Seafuryfan needs scanner – help!

I apologise; I think I’ve given you the wrong end of the stick. What I meant was that I have a Nikon film scanner and an Epson flatbed. They are separate entities and I know of no Nikon attachments for anyone else’s flatbed scanners.

What other people are saying about higher-end flatbeds with film attachments is OK if you only want low-resolution copies of images, or are very sure you won’t be printing any.

If you want to print some out – and I know from experience that images on the screen just don’t look as nice as printed ones done to a decent quality – then you need a film scanner with ICE. These do come at a price, but you very much get what you pay for.

Hope this clears things up a little.

DH Fan was kind enough to reply to this in General Discussion so here it is…..

DH Fan says:

“Don’t approve of combined scanner/printers. One bit fails it usualy all fails.

My current scanner is USB, came from a computer fair last year and was £37. Week after it was £35 – bugger. Works perfectly, actual resolution 600dpi I think.
If it was only for displaying on forums and the like, buy the cheapest you can get as monitors only show 72dpi anyway.

If you really want to scan negs and slides, wait and save up a bit more. Saw an Epson Perfection 3200 or similar advertised recently. Resolution 3200 x 6400, built in slide/neg capability, scans 12 35mm slides in one hit, about £260. Could be + VAT, sorry, as I’m VAT registered I tend to not take a lot of notice.
That’s substantially higher resolution than a dedicated Minolta slide scanner a mate bought a year or so ago.”

Big up to all posters this thread!!!

Sorry for delay – work.

Thanks for the advice, all. Particulary intertested in Futurshox & Snappers posts, which sounds about what I’m looking for. Why? Because I only envisage looking at my print photo collection on the computer in future, and I think that the Internet is the best ever way of showing photos to your mates.

This adaptor for the Epson – is it an extra? Futurshox mentioned a Nikon film/Epson flatbed arrangement. Is this a Nikon adaptor? And is this the one that comes with a dust/scatch removal?

Get an Epson with a film adapter (or similar) if you only want to post online. For files good for prinyting, I would definately reccomend the Canon FS4000US. Better than both the Nikons, and about £650-700. But a flatbed with adapter is fine for online scanning.

I’ve been pretty happy with my Nikon film/Epson flatbed setup, and they both work just fine on XP, Mac OSX and Linux.

The film scanner will take strips of film up to 6 frames, and the dust/scratch removal (ICE) is worth its weight in gold.

See my reply to SeaFuryFan’s scanner question in the General forum.

I’d be interested to hear comments.

I have a Epson 1250 as well. No probs with it whatsoever.

M

It’a a Perfection 1250 I have. It scans one frame at a time for negatives, and converts to positive images, colour or b/w.
I run mine on XP Home and have had no problems with it at all.
I’m not a professional photographer and my needs are modest; it’s perfectly acceptable to me, especially at £100.

ymmv of course.

Shameless Hewlett Packard plug

HP have recently brought out the PhotoSmart 1200 photo scanner, which is a battery or mains operated 6″ x 4″ photo scanner. Drops the images onto either internal memory or a secure digital card which you then either download to the pc or take the card, slot it into a card enabled printer and print copies straight off. Currently retails around the 99 quid mark.

For 35mm transparency scanning, we have the ScanJet 5500 range, which have a 35mm transparency adapter (which will scan a line of negatives for you) and an auto photo feed to whizz your photos in and out. It’s all done on airbed technology which ensures the photos don’t touch the face of the scanner. The 5500 will scan anything up to A4 size, all at 4800 dpi. Can’t remember the pricing off hand (but don’t think it’s over 150 quid). I’ll check that for you when I’m back at work tomorrow.

We’ve also got my favourite little baby, the PSC 2210, which has digital card slots (so you can print photos without your pc), it’s a flatbed scanner, copier, fax and PhotoRet IV printer. It doesn’t have negative scanning capability though, as it’s designed as a small office / home office all in one unit. I can advise pricing tomorrow if you’re interested.

HP are constantly improving in this market, and while they’re not quite up to the standards that a photographer like Damien would insist upon, they’re not far off.

Hi

Just bought a Minolta Scan Dual III which seems to be recommended by many folks to scan slides, got mine from www.cameras2u.com – good price and swift delivery. Does anyone have any advice as to the settings I need to select to get this beast to work to the best effect?? I have Photoshop 7, so I can either scan the images via that or using the Minolta software I guess….anyhow, all advice gratefully received.

Chris

They are all great until you use with XP, I got shot of my Epsom because I thought it was the TWAIN software that caused all of the problems. I got the HP in its place , not only is it a awkward scanner to use but the software(driver) will still not function correctly with XP.
I liked my Epsom, never the very best quality, but user friendly and pretty inexpensive.
When I change again, probably this autumn, I will go for a film scanner rather that a flatbed with attachements.

I use a Canon N1220U (?) (It’s at work at the moment) but have no experience of negative scanning, all my stuff comes off prints.

I would say though, that of equal importance to the scanner is the software you use, and your skill at using it.

Photoshop 7 is the one to go for, but the price if you have to buy it as an individual is a bit eye-watering

Moggy

Thanks for the post Macky…

Please tell me: how does the negative / slide scan work?

Can you do a strip at a time?

Does it turn it into a full colour picture?

Etc Etc

Regards,

Scanners

Not an expert on photography, but I’ve got an Epson 1250 which gives excellent results, and comes with a couple of plastic gizmos to hold slides and negatives, and an auxiliary light source. The software can scan all of these no problem. All for around £100, probably less now.