Film scanner

ahelg

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I've got tons of old slides in boxes which I plan on digitizing once I've moved to england. Therefore I wish to buy a film scanner. I've been looking at Jessops homepage and searched a few sites on google. I was just wondering if anyone here has any recommendations. I'd rather not spend more than £200.
 
i love my canoscan 8400.
read the reviews, theyre all good, and it should be sub 200 quid.
 
I'll third the canon scanners, have the same as luke. Of course the dedicated ones are going to be better than a flatbed with attachments, but you've gotta ask if it's practical for you. If you've got thousands of slides and need great quality, it's probably a good investment spending all of your 200 quid on a dedicated one. Otherwise, go the canon.
 
Luke said:
i love my canoscan 8400

Same here, the scan quality is great just using Canon's packaged software, and I imagine it would be even better if (unlike me) you can use VueScan. The Canon also costs about half your budget, meaning you have more money to spend on film. :D

Although dedicated film scanners tend to have less resolution than the max 3200dpi on the Canon and comparable Epsons or other flatbeds, the quality of scans from a dedicated scanner is likely to be better. I expect this will be most noticeable in big prints or severe cropping. For 'normal' sized prints, scans from a flatbed should be fine.

If cropping or big enlargements are something you do a lot, and you only shoot 35mm, then a second-hand dedicated scanner like the Minolta is probably best. If on the other hand you also shoot or plan to shoot medium format and would also like to scan that, obviously a flatbed would be a better option. The only problem is that the film holders for larger formats may not hold the film completely flat, but it's not too hard to make or adapt a holder yourself (I'm currently working on this).
 

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