wrong size for a 35mm slide scanner).

[FifeingEejit]

Kodak 126 is 35mm film with different perforation and Edge markings spooled into a cassette for easy loading

It's 110 that's a pain to scan but only because it's 16mm film with different perforations and Edge markings spooled into a cassette for easy loading and you don't get 16mm plates with film scanners

Sent from my IV2201 using Tapatalk

[DaveJ]

Kodak 126 is 35mm film with different perforation and Edge markings spooled into a cassette for easy loading

It was chopping off top and bottom I think.  Wiki says 126 cassette is 28x28 masked down to 26.5x26.5, and the scanner is 35x24 which probably explains it.

I guess you wouldn't have that problem with the Epson scanner. 

[FifeingEejit]

The Epson 35mm Film plate has edges thin enough that it jsut chops off the perforations and markings, the 126 edges are deeper so would either end up in the scan or be chopped out by the software iirc.

I'll need to find the folder with the 126 negs

Sent from my IV2201 using Tapatalk

[tonycollinet]

I also have a V500 and find it very good.

However - slide scanning is slow and boring. Given that 95%+ of the images I have stored on negatives are not worth that level of effort, I've compromised on the following.

1 - Scanning the prints using an iphone with print placement guide and flat neutral lighting (just using an IKEA uplighter). So it is "remove print - place next - press volume on headphone (acts as remote trigger) - rinse and repeat"

(If you have slides you could set up a similar system for photographing negs)

2 - Catalogue same by numbering photo envelopes, and taking a photo of the envelope number at the start of each envelopes set of prints (this way I can easily find the negatives for any given scan)

3 - Any scans that are worthy of spending more time on - go back to the negative and scan at high quality using the V500. I only do this one at a time for speific images as I come to edit them.

[ppg]

I use a Plustek Optifilm 8100 as I only do B&W so no need to go higher up the range as IR dust reduction doesn't work on silver halide.
But if you have loads to scan then the Epson Perfection range takes a lot of beating, my V200 is very good so the 600 would be fine, though I doubt the results would be much different.

[fruitcake]

I started digitising the family photos (prints) a couple of years back. I settled on a flatbed scanner for ease of setup, reliable colour rendition, ease of use, and in my case I decided the scanner I already owned was adequate for capturing these holiday snaps. The job wasn't quite as boring as I thought it would be. I scanned a few pics a day, listened to a bit of Radio 4 while I worked, stopped before I got bored. It was satisfying to get to the end of a photo album. I freed up an entire shelf that winter. 

[Polar Bear]

In the spirit of patience I gained possession of a V600 on December 25th.  I have a couple 9f other jobs to do before I start this project but I will run a batch of my late father's slides through in a week or so more for learning the process than anything.   

Rummaging through old "stuff" lurking in drawers I found the slide carrier for my old Canoscan 8000 which would have been ideal for the job 15 years ago but was let go for reasons of lack of use and for space as a printer/copier/scanner was acquired for my legal studies.

We hardly ever use a printer now.