[Glen_S]

I have 1/2 dozen or so carousels of slides, pages and pages of negatives, a few sleeves of 120 negatives and possibly a various assortment of photos than need scanning. The photos will be scanned if I can't find the negatives.

I have an older coolscan that was abandoned where I work so they said I could have it, but it's a SCSI scanner and I'd sooner not have a monstrous SCSI cable cluttering my desktop, and it was very slow. It did work reasonable well, but as you know, could only do slides one at a time.

I am thinking about one of the new flatbed's that come with film and slide scanners, this would allow me to do more than one at a time, and also accommodate my 120 negatives. I am not looking for huge enlargement capacity here (for 99% of them anyway), but more or less something to get them in digital format so I can reprint prints, include in slideshows etc,

Compared to the coolscan (I think it's a 2000) how will the new flatbeds perform? Will something along the lines of the V600 epson suffice? I was looking at the new offerings of film and slide scanners as well, but from any reviews I read it looks like to get decent quality the cheapo <$200 unit's will not cut it. If I can get acceptable quality from a flatbed I would prefer that, because I could then accommodate all my old formats, including photos.

[eddie1960]

haven't tried the 600, but the v700/750 are widely touted
the thing i would look at is can you get the glass holders at betterscanning.com for the model you want. you will get a much better scan as they can be fine tuned for height and hold the neg properly flat ensuring a better scan
Certainly the V600 paired with one of these will give a file more than capable of 8x10 prints and somewhat larger (depending on the film format) then if you have an image you really want to go large with have a drum scan done on that single image

Custom film holders for Agfa, Microtek, Canon and Epson film scanners.

[Steinback]

The Epson V600 should do what you want. I use an Epson V500 and while it isn't exactly fast (depending on the resolution you use, scanning options, and your computer) you can set up 2 strips of negatives or 4 slides and leave it to run for 2 to 5 minutes per frame while you work on something else. The biggest (occasional) issue on the V500 is keeping the scanner calibration area completely clean of dust to prevent streaks from showing up in high resolution scans but you should be able to find cleaning instructions online.

A quick search on Flickr should give you lots of sample images from different film brands and formats: epson v600 - Flickr: Search

[davidreilly3207]

I have a V500. It does an excellent job on all of the above. However, I found that I got better results using the software called Vuescan rather than the epson software.

[stevebrot]

Here is a link to a detailed review of the V600:

Epson Perfection V600 Photo Review

Their tests indicate a real-world resolution of just less than 1600 dpi. That translates to 2270 pixels on the long axis of a 35mm negative. 300 dpi is the convention used for high quality print output. Do the math to determine your limits for print size.

The V700 will deliver about 2400 dpi and the Nikon LS-2000 2700 dpi.


Steve

[artobest]

The V700 will deliver about 2400 dpi and the Nikon LS-2000 2700 dpi.


Steve

Agree the V600 is not great for printing super-large. However, the 2400 dpi figure for the V750, though widely accepted, is thought by some to be on the low side. My personal belief is that the resolution is a little higher than that, just based on informal comparisons with a 3200 dpi (real-world @3100 dpi) film scanner. Somewhere between 2400 and 3000 dpi, and perhaps closer to 3000 if the scan is made at the highest resolution of 6400 dpi. And there's the rub, because that's a large, slow scan.

[dugrant153]

wait wait wait wait... sooo... the V700 has a much better and higher resolution than the V600?

Sorry to jump in but I use an Epson 4490 and goodness knows what resolution this one scans for 35mm.

[artobest]

wait wait wait wait... sooo... the V700 has a much better and higher resolution than the V600?

Yes. See Steve's link above.

[Clicker]

If you just want to digitize the film for keepsake the V600 is the minimum that will handle up to 120 negs otherwise the V700/750 would be better for printing, different bulb setup i believe and much faster with bigger files. The 750 handles up to 4x5. negs

[stevebrot]

the V700/750 would be better for printing, different bulb setup i believe and much faster with bigger files. The 750 handles up to 4x5. negs

Better optical path for the V700/750 over the V600. Both the V700 and V750 will handle up to 4x5 with the high resolution lens (using the film holders) and up to 8x10 with the lower resolution lens (using the film mask directly on the glass).

[cats_five]

If you can find one, the Coolscan 2000 can work with an SF200 though not an SF210:
https://nikoneurope-en.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2123

However I suspect they are like hen's teeth.

I scanned 50 boxes of slides (most 36s) with a 5000 & SF200, each set of slides took about 45 minutes and whilst I found I had to hang around incase I got a jam, I could generally get on with other stuff while it was working. There is an expired credit card fix that reduces but doesn't completely prevent jamming.

You also need to make sure each slide / negative is clean before scanning it.

[Lowell Goudge]

I bought a Minolta Dimage II scanner in about 2000. It sat almost unused for a year or so until I got the incentive to really put it to work. I scanned 4500 slides and almost 16000 negatives over a 4 - 5 year period so that 100% of everything I ever shot is now digital.

It was not fast, but could batch 4 slides or 6 negatives at a time, si that I did not need to sit and wait at the scanner.

If it was not for personal use, i would suggest doing something else to get the scanns, but I tried the best flatbeds at the time and was disappointed with the resolution. the minolta gave 10 megapixle images of everything. and scanned in 10 bit color at 2880 dpi. (non interpolated)