(Techy!) More neg/slide scanning...

[Eric The Viking]

Oh how technology marches on!

My dad has a hugely expensive (back then) Nikon (Coolpix?) neg/slide scanner. I have a lot of slides and negs I'd like to digitize. Now, I think it's too late:

I can't find a SCSI HBA that has a PCIE interface for the computer and SCSI-2 or SCSI-3 for the scanner*. It's looking increasingly like it's unusable, which is a great shame as he's hardly used it and the quality was pretty good.

So, I'm considering one of the Plustek range, probably the 8200i SE, although it would be nice to be able to do larger formats too, just in case (I don't have anything other than 35mm myself).

It'll have to handle negs (B+W & colour), and uncut reversal stock (Kodachrome & E6), mounted and unmounted slides. I have a lot of glass mounted stuff, but can probably remove the actual frames for scanning if it's worthwhile.

The Plustek seems to be a good performer: has Linux drivers available (3rd party), USB2 (fast enough, probably, and compatible), an IR channel for scratch/muck removal, and worst-case I can run its tuned software in a virtual instance of Win 10 (ugh!).

I used to dupe slides back in the day, and found a homebrew optical setup gave far superior results to anything I could plug on the front of the camera. I do have a Bowens Illumitran that I've never really used, and a full frame DSLR, so could press that into service instead, I guess. But that's just optics with nothing "clever", and that IR channel is alluring!

So, would any of the serious photographers on here care to comment?

Thanks,

E.



*Plenty that do Ultra320, but that's differential and won't work with SCSI-2 or SCSI-3 devices (it's a safe bet that it won't anyway). You'd have thought someone would make a decent USB3-SCSI3 adaptor for legacy devices, but heck no. I found one Adaptec one eBay from Japan, but it's SCSI-2 and probably won't work (the last one I had didn't).

 

[geoffshep]

I had one of those Nikons a million years ago - the quality was great but I too eventually ran out of SCSI options. I have a plustek which I have also run in a windows partition on a Mac but you can also use Hamrick's Vuescan for most otherwise windows-only scanners, vuescan has a Linux option. The downside is that you have to process each slide manually - even with the four-slide carrier, you have to actually push the carrier along for each slide. It is slow and labour intensive.

I have seen excellent results on aviation websites from flatbed scanners like the Epson v600. Check it has the compatibility you need size-wise, but it will do 4 slides at a time unattended. The 800 will do even more. If you have a lot of slides, that may be a deciding factor.

https://www.hamrick.com

https://youtu.be/2buwklEqvmU

 

[scrimper]

I am not a serious photographer (used to do my own d&p etc but not now) but I had many 100's of slides to convert and lot's of B&W negs that I had processed but not printed. I had an Epson perfection 2400 which at the time cost me about £100. It has an adaptor for negs and another for doing 4 slides at a time, given it's resolution I did not hope for much given the massive enlargement from 35mm but frankly I was amazed at the results! I managed to convert all the slides and negs I wanted with highly satisfactory results.

You can buy these and similar quite cheaply now on 'fleabay' but you need to make sure it comes with the slid and neg adaptors for proper results.

 

[AndyT]

Your'e over my head with most of those initials, but could the most economic option be to find a computer which is old enough (and therefore cheap) to connect nicely to the nice Nikon scanner, just to use as a one-job 'appliance', with no associated problems of internet connectiion, malware precautions etc, then copy the image files over to where you want to work on them/archive them?

I might even be typing this reply on something old enough!

 

[LancsRick]

There are no shortage of pci scsi cards to be had, and USB to scsi adaptors can be bought. Are these things you've tried but had issues with driver compatibility?

 

[El Barto]

Don't be put of by the cheaper Epson scanners. I've been using one that cost about £80 for the past 5 years and it's very good, in fact I've used it for professional purposes a few times. Can't fault it.

 

[heronviewer]

I have an Epson Perfection V550 which I've used for old 35mm colour slides and it works very well indeed - and the software with it is good for colour correction. A lot of the old slides (40/50 years old) had gone a bit blue, but I could correct that. I'm using it with Windows 7 - don't know if it will work with later Windows versions