How to scan Mum's old colour transparencies

Soldato
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So Mum found a box of some of her old colour transparancies and has asked me to find out if it possible to digitize them so she can get some made onto a large canvas frame. I know there are scanners that can scan negatives but I don't know about colour negatives. Do you need special/expensive equipment for that?
 
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You can scan negatives or transparencies on a standard scanner, no problem at all, the only difference is you don't need to "invert" the image when it gets into photoshop, as it's already a "positive"

just process as normal in photoshop, once scanned
 
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You can scan negatives or transparencies on a standard scanner

Ideally, you want a scanner that has a separate lightsource for scanning negs or slides, so it shines light through the neg / slide. Most scanners just have the light source on the same side of whatever is being scanned as the sensor.
 
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Ideally, you want a scanner that has a separate lightsource for scanning negs or slides, so it shines light through the neg / slide. Most scanners just have the light source on the same side of whatever is being scanned as the sensor.
Any particular scanner you can recommend for that? :)
 
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How large a canvas do you want?

You can scan slide film on any modern flatbed scanner such as a Canon 8800F/9000F, and they will normally come with film strip holders and mounted slide holders. They're about £150 to £400 depending on what you want. The newer Epsons are more expensive but offer little in the way of resolution improvements for double the money.

You could look at a Plustek Opticfilm 8200i or similar which is realistically the most reasonable value and best resolution for £200-400, you still wont get much more than 2800 DPI and a slight dmax improvement over the flatbeds. It only scans 35mm film though, and has no platen so it can only scan film, not sure if thats an issue.

The quality however..I scan with an 8800F and its fine for web, 6x4s and occasionally 10x8. I wouldn't print any larger as the true optical resolution of most of these scanners is around 1600 to 2000 DPI. However the film base on slide films is denser and the dmax of slide films is enormous, way larger than most flatbeds will be able to cover so the quality will depend on how large you want to print and how much detail you want to retain.

If it's a few slides for a one off then send them to be scanned in a proper lab that uses something like a Flextight (3 CCDs, best quality outside of a drum scan) or a newer Noritsu scanner. Avoid places like Snappy Snaps as they usually scan with a desktop scanner.
 
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How large a canvas do you want?
Not sure, it's just an idea Mum had last night. I've been thinking of getting a Canon LiDE 210 scanner for a while and I thought it best to see if that would do the job for us. My uncle has worked in publishing/printing before so he'll probably be able to help us.
 
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Hi

That scanner is not a dedicated film scanner so only has a platen light source, wont hold film properly and you'd had to stick the bare film onto the platen. I wouldn't use it to scan film (definitely not slides) tbh

For that sort of money you'd be better off with the Epson V370 which has a transparancy unit, slide and film holders and is still under £100.

Don't expect miracles from any flatbed scanner though..
 
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Hi

That scanner is not a dedicated film scanner so only has a platen light source, wont hold film properly and you'd had to stick the bare film onto the platen. I wouldn't use it to scan film (definitely not slides) tbh

For that sort of money you'd be better off with the Epson V370 which has a transparancy unit, slide and film holders and is still under £100.

Don't expect miracles from any flatbed scanner though..
I was just wondering if a flatbed scanner would do the job for us. There's no point buying a scanner for this job, that much is obvious. As I said my uncle might be able to help or we can send the slides off to be professionally scanned as you suggested earlier. :)
 
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Hi, the V370 is a normal flatbed scanner but it also has a film transparancy unit. So if you wanted a scanner anyway it could be used for scanning normal documents, photos etc.
 
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I was just wondering if a flatbed scanner would do the job for us. There's no point buying a scanner for this job, that much is obvious. As I said my uncle might be able to help or we can send the slides off to be professionally scanned as you suggested earlier. :)

Professional scanning for me is only really an option if you have a small number of negatives of real value if you are just talking about bulk scanning your mums old holiday snaps then your much better of (financially not time wise!) buying a scanner and doing it yourself! I have a V500 from Epson that I got for exactly this reason and I could sell it on for a very small loss as they are popular.

I'd go the flat bed option then see if there are any you particularly want really large enlargements of then you could just sent specific negatives to a pro shop
 
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Professional scanning for me is only really an option if you have a small number of negatives of real value if you are just talking about bulk scanning your mums old holiday snaps then your much better of (financially not time wise!) buying a scanner and doing it yourself! I have a V500 from Epson that I got for exactly this reason and I could sell it on for a very small loss as they are popular.

I'd go the flat bed option then see if there are any you particularly want really large enlargements of then you could just sent specific negatives to a pro shop
Yeah, we only have a few slides so its not worth us spending money for so little to be scanned.

why not use professional services to scan to get best possible quality ?
http://ukfilmlab.com/

or even good old snappy snapps

especially if you do not have a dedicated scanner or one that scans negatives
Will give UKFilmLab a read over later. :) Thanks for the name.
 
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So Mum found a box of some of her old colour transparancies and has asked me to find out if it possible to digitize them so she can get some made onto a large canvas frame. I know there are scanners that can scan negatives but I don't know about colour negatives. Do you need special/expensive equipment for that?

How many negs is there?, if its only a few you can send them to me for the price of postage and i'll scan them and drop box you the images :)
 
Soldato
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Yeah, we only have a few slides so its not worth us spending money for so little to be scanned.

Will give UKFilmLab a read over later. :) Thanks for the name.

If it's only a few then ignore me! Usually when these threads rock up it's because someone has been given a giant box to go through and the cost involved in scanning a few thousand bang average holiday snaps isn't worth it!
 
Soldato
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I've just bought an Epson V370 Photo to scan some 30-year old slides for a course I'm going on next month. I'm not that impressed with the sharpness of the scans but I may not be getting the best out of it and the slides' colours are severely degraded anyway. We're now going to work through our slide collection and there could be many casualties.....
 
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How many negs is there?, if its only a few you can send them to me for the price of postage and i'll scan them and drop box you the images :)
Not negatives, transparencies. A few. Perhaps 10-12. :) I'll mention it to Mum later. Uncle might be able to help us as well.

If it's only a few then ignore me! Usually when these threads rock up it's because someone has been given a giant box to go through and the cost involved in scanning a few thousand bang average holiday snaps isn't worth it!
Haha, will do. :D
 
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Been using an Epson V550 to archive old negatives and slides.
Absolutely fantastic bit of kit for the money.

As Willis, I'm more than happy to scan them for you and post back :)
 
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