Converting old 35mm to Digital

chrissy21_2 · 11 December 2008 at 6:46PM

Hi I have seen some really fab scanners that will convert your old 35mm negatives to digital. Seems a really great idea to me.

Anyone had any experience of them and can anyone recommend a decent but sensibly priced one.

Do they do any with a printer built in as I'm looking to buy a new printer also.

Thanks

:rudolf:

Moneymaker · 12 December 2008 at 3:33PM

It can be done with a flatbed scanner like this:
http://www.glodark.com/epson.htm

I don't recommend buying a combined printer-scanner. There's twice as much to go wrong and, when it does go wrong, you lose both printer AND scanner!

fwor · 12 December 2008 at 4:02PM

A lot depends on the quality that you want.

A flatbed scanner like the one the Moneymaker points to will do the job, but the quality almost certainly won't be up to the standard of a dedicated slide/negative scanner.

Also note that if you want to scan negatives and slides, the scanner must have a light source above the material to be scanned. Most all-in-one printers and many cheap scanners don't, though the one pointed to above does.

Decent dedicated slide/negative scanners start at around £130, and Plustek seem to be a well regarded make - IIRC their entry-level model 7200 has been recommended previously on this forum for general-purpose use.

isofa · 12 December 2008 at 5:03PM

Quite agree with fwor, a flatbed (with transparency adapter) will give limited results.

I have a dedicated Canon Canoscan slide scanner, which gives incredible results, does pos and negs, 35mm, unmounted, mounted etc, but takes a while for each slide, but worth it, the detail resolved compared to the printed photo is breathtaking. You then realise just how poor high street labs were in the past at developing and printing film.

Some of the Canon and Epson flatbeds (with transparency adapters) will give reasonable results, I believe one of the Canon models is the best, as it has all manner of adapters and a good resolution - but if you want really good quality scans, a dedicated slide scanner is the way to go.

However avoid the cheap own brands (you might as well just opt for a decent flatbed with transparency adapter instead), the Canon and Nikon ones are very good quality, read some reviews before you spend money. But it all depends on budget!

If you weren't talking about slides/negs, just normal scanning and printing, then an all-in-one - is a good idea, they are a bargain price today, flatbed scanners are disappearing from the market, new models are rarely release today, as digital photography is taking over, the requirement to scan has dropped dramatically. And, the all in ones are just as capable, and cheap to make, meaning one less box on the desk. Considering good HP and Canon all-in-ones start at £100 nowadays, unless you are a professional, I can't see the point of a separate scanner (I have a Linotype flatbed, a Canon slide scanner, and a various printers!).

chrissy21_2 · 14 December 2008 at 10:27PM

Thanks guys very useful.

Will check these out - guess what I'll be doing this Christmas?

cottager · 15 December 2008 at 4:25AM

isofa wrote: »

I have a dedicated Canon Canoscan slide scanner, which gives incredible results, does pos and negs, 35mm, unmounted, mounted etc, but takes a while for each slide, but worth it, the detail resolved compared to the printed photo is breathtaking. You then realise just how poor high street labs were in the past at developing and printing film.

Only just found this part of MSE, and I'm really interested in what you've been discussing here, as I've been wanting something to start converting a large 35mm slide collection into digital images. Plus a range of B&W and colour negatives of various types... many also 35mm, but others of assorted sizes from old instant cameras dating from the 60s/70s.

Which model Canon Canoscan is yours, isofa? And it really is that good? I'm pricking up my ears already

I have an HP flatbed scanner, a few years old now, and dabbled a little bit with the slide adapter in the past. But, as fwor mentions, looking around more recently it seems the light source above is what will make a big difference. The results with the adapter on the HP were disappointing, though it was quite a while ago and I don't remember too much of the detail about it as I never tried it again. (But, as a straight flatbed for photos, documents and copies etc, it's brilliant, and especially useful for some of the stuff I scan, as the scanning area is a fair bit larger than A4.)

What I do remember as very frustrating when I tried slides was not being able to scan anything large enough, compared with scanning a photo. It didn't matter how high I set the resolution or output size, or played around mixing/matching the two, there was a finite limit to the size of the scan. It wasn't even large enough as a preview/pre-scan to see clearly enough to make adjustments to colour, midtones etc, or even to crop precisely, before saving the file. Scans also came out pretty dark.

The other downside of the small preview was if I only wanted to select a part of the original slide. With a photo I can select a very small area, then pre-scan again and the selected area will show up just as large to work on some more (unless it's a really tiny selection), so there's never a problem with any adjustments needed before saving. With a slide this was virtually impossible.

So are these aspects of the scanning process better/easier with the Canon? And can you produce good quality/high res scans of, say, 800 or 1000 pixels wide/high from 35mm slides? Is there a full range of useful adjustment controls at the pre-scan stage? Full control over resolution and output size?

Is it simple to learn? I've got so used to the HP's own scanning software, which is very intuitive, I'm dreading having to get used to anything else! Hardly ever have to do further work in an image editing programme afterwards as it can all be done from the scanner -- a touch more sharpening now and then.

Sorry to fire all these questions -- you just made it sound so good!

System · 15 December 2008 at 7:41AM

Last week, I bought a Ion 35mm negative/slide scanner, RRP over £100, Maplins £64.99. I had read as much as I possibly could from users of scanners and without exception, all talked about flatbeds. But something about the model I bought attracted me. They suggested that it might be best for the non-techie people, maybe the older generation, those people that had maybe thousands of negatives stored long after the photographs had been lost. People who toook pics long before digital. So I bought one.

There is a piece of software to install (Photoimpression6)

Basically the item stands up about the size of a bag of sugar. A narrow slit in the front and back allows a plastic tray to slide through. This holds either slides or negatives. As you enter the slide, the pic appears on screen in neg form, you press a button and save the pic and move on to the next.

I have produced over 900 negatives so far, things which would in all probability have been dumped. Now they are available for all to see. I discovered some negatives that wouldn't fit the slides, so simply pushed 'em through manually. B&W, colour, it makes no difference.

If they come out lop sided, then via picasa I straighten them up, crop them where neccessary, introduce variations in colour/brightness etc.

This item has brought back a wealth of memories for such a little outlay. My biggest dread is for friends to arrive with their negatives asking that I allow them to catch up with the past. Oh, and once you have completed scanning, you can then print them off but you will require a separate printer UNLESS you take notice of free printing tips on MSE and take advantage of the offers where they print and deliver your first order free. You join them all, and use as many email accounts as you can muster up, they only take notice of them.

If you want to know more, then PM me. Oh I'd better say I have no connection with Maplins or indeed any other company, I'm just an excited user of this product.

I suppose I'd better say that in case anyone talk about quality, you need to remember that many negatives are from camera's which we used donkeys years ago, so the quality of those is the quality of the negatives now. Even so, my 40+ yr old negs are great.

ih8stress · 30 December 2008 at 2:28PM

Was this able to do 110 film size negatives? If so, can you give me the exact model no. details please as I would be interested in looking further into this.

fwor · 30 December 2008 at 3:04PM

I'm fairly sure this is the product:

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=225878&source=1

The description only mentions 35mm, and from the photos the film carriers appear to be designed for a 35mm strip of six exposures.

No doubt it would be very easy to modify the carrier (e.g. a couple of layers of acetate which the smaller format sits between) but I guess you would need to crop every scan to remove the intruding parts of the adjacent pic(s).

Not hard to do, but I would guess it's pretty tedious if you've got more than a few to do...

superstylin · 1 January 2009 at 1:35PM

There's a digital film scanner in Netto from the 2nd Jan for £44.99 for anyone that's interested. No idea how good it is!

http://viewer.zmags.com/showmag.php?mid=wtqqpr#/page6/

see top right hand page

27col · 1 January 2009 at 3:35PM

I have got a Veho from Novatech. Works quite well, but fairly slow. But I suppose most of them are.
http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?VEH-VFS001

Converting old 35mm to Digital

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