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Scanner advice


LADP

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I am interested in getting a scanner for home use that I will be using with a 15" MacBook Pro. I really don't know the first thing about brands, models and features. I'm hoping to glean some advice from you all about what works for you, and what you would recommend for my purposes.

 

I am getting back into processing my own B&W 35mm negative film, and I will primarily be scanning that. In a perfect world, it would be nice to have the ability to scan 35mm color neg and slides too, but that is a lower priority at the moment. What I mean by that is, I'd rather have a scanner that does B&W really well and is not so great at color than one that is mediocre at both. Down the line I might be interested in larger format scans (i.e. 4x5), but I'm don't necessarily need this first scanner that I want to buy to be able to do larger formats. I guess price wise, I would like to stay under a grand, but I don't want to feel like I'm wasting my time if acceptable quality isn't easily achieved at this price point. I certainly am not looking to spend the kind of money that Imacons cost, since this is not for commercial work, but rather my own personal photographic work.

 

Thanks for any help and suggestions you might be able to give me.

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Anthony, I think the stock answer to your question is the Nikon Coolscan V or if affluent the Coolscan 5000. Konica Minolta used to make some pretty mean machines such as the Dimage Scan Elite 5400 II but they are out of production. In general all of these devices scan colour materials and B&W equally as well. With B&W you will not be able to the Digital ICE dust reduction. I hope this helps.

 

Mike

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Agree fully with Mike above.

 

Although I don't do my own scanning (have it done at my lab to CD), the consensus is that the Nikon Coolscan V is the one to have (now that Konica-Minolta have gone out of the scanner business). And you can't use ICE on B&W.

 

PM Andy Barton if he doesn't see this. I believe that's what he is using, as are a number of others.

 

Thanks.

 

Allan

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Thank you all for pointing me in the right direction. I have some research to do, and now I have some leads to follow up on.

 

Peter, thank you for the suggestion. Being a member of a number of forums for a number of years, I always try to do a search before asking a question. In this case when I searched this topic, I tried the word "scanner" in singular form, and I didn't come up with any obvious hits, and for some reason unknown to me I didn't think to try the plural form of the word. I now have found a number of threads to look into, so thanks!

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You are welcome Anthony,

 

I am glad you found some. I think the most popular one would be the Nikon Coolscan V, I got a Minolta dual 4 it is more on the lower end as far as film scanners go and I am still working on my scanning skills. One thing you might also want to look at is third party scanner software, they seam to produce much better results then the software from the manufacturer. Two of the choices are Silverfast and Vue Scan .

 

Peter

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Hi Anthony,

 

I agree the most popular choices are coolscan v and 5000, and if you only concern about 35mm scanning that's what I would shoot for. I use a Minolta Multi Pro myself. It's not available new any more but still can be found used. It's not the fastest 35mm scanner, but it scans up to 6x9cm. I find the Minolta software good for slides once you profile it, but for negative scanning I just started using Silverfast SE and it does a much better job.

 

Hope this helps.

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Some time ago I lost this file, so I have re-scanned it with my MINOLTA 5400-2

Taken with Leica-M7 & 35mm asph and Fuji Sensia 100 back in Jan 2004-Thailand.

Oh yes it's hand held and a flash unit was not permitted by the monks.

 

Ken.

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Hi Anthony, I've used a Nikon Coolscan V with Vuescan for a number of years and have been more than happy with it.

 

Here's as boring a photograph as you'll see, but I gives you an idea of what the scans look like - I've included a section of the full frame at 100% magnification. I'm not sure of the film, but I think it was either FP4 or Efke 25.

 

No sharpening on either image, just an adjustment of levels.

 

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Anthony,

 

The Coolscan V has my vote, too. I get the best results shooting color neg and B&W. It's not a fast machine, but you'll get excellent results if you work carefully.

 

I've attached an unremarkable shot I recently scanned from color neg (M7, 35 asph.).

 

Larry

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Thank you all for taking the time to post your thoughts and recommendations. After much reading and thinking about it, I bought a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED yesterday, and am just starting to play around with it. I have a lot to learn about scanning, and I think I will get a copy of Silverfast soon, but I did manage to scan a coupld of photographs yesterday.

 

Here is my first effort. It was shot on Plus-X and I processed it here at home, which is something I haven't done in nearly 25 years. I need to play around with soup parameters, but I was just happy to have the negative develop at all for the first effort. I also am in need of lerning Photoshop, but my wife was able to give me a few pointers on cleaning up dirt, dust, scratches, etc. I have to figure out a way to not scratch my B&W negative so much in the process of developing and handling it.

 

As for the PS work, I still need to learn about dodging and brurning, and other techniques. I am pretty excited about working in this workflow of originating in film and utlizing a digital darkroom (for now). When we move to a bigger house I would like to set up a traditional darkroom too. For sharing photographs on-line and via email though, I really like the digital darkroom aspect. Well enough rambling. This is my friend Rick, and his beautiful Ebony 4x5 camera. We spend part of a Saturday making some images on El Matador beach a few weeks ago.

 

110440704-L.jpg

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Guest bresson

Anthony:

What a great thread, it has generated a lot of useful information on one page. I'd like to also thank all the others who posted their replies to your question.

I think that any information on technique, hints or personal experience on scanning film, including what films, scanners, software etc. deserves it's own forum or be posted in the Film Forum. Threads on this subject seem to pop up in differant forums and it can be time consuming tracking them down.

I'm not ready to plunk down thousand of $$$ on a first version digital product (don't want to pay to be a beta tester for the M8). I'm very happy with my M6 and my 35 year old Leicaflex, which still takes beautiful pictures and I use the Konica/Minolta DiMage Scan Elite 5400 II and Epson 2200 converted to Quad Color.

 

Best regards.

B

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