Looking for film scanner

Looking for a scanner to convert my negatives to digital media.
Nothing fancy, with resolution good to show pictures on 19" PC
monitor.
Any idea how long it takes to scan one picture?
I don't want to spend more then $300.
Looking on the Web I found:

Pacific Image PrimeFilm 3610AFL 3600dpi, $ 309.95
Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u, 3600dpi - $ 269.95
Pacific Image Prime-Film 3600u, 3600 dpi, $ 209.95
Canon Canoscan 8600F Color Image Scanner $163.99
Microtek ScanMaker i800 $299.84
Canon CanoScan 4400F Color Image Scanner $89.99

Which one you recommend?

Thanks,

Zalek

On Wed, 25 Apr 2007 20:59:36 -0400, ZalekBloom wrote:

> Looking for a scanner to convert my negatives to digital media.
> Nothing fancy, with resolution good to show pictures on 19" PC
> monitor.
> Any idea how long it takes to scan one picture?
> I don't want to spend more then $300.
> Looking on the Web I found:
>
> Pacific Image PrimeFilm 3610AFL 3600dpi, $ 309.95
> Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u, 3600dpi - $ 269.95
> Pacific Image Prime-Film 3600u, 3600 dpi, $ 209.95
> Canon Canoscan 8600F Color Image Scanner $163.99
> Microtek ScanMaker i800 $299.84
> Canon CanoScan 4400F Color Image Scanner $89.99
>
> Which one you recommend?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Zalek

You can also find some good Epson scanners on the Epson web site -
neighborhood of $150 or less - the 4490 I have works fine.

Scanning takes a LONG time - better to have a commercial outfit do them
for you if your time is worth anything.

wrote:
> Looking for a scanner to convert my negatives to digital media.
> Nothing fancy, with resolution good to show pictures on 19" PC
> monitor.
> Any idea how long it takes to scan one picture?

Anywhere from a couple of minutes to half an hour; not counting any
restoration or retouching that's necessary.

> I don't want to spend more then $300.
> Looking on the Web I found:
>
> Pacific Image PrimeFilm 3610AFL 3600dpi, $ 309.95
> Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u, 3600dpi - $ 269.95
> Pacific Image Prime-Film 3600u, 3600 dpi, $ 209.95
> Canon Canoscan 8600F Color Image Scanner $163.99
> Microtek ScanMaker i800 $299.84
> Canon CanoScan 4400F Color Image Scanner $89.99
>
> Which one you recommend?

I would strongly suggest *not* considering anything that doesn't have
Digital ICE or equivalent (infrared scan channel plus software to
interpolate into damaged areas as revealed by the infrared scan channel;
it eliminates dust and hairs and scratches amazingly well).

I would not seriously consider any flatbed scanner with transparency
adapter for 35mm work.

And I would go up to the Nikon Coolscan V at $500. But I haven't used
the Pacific Image products, so I'm basing that opinion on reviews, not
direct personal experience.

Resolution isn't the issue; the issue is dmax and brightness range. At
least you're doing negatives, so the dmax issue isn't so severe.

I can't personally conceive of going to the trouble of scanning a lot of
film, and not doing TOP quality scans. It's so little more trouble; the
big cost is your time. I can so easily imagine regretting not having
done top quality work later on, possibly when it's too late to remedy.

wrote:
> Looking for a scanner to convert my negatives to digital media.
> Nothing fancy, with resolution good to show pictures on 19" PC
> monitor.
> Any idea how long it takes to scan one picture?
> I don't want to spend more then $300.
> Looking on the Web I found:
>
> Pacific Image PrimeFilm 3610AFL 3600dpi, $ 309.95
> Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u, 3600dpi - $ 269.95
> Pacific Image Prime-Film 3600u, 3600 dpi, $ 209.95
> Canon Canoscan 8600F Color Image Scanner $163.99
> Microtek ScanMaker i800 $299.84
> Canon CanoScan 4400F Color Image Scanner $89.99
>
> Which one you recommend?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Zalek

Add the Plustek Opticfilm 7200. Worth considering. Also that crap about
scanning time, it all depends on what you are going to USE the scanned
images for. If all you want to do is digitise your film/slides to show on a
computer monitor, scanning time is very short. If you want top quality
prints, it takes a little longer, but up to 10 by 8, image resolution need
not be all that fine.

Digital Ice costs money, but saves time in the apres-scan work. If you are
good with Photoshop or PSP, and selective as to which of your scans are
worth spending time on, you can live without Digital Ice.

Dennis.

"Dennis Pogson" <> wrote in message
news:B9ZXh.84$...
>
> Digital Ice costs money, but saves time in the apres-scan work. If you are
> good with Photoshop or PSP, and selective as to which of your scans are
> worth spending time on, you can live without Digital Ice.
>

My Epson 4490 has Digital Ice and is not excessively expensive. As you said,
for screen work it is fine. I even did some colour slides for a printed
book. Took a bit longer but still impressive for the price of the machine.

Gerrit - Oz

<> wrote in message
news:...
> Looking for a scanner to convert my negatives to digital media.
> Nothing fancy, with resolution good to show pictures on 19" PC
> monitor.
> Any idea how long it takes to scan one picture?
> I don't want to spend more then $300.
> Looking on the Web I found:
>
> Pacific Image PrimeFilm 3610AFL 3600dpi, $ 309.95
> Pacific Image Prime-Film 3650u, 3600dpi - $ 269.95
> Pacific Image Prime-Film 3600u, 3600 dpi, $ 209.95
> Canon Canoscan 8600F Color Image Scanner $163.99
> Microtek ScanMaker i800 $299.84
> Canon CanoScan 4400F Color Image Scanner $89.99
>
> Which one you recommend?
>
We have a Canon 8600 and it seems to do a good job on 35mm slides. Takes
about 30 minutes to scan 4 slides.

Ron

Doug McDonald wrote:
> David Dyer-Bennet wrote:

>> And I would go up to the Nikon Coolscan V at $500.
>
> I have a Coolscan IV. It, and the ICE3, works, but a scanner with
> a diffuse light source would be much better to get rid of
> grain. Any suggestions?

I've never liked diffuse light sources; always used a condenser enlarger
in the darkroom, too. You can use GEM, or Noise Ninja or NeatImage, to
get rid of grain you don't want easily enough.

"David Dyer-Bennet" <dd-> wrote in message news:46303dcf$0$961

>
> I would strongly suggest *not* considering anything that doesn't have
> Digital ICE or equivalent (infrared scan channel plus software to
> interpolate into damaged areas as revealed by the infrared scan channel;
> it eliminates dust and hairs and scratches amazingly well).
>

I'd second that recommendation. Even my newly-developed film often has
scratches that must be cleaned up. If it were not for ICE3 I would have
abandoned film scanning.

>
> And I would go up to the Nikon Coolscan V at $500. But I haven't used the
> Pacific Image products, so I'm basing that opinion on reviews, not direct
> personal experience.
>

I have the PrimeFilm PF3650Pro3, but I notice that it has been removed from
both the Amazon site and from the manufacturer's site (www.scanace.com).
I'm wondering if it has been withdrawn? It has Digital ICE3, it scans an
entire roll of uncut negatives (so I can just let it scan automatically
while I do something else), it scans individual slides, and it has 3600
optical resolution, which is more than the original Kokak "Photo CD" had
(2048 x 3072).

There is a full review here:

http://www2.hardwarezone.com/article...?cid=13&id=868

If anyone is looking for the best bang for the buck, they might want to
check around and snap one of these up if they're still in the shops. I paid
about $350.00 on Amazon.com for mine.





> Resolution isn't the issue; the issue is dmax and brightness range. At
> least you're doing negatives, so the dmax issue isn't so severe.
>
> I can't personally conceive of going to the trouble of scanning a lot of
> film, and not doing TOP quality scans. It's so little more trouble; the
> big cost is your time. I can so easily imagine regretting not having done
> top quality work later on, possibly when it's too late to remedy.

David Dyer-Bennet <dd-> writes:

> I've never liked diffuse light sources; always used a condenser
> enlarger in the darkroom, too. You can use GEM, or Noise Ninja or
> NeatImage, to get rid of grain you don't want easily enough.

I've recently tried the Photoshop Plug-in 2.0 version of Kodak GEM and
I it might be the best grain reduction solution (at least on the
software side) that I've tried so far. I've also got GEM in my scanner
software (Konica-Minolta Scan Elite 5400 II) but it doesn't really do
much in my opinion. I've also tried Photoshop plug-ins Remove Grain 2,
Noise Ninja, Neat Image and possibly one or two more that I can't
remember.

On my dual-core machine, the GEM Plugin is very fast too, at least
compared to the Remove Grain 2 plug-in. I think it has a good
trade-off between grain reduction and detail preservation and
is fine-tunable. I've only tried the demo on a few images but
so far it's very promising.

I've also heard about a separate scanning aid called Scanhancer but
haven't tried that.

jeremy wrote:

> I have the PrimeFilm PF3650Pro3, but I notice that it has been removed from
> both the Amazon site and from the manufacturer's site (www.scanace.com).
> I'm wondering if it has been withdrawn? It has Digital ICE3, it scans an
> entire roll of uncut negatives (so I can just let it scan automatically
> while I do something else), it scans individual slides, and it has 3600
> optical resolution, which is more than the original Kokak "Photo CD" had
> (2048 x 3072).

That resolution (if taken literally) is adequate for nearly anything
(certainly unless you have slides shot on very lowspeed films, on a
tripod, with first-rate lenses :-)).

The entire uncut roll thing sounds *so great* -- except that all the
film I need to scan is already cut into strips of 1, 4, 5, or 6 frames.
(The "1" is mounted slides, and I do have the slide feeder for my
Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED).

Also, the rare times I've had films returned uncut, it's been *much*
more scratched up, probably from what they did to get the entire strip
into a protective plastic sleeve, or else what they did to coil it up in
the film can. So I don't think I'd have film returned uncut even if I
were still shooting film. If I were processing it myself I'd probably
scan it before cutting, though, if I had such a scanner.