35mm neg scanner?

Wanted for WinXP or Win7, ~2000dpi, ~16/32bit, possibly producing 5 mega pixels JPEG files, usb powered, no more than £50 for new or good secondhand, dedicated 35mm neg/35mm slide or flat bed A4 hardware?

Any thoughts or experiences for best results/price?

I came across this: Code N16JA selling at £40 for a 5MPixels Compact Film and Slide Scanner from Maplin's Catalog a few days ago! However it would involve manually insertions of your negatives/sildes into their machine through a "frame". So depending on what you may want, I have neither seen it physically at Maplin store nor have used it at all.

Edited by deleted (Tue 09-Nov-10 11:41:38)

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/mac/t/3886978-ot-35...

Thanks for the link BatBoy - I should have checked the forum topics more thoroughly,
4M2.

I had 4000+ 35mm transprencies, some of which were in excess of 50 years old, and beginning to deteriorate, (colour degading). I looked at the options of scanning, etc, and came to the conclusion that it would take years to digitize the lot. My solution was to do a trial with a projector and photographing the screen image. Whilst not perfect, the trial results were perfectly acceptable. So, I set up my Kodak Carousel projector and loaded up six 80 slide carousels. That comes to 480 transparencies, which I was able to photograph with my Olympus C765 camera in approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes. Most time was spent loading and unloading the carousels, and ensuring that all were loaded in landscape format. If an "assistant" could be persuaded to load and unload the carousels, the job could be completed even more quickly. There must be a trade-off in terms of image quality, but I am satisfied with the end results.

Stuart

Thanks for the suggestion OCdragon - £40 sounds good and a shop like Maplins might (?) let one try it and offer a refund if the quality is not satisfactory...4M2

Good idea Anonymous - I can do a similar thing using a macro lens and photographing the slides and negs directly using a diffuse backlight.

Just thought perhaps an inexpensive scanner might be more convenient and versatile?

4M2.

Edited by 4M2 (Tue 09-Nov-10 12:30:00)

How many slides do you want to to do & how important is your time? The big issue in scanning slides is time & it takes just as long to do it on a cheap rubbish scanner as it would on a proper one that might cost £150. The difference is at the end you'll either have disappointing scans or useable ones.

The proper scanners also have the advantage of IR dust & scratch removal & this makes a massive difference to the output. I suggest you look at ebay for a Plustek unless you only want to do a few scans in which pay to get them done.

Thanks for the info mondeoman.

Actually an indeterminate number of negs and slides - the device would be shared for use amongst friends and family.

Would something like this http://www.amazon.co.uk/Plustek-7600i-SE-Optic-Scann... be a good purchase if found cheaply on ebay?

4M2.

Yes indeed - that's a fairly high level model, only really bettered when you jump up to Nikons costing £600 second hand. It should be perfectly adequate.

There aren't any 7600i types on ebay at the moment but there are a couple of the older 7200i models which are pretty good, although only single pass. I think you'll struggle to find them cheap as this is a popular time of year to start this sort of project so they're quite in demand.

Be very careful about the exact bits at the end of the name (i, SE etc) as it can make a large difference to the functionality or software. The Plustek website describes the differences. The SE versions have slightly crippled Silverfast software for instance.

http://www.plustek.de/uk/product/film_compare.php

Some people don't like the included Silverfast software so have a look at Vuescan to see if you prefer it. You can download a free trial:

http://www.hamrick.com/