Slide scanning / digitizing

From: CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)16 Aug 10:11
To: Peter (BOUGHTONP) 5 of 12
I have an Epson 1660 flatbed with film/slide scanning. It does a fairly good job for a low-end device. The hardest part is getting dust off the platen and both sides of the originals, and in some cases film curl.
From: CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)16 Aug 10:13
To: Peter (BOUGHTONP) 6 of 12
I think you mean an auto-loading, jam-proof, set it and forget it device. No such animal.

My advice would be to obtain a light table, a real one, cull it down to 100-150 must scan images, and take it from there.
EDITED: 16 Aug 10:18 by DSMITHHFX
From: Peter (BOUGHTONP)17 Aug 17:18
To: CHYRON (DSMITHHFX) 7 of 12
I think any culling has already happened, at least for the bulk, but that could still be a useful idea for grouping.

If I can get something that's a constant white, maybe the least painful option would be tripod with a macro lens, and clamping a ruler so there's only one dimension of alignment to deal with.

I guess the question would then become how much does one need to pay to ensure the light is sufficiently diffused - are the cheap illustrator-targetted options good enough or would they have a subtle pattern when photographed.

According to Andrew Clifforth, it's the latter, but a good diffuser can overcome that, however they want £65+ and 17 working days to send out some plastic. :/

From: CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)17 Aug 22:23
To: Peter (BOUGHTONP) 8 of 12
There's a bunch of adaptors for DSLR and cellphone scanning out there, I haven't tried any myself but they look like they could save a ton of alignment and lighting hassles.
From: Peter (BOUGHTONP)18 Aug 16:40
To: CHYRON (DSMITHHFX) 9 of 12
Hrm, I think I thought I'd looked for that and not found anything, but I guess I hadn't actually looked.

Nikon do one, though obviously it has an uncommon thread size... I think it'll fit my Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX, and of course it's £150/160 new, or £115 from the nearest used/refurbished shop, where I could physically confirm it fits, and test whether my extension tubes allow close enough focusing. That's still a fair amount of money for a few bits of plastic.

For a similar price there's a Kenro 302 scanner which can be used standalone and outputs to SD card - though is only 8MP JPGs instead of the cropped 16MP NEF raw files my camera would give, but would probably still be good enough.

But then, I do have a diffuser already, so if that can sufficiently blur the pixels of a bright white screen (I need to go get it and test), then the rest might be tedious but ultimately solvable.

From: Peter (BOUGHTONP)18 Aug 17:03
To: Drew (X3N0PH0N) 10 of 12
p.s. Thanks for your response too - I'm not deliberately ignoring you, just couldn't think of a reply.
From: Drew (X3N0PH0N)18 Aug 20:12
To: Peter (BOUGHTONP) 11 of 12
I said nothing useful, no worries!
From: koswix26 Aug 13:39
To: Peter (BOUGHTONP) 12 of 12
Various light box/light sources + DSLR set ups that give good results, but it you want a faster solution then would recommend the Plustek Optiscan range. I tried the Epson mentioned above and found it to be awful (had several dead lines on the light source)

I bought one to digitise a load of old film and slides. Didn't bother with the bundled software just used it straight from VueScan. My approach was to get a nice flat well exposed scan and then used a Lightroom plugin to develop them based on profile of the film chemistry they came from (forget the name of it, cost about 20 quid I think)


Once I was done I sold the scanner back on eBay for about 30 quid less than I paid for it 8 months earlier.

https://plustek.com/gbr/products/film-photo-scanners/opticfilm-8200i-se/