photo slides to digital

isofa

andygb wrote: »

The problem with giving the negatives to someone else to scan (and I would never scan prints, because any blemishes are just repeated/exaggerated), is that you do not know what resolution they will be scanned at. When you have a photo CD along with a processed film and prints, look at the woeful images the CD produces, when enlarged on a monitor. The reason for the low resolution is time and money, it takes a long time to scan at high resolution.
The Nikon and Canon models are great, but I think £150 should bring the good Epson models in budget.
Go on one of the photography forums - "Talk photography", is a good one, and look at the "film" section. More and more people (including myself), are wanting to transfer the best negatives/transparencies to digital format.

Good luck,

Andy

I think that's fair enough given the budget, but if you look second hand you'll get a much better dedicated box.

A good bureau (not a chemist) will scan at high res and wouldn't use a Photo CD format which has been dead a buried a long time ago, they'd scan starting at around 2700ppi and then move 4000 ppi upwards depending on your output requirements. They'd save as TIFF unless requested otherwise, however a most users will be unlikely to notice the difference between a top end JPEG which is much smaller in file size.

Whilst the Perfection is a good scanner and gets great reviews, my issue is that a colleague has the V200 item and has been unable to get it to work after upgrading to Vista SP2 (clean install). There is an issue with the V200 ranges and faulty driver setups under Vista SP2: http://www.epson.co.uk/Scanners/Epson-Perfection-V200/Drivers-Support?target=article&extn=.html&articleId=2082)

If you compare the output from that scanner to that of a dedicated slide scanner, you'll be amazed at the difference.

I scanned hundreds in with a Canon dedicated unit about 8 years ago for a commercial project and the quality was sublime, comparing with the prints, you couldn't believe the detail which had been lost in the shadows and highlights. When I've more time I'll do our positives from slide days.

andygb

moonrakerz wrote: »

Que ?

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=26708337&highlight=#post26708337

Because I have had plenty of out of focus prints from sharp negatives in the past. I would rather take information from the source, than an already corrupted article.
The beauty with digital photography, is that you are left in no doubt as to your skills, they are instantly available for criticism, no place to hide. In the old days, with 35mm, you had to rely on others for an end result.
I prefer to take responsibility for my own failures.