by Carl Farley for Murray McAndrew . . .
The Hammacher Schlemmer Co. advertises a slide and film negative scanner that’s small and portable. I would be interested in knowing opinions from other members of our Digital Photo SIG whether there is enough data on the specifications for this device to make a judgement about “will it really do a good job” or would a good scanner be a better choice for this job. Are other specs needed to make a decision and, if so, what are they? I w0uld also be interested in learning what other devices members use (just) for slide and film negative scanning. Go here:
http://www.hammacher.com/publish/74083.asp?promo=QSearch
Thanks for posting this.
February 14, 2008 at 4:06 pm |
I was intrigued by one of the specs. It says it does a scan in 5 seconds. My current Plustek Scanner takes a lot longer than that but has much more flexibility in terms of resolution. A recent inquiry on scanning hundreds, even thousands, of sides led to having them scanned commercially. It’s relatively cheap and according to the comments is quite satisfctory. It would be better if the scans could be automated.
February 14, 2008 at 7:07 pm |
Sounds awesome! Only 5 seconds—now that is a “double dog dare” experience. My HP slide scanner takes 12 seconds with lots of other things which could happen to extend the time to 25+.
I suppose you connect it to a movable memory, download it to your CPU, then do some slide corrective activities to finally get the slide to the proper quality.
A test run certainly would be worth the time and effort..
Harry
February 15, 2008 at 1:19 am |
The resolution to scan slides is traditionally 2400 dpi. But, there’s more to the quality than the dpi.
I used a Nikon LS-2000 film scanner. They’re discontinued now but you can get them on eBay for about $300 — http://tinyurl.com/2np79p. You want to make sure it has all the pieces that came with it originally, including software. I think this picture shows them all http://www.joesco.com/ei/nikon01.jpg
This scanner gave me excellent results.
February 15, 2008 at 2:13 am |
Sounds great, but does it work work with a Mac computer? If not, it’s worthless to many photographers.
February 15, 2008 at 7:40 pm |
If you have thousands of slides you want to copy, I would suggest you take a look at http://www.scancam.com. They charge $ 0.24 /slide and you only pay for the ones you want to keep!
If you really want to scan them yourself, be prepared to spend a fair amount of money and lots of time. It takes about 5 min./slide.
To buy a scanner, you need one that scans at at least 4000 dpi and at 8 bit color (RGB).
Good luck!
February 15, 2008 at 9:53 pm |
I believe the previous poster might have meant ScanCafe http://www.scancafe.com/ as all the information he provided can be found on the ScanCafe web site.
If you have any questions about ScanCafe’s slide scanning services you can contact them online at http://www.scancafe.com/contactus.php
February 18, 2008 at 1:40 pm |
> Sounds great, but does it work work with a Mac computer?
Yes. Here’s a thread discussing it http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=177002
April 20, 2008 at 2:19 am |
I wouldn’t buy this scanner for myself. Speed isn’t the only thing you want to look at. It only scans 1800 dpi. I scan my slides and negatives close to 4000 dpi or above. 1800 dpi will get you a 4 x 6 print.
This scanner has a 10 bit color converter….I want more than that.
My advice is to compare a couple of good quality scanners from Nikon, Epson, Canon, etc. They will be more expensive, but they will probably give you better quality.
May 15, 2008 at 3:39 am |
The Hammacher Schlemmer product is (how do I put this delicately?) junk. We bought a product identical to this on sale for $80 at Bed, Bath & Beyond. After the first slide, I was unimpressed. After the second slide, it went back to the store.
We’ve subsequently moved up to a Canon CanoScan 8800F and have been pleased. It’s a mid-range product at about $170 on Amazon.com, but I think it turns out excellent images considering what I’m working with (20-30 year old film slides). I have a brief post over on my blog @ http://openkimono.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/canoscan-8800f/ which contains one of the first slides I converted. This scanner will do 300 dpi up to 4800 dpi.
Take the advice of some others responding to this post and look around before you buy.
May 20, 2008 at 2:07 am |
Thanks to all who responded to my question about the H-S Film & Slide Scanner. Lots of useful information in these postings. It shows me how useful the Digital Photography SIG can be and the utility of the blog maintained by Carl.
June 18, 2008 at 9:46 pm |
You might also want to look at this side by side comparison of all the high quality scanning services.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=phRG-JoD0f6N8DrY8b8ZGLw