Newbie scanning question

Tobes

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About a year ago I began collecting slides (transparencies, negs, all sorts and sizes) for a project. With a little luck and patience, I finally have the film ready to begin.

The goal is to scan them in the best quality possible. I don't want to pay $10 000, but a $99 scanner likely wouldn't get good results. Pricewise, something in the middle would be great.

These slides look amazing and I want to capture them in the quality that they were photographed in, so need a scanner that can do a professional quality job. I was just wondering if anyone can recommend a scanner that would achieve this result?

Second question is that many of my slides are still on the original roll of about 36 or roughly normal roll size, so would need to find a way to scan those as well, as I'd prefer not to cut them up.

Thanks for any help.
 
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Epson flatbed scanners are great but you would for sure have to cut the negatives down though. Id look for an Epson V600 or higher model number. B&H photo has a payment plan that you can sign up for and if you make all the payments within 12 months, its interest free. So you could pick up an Epson V850 for a monthly fee
 
Have you considered a service? How many slides? Kodachrome or E-6 transparencies like Ektachrome? What's your budget? Do you have patience?
 
Thankyou both for your replies. A flatbed scanner is definitely something I'm considering.

Alan, there are a few thousand slides so a service might be a bit expensive. Plus I'd like to take on the responsibility myself and it's a fantastic way to learn more. Right now, I couldn't tell the difference between a Kodachrome and an E-6, so had to Google what they were.

If I'm understanding correctly, E-6 is the color negative film from the camera, while Kodachrome are the developed slides?

There are a bunch of different batches but a large portion are both about equal ratio's of the original camera rolls and fully developed slide film in holders. They were developed by a service at the time, who included the originals back with the developed film, so I have a bunch of original rolls as well.

If I was to scan the undeveloped E-6 film, would they still produce the same results as the developed slides, once they're scanned and inverted?
 
What's your budget? Do you have patience?

Budget is a few thousand, if I can find one with a payment plan. Patience, yes. With the amount of slides I have, I will need a lot of patience. I'm really excited about viewing them all on a big screen.
 
Kodachrome and Ektachrome are both slide type film. However, they have different properties and film developing procedures. Ektachrome slides uses E6 process. Kodak uses another process; I forget the code.

Flatbed scanners such as Epson V600 and V850 that I have will remove the spots, dust and some marks on the slides but for Ektachrome type slides, not for Kodachrome because of the difference in how each film is structured. The removal process during scanning is called ICE. So if you're scanning Kodachrome slides, you'll have to spend a lot of more time removing the spots in post processing with Photoshop, Lightroom, or another post processing program.. If you have mainly Ektachrome slides, than you can use ICE. But keep in mind, ICE doubles the scan times.

I'm a little confused by your post about the "original camera rolls" Are these negative film for prints in addition to slides? Negative film is usually used to make prints only. Negative film is different than slide film which develops as a slide with the colors showing normally. Negative film has reversed colors. You can scan negative film. However, the reversal process of getting the colors to look proper is more involved in post processing.

What do you mean by "undeveloped E6 film". E6 film is slide film. You don't mean you have film rolls that haven't been developed, do you? It sounds like you mean developed negative film that are used to make photo prints.

You didn;t mention what you;re going to do with the scans. But a V600 served me pretty well. My scans look pretty good on a 75" 4K TV or a computer monitor. Here's a sample. It's in 2K though.


Epson has a sales on a factory refurbished V600 for $140 with one year warranty rather than the price of around $225 new. That's a good deal if you want to save a few bucks.
Epson Perfection V600 Photo Scanner - Refurbished | Scanners | Clearance Center | Epson US
 
What's your budget? Do you have patience?

Budget is a few thousand, if I can find one with a payment plan. Patience, yes. With the amount of slides I have, I will need a lot of patience. I'm really excited about viewing them all on a big screen.
If you have that much to spend, than you could go with an Epson V850 for around $1100. YOu'll get slightly better results. Also, you'll be able to set up 12 slides at one time with the V850 vs. 4 with the V600. However, I don't know if the scans are better with the V850. It seems to me that the second scanner lens is used which is less sharp. So you might be better off with the V600. Maybe someone else knows more about this.
 
A word of advice. Something I did was to cull duplicates and crap shots. You don't need to scan everything. Better to scan 100% of all the good ones rather than scanning 100% of the first 25% and then stopping and never scanning any of the remaining 75%. Or blowing your brains out first. :) Scanning and post processing can become very frustrating and hugely time consuming.
 
If I'm understanding correctly, E-6 is the color negative film from the camera, while Kodachrome are the developed slides?

E-6 isn't a film. It's a process (sequence of chemical treatments) for developing color slide film. It is the common process used today to create color slides (with a few exceptions).

Kodachrome was a slide film by Kodak that was discontined some years ago. It used a unique development process used by no other film (not E-6).

The most common process used today to process color negative films is called C-41 (with a few exceptions).

Kodachrome slides are usually found in distinctive cardboard mounts that say "Kodachrome" on them but there are some exceptions to this too.
 
Kodachrome and Ektachrome are both slide type film. However, they have different properties and film developing procedures. Ektachrome slides uses E6 process. Kodak uses another process; I forget the code.

Flatbed scanners such as Epson V600 and V850 that I have will remove the spots, dust and some marks on the slides but for Ektachrome type slides, not for Kodachrome because of the difference in how each film is structured. The removal process during scanning is called ICE. So if you're scanning Kodachrome slides, you'll have to spend a lot of more time removing the spots in post processing with Photoshop, Lightroom, or another post processing program.. If you have mainly Ektachrome slides, than you can use ICE. But keep in mind, ICE doubles the scan times.

I'm a little confused by your post about the "original camera rolls" Are these negative film for prints in addition to slides? Negative film is usually used to make prints only. Negative film is different than slide film which develops as a slide with the colors showing normally. Negative film has reversed colors. You can scan negative film. However, the reversal process of getting the colors to look proper is more involved in post processing.

Thanks Alan, all of this particular batch of 35mm slides & color negs come consist of half being developed slides (aka transparencies) in their mounts which was performed by a photographic company at the time, and the rest in this particular batch are quite a few rolls of color negatives, which appear to be the original camera negatives. I'm not sure if all of the negatives have been developed into the slides I already have or if they're new rolls that would need developing. I haven't looked through them in detail yet. Here's an example from the web of what they look like, 35mm strips with those dark browny colors:

512qQZZI3uL._AC_SX466_.jpg

The slides range from the late 1970s to the mid-late 1990s. My plan is to scan them all and pick some good ones to share on social media and sites like Flickr and Tumblr. It's a passion project where I get great joy out of viewing the images and hope people will as well. :) Alan, your slides look great! That's amazing how you also got some underwater shots in full clarity. I wonder how you did that.

A word of advice. Something I did was to cull duplicates and crap shots. You don't need to scan everything. Better to scan 100% of all the good ones rather than scanning 100% of the first 25% and then stopping and never scanning any of the remaining 75%. Or blowing your brains out first. :) Scanning and post processing can become very frustrating and hugely time consuming.

Yes that's a good idea. The actual scanning probably won't take too long (though have read it can take quite a while) but it's the post-processing that would take a while per image. :)

E-6 isn't a film. It's a process (sequence of chemical treatments) for developing color slide film. It is the common process used today to create color slides (with a few exceptions).

Kodachrome was a slide film by Kodak that was discontined some years ago. It used a unique development process used by no other film (not E-6).

The most common process used today to process color negative films is called C-41 (with a few exceptions).

Kodachrome slides are usually found in distinctive cardboard mounts that say "Kodachrome" on them but there are some exceptions to this too.

Thankyou for explaining that. So, E-6 and C-41 are both used to process color negative film - do they differ at all in the resulting image? Is one better for 35mm than the other? I may have to send in a whole bunch of 35mm rolls to be developed into slide films, so might have to think about which process would be best.
 
Still some confusion to dispel. Slide film requires E-6 processing to turn it into a slide, a positive image. Print film requires C-41 processing to turn it into a negative that's printed on paper as a positive image. There's no easy way to process one as the other--it's not an option as you seem to believe.

This gets settled the quickest if you identify which is which among the exposed rolls you seemingly have. If these are exposed rolls--usually obvious since the film is wound up inside the film can. Showing us a photo of the film cans would help, too, in telling slide and print film apart.

So far, it sounds like you have mounted slides and lots of negatives with a few(?) exposed, undeveloped film rolls on the side.
 
When you buy color film it will be either print film or slide film. Print film is processed via C-41 into negatives and slide film is processed via E-6 into slides. It will say on the box which it is.
 
To give you an idea of sending out cost, at the lab I work at over 1000 35mm slides or negatives would cost 65 cents each scan (cost starts at $1.49 each 1-50).
 

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