film scanner

fightheheathens

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so im looking into getting a used film scanner off E-bay
my price range is 100-200 bucks (ideally i spend 150)
i dont need anything fancy and my main use for the scanner would be to
scan all my negs to use as a sort of contact sheet. I develope my own B&W and i do have access to a dark room, but i would rather spent my hours in there actually printing pictures rather then contact sheets to see what my pics look like. (it does cost me to use said darkroom)
I would also use the scans to post here.
I would use it to scan slides to and other color films.

Ive been looking on e-bay and a scanner that comes up often (for around 150) is the Nikon LS-2000. I dont know much about scanners. I've looked stuff up and i understand that whole ICE thing (to get rid of dust) and i get the whole resolution thing but im a little confused on the color depth, IE 8 bit vs 16 vs 32 etc. Anyway, what are good scanners in that price range (remember im looking used) and what are things to look for in a scanner.
also what are some scanners to avoid.
Im not looking for something super good, im not going to print from the scans (ill print from the actual negs) but i also dont want a piece that im going to be frustrated with
help would be cool
thanks
 
Are dedicated film scanners even needed these days? We just bought a new canon all round scanner. It had plates for mounting film and slides which is painless to do, and the photos came out spectacular by the standards of our last scanner. And this new one wasn't even all that expensive.
 
Well I bought a new flat bed scanner with a high dpi like 4800 or something like that. It scans 35mm but i bought it to scan med and large format negs. I did the 35mm and was just okay I thought, so I bought an old super cheap dedicated one on ebay. I was amazed how much better the lower resolution scans looked.

But just to check it out have the drug store make you a couple of scans on their film scanner then check them against you table top. If they are as good you might be right. That was just my opinion, but then I now own both scanners and one more I scan paper negative with. Like to keep the new flatbed for film only.
 
The LS2000 is built mostly for slide scanning, though of course it is capable of negative scanning as well. It's a pretty decent scanner.
 
thanks for the info so far. I usually only shoot color in slide film and then B&W, also B&W infrared

I had access to some nikon coolscans in college, i dont remember exactly which ones they were, but they were in the price range of 1200 usd and they were freaken sweet.
 

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