35mm negatives to digital

[Luke Duke]

I would like to convert my wedding photos to digital. There are around 500 pictures. What device would you recommend that I use. I am aware of the Nikon Coolscan. My plan is to buy something like the Nikon on ebay, use it, and then resell it on ebay. As an added bonus I would like to find a device that will also convert slides to digital. My father has tons of slides that I know that he would like converted.

Does anyone have any suggestions for somethinf other than the Nikon Coolscan? Also are there any recommondations on which Coolsacn model to buy?

 

[pmg]

I have a NIkon Super Coolscan LS-2000. It's a great product, although a bit outdated today, and expensive.

I'd seriously reconsider the desire to scan your own film vs. taking it to a service bureau. Especially for your wedding photos, as it will take you a long time to do it by hand, then adjust each pic, store, and backup.

I've scanned about 1,000 slides, maybe 2,000 slides, over the past five years. (Maybe 30-40 rolls of negs, too.)It takes a lot of time.

As far as your dad's concerned, how many are a "ton"?

Many flatbed scanners come with film adapters, inexpensive, but I've heard less than stellar reviews.

 

[Fancy Pants]

I bought a digital camera and took pictures of the pictures. Didn't come out so great.

 

[russwm]

For slides and negatives, consider the Minolta Dimmage Scan Dual IV. It costs less than the Coolscan, and is highly regarded. Are you going to scan the actual wedding pictures, or the negatives? If it is the pictues, I don't think the Coolscan will work. It is only for negatives and slides, I believe. For pictures, a good flatbed scanner will do a good job. Look at the Epson Perfection scanners. But if you are going to do negatives or slides, definitely get a negative/slide scanner such as the Coolscan or Scan Dual.

 

[Luke Duke]

I plan to scan the negatives and also some of my father's slides.

 

[pmg]

Pretty sure any 35mm film scanner will handle both negs and pos (slides) and mounted or strips. Are your wedding photos 35mm negs? I ask because if they're professional, and older, it could be larger size, in which case all bets are off.

 

[Luke Duke]

The negatives are 35mm. I haven't even gotten them back from the photographer yet. I just got married 2 weeks ago so the negs will be in good condition.

Does anyone else have any firsthand experience with either the Nikon or the Minolta or even another similar device? What kind of image quality can I expect? How easy are they to use? Am I going to have to spend alot of time enhancing each image in Photoshop?

Cost isn't a big issue since I plan to resell the scanner.

 

[BigXIIHorns]

I have a nikon coolscan and it works great. you do need to do some color correction and sharpening. it creates really big tiff files and is very time consuming. the scans take a couple of minutes each plus adjustments and time to load it's easily 10 minutes a slide/negative. Works great and creates great pics. get the model with digital ICE this fixes scratches and dust, a real problem with scanning photos.

I would do it if I were you. Just to have great digitals of your wedding. It's just time consuming.

 

[pmg]

The wedding pix probably won't take too much image adjusting .But if you end up scanning other types of pix, you'll need to be pretty good at photoshop; you'll need to understand color correction. Ideally, you'll save your scans as archival quality, then you can go back later and do other things with them. And if you get something with Digital ICE, then save the infrared-dust and scratches as a separate channel, along with your original. (I think that would be RGBi.) Then you can later post-process them.

I don't use the Nikon software, I use a shareware product Vuescan.

 

[ghost]

Mr. Duke,

Unless you are concerend about an "outsider", i.e. someone other than yourself, transfering the slides to digital, then I would go to a third party, like Wal-Mart. My dad has done and is still doing what you are trying to do.

He first went to Walgreens where they did roughly 200 slides for him for like $1.99 TOTAL. They have now raised the price, pressumably from him getting the service done. I doubt a lot of people do it so they probably never had to do it before and once he brought his slides in, they figured it was time consuming and raised the price. They now charge something like $2.39 for the first 15 slides and then like $.29 for EACH additional slide. That can be super expensive.

When my Dad told me that, I told him to try Wal-Mart since my future mother-in-law did the same thing there. That is the place you want to use. He has now done about another 200 slides - 100 at a time and it costs like $2.99 for the WHOLE thing. I am sure they can do the same with the negatives.

Oh, and the first set of slides my Dad had done were 34 years old and they look like they were just taken yesterday. If your dad's slides are Kodachrome, they will still be in great shape. That's why my Dad's slides were.

 

[Luke Duke]

I'm not concerned with an "outsider" transfering the slides. Although it wouldn't surprise me if my father had a problem with losing posession of his slides. Slide scanning capability would just be an added bonus so I could do something for my father. My main goal in this case is to transfer the 35mm negatives to digital.