Scanning colour negatives,Hard and Software

[nightshade]

I have a box of colour negative 35mm film and was wondering if I could use
a flat bed scanner (the Epson 3170 for instance) and one of the photo packages to digitise these negatives as images. Cost is a factor.

[Meta menardi]

I have had mixed results with trying this kind of thing, ranging from dreadful to downright awful. I would prefer to project them and re-photo, even that is not easy.

What sort of number of slides are you thinking of, and how much time have you to play around?

[nightshade]

Not slides but negatives, I have slides but many suffered due to poor storage
The scanner route seemed a good idea but I may go to the old Ohnar copier
Wine women and song take up a lot of my free time (the government takes up my money) and Eribering is a preferred use of any other time

[Lancashire Lad]

To be able to do this your flatbed scanner must have the facility built in - If your scanner has a removable slider, with a separate lamp in the lid (which is revealed when you remove the slider) then yes you should be ok. You should also have a plastic template that will hold a strip of negatives at the correct point on the flatbed.

If your scanner doesn't have this extra light in the lid, (many flatbeds don't) you won't be able to use it because you need to be able to shine the light through the negatives in order for the scanner to "see" the images thereon.

I'm using an epson "Perfection 2400" which is about 6 or 7 years old, for copying slides & negatives, and have achieved fairly good results - but it has got the extra lamp etc.

Regards
Mike..

[Tormentil]

I have an Epson "Perfection 1670" which also has the built in negative copier. I've found it very good.

[Jim Ford]

I have a 'CanoScan FS2710' slide scanner which gives good results with good originals, but it's _very_ slow to scan a lot of film.

Some people report acceptable results with good speed using a 'traditional' slide copier attachment on a digital camera, usually a DSLR.

Jim

[Lancashire Lad]

Originally Posted by nightshade

I have a box of colour negative 35mm film and was wondering if I could use
a flat bed scanner (the Epson 3170 for instance) and one of the photo packages to digitise these negatives as images. Cost is a factor.

Just noticed you mention that you might use the Epson 3170

Are you considering buying one of these? or do you already have it.

I've just done a google search and the 3170 model is fully equipped with everything needed to scan negatives or transparencies. It is a current model so should give better results than my 2400.

The twain software for epson scanners is easy to use, so you shouldn't have many problems (apart from the time it takes per image).

This is an examplle of one of my slides that I copied to give you an idea of quality you can expect. (Scanning negatives on the epson is exactly the same process).



(Not British wildlife I know, but I've only scanned foreign diving stuff).

Regards
Mike.

[JennyR]

I've recently got a Cannon 4400 scanner with a negatives section built it. It's a cheapish one at about £70 but I'm really impressed with what it can do. It's not terribly fast, but then if you want a large image, none of them are fast.

I've been loathe to trade my film camera for a digital just yet, I don't have a spare £800 for a start! I thought the scanner was a good compromise and although it's a little time consuming doing one strip at a time it's worth the effort.

I looked at the reviews of more expensive scanners and the Canon 4400 came out better than them all, until you get to £400+.

Just make sure your PC has enough RAM and a fast enough processor to deal with the enormous images these things are capable of producing! I suspect you'll need at least 2GB and 2.8GHz.