Scanning Slides

“Buck, when you scan slides with your Nikon Coolscan III (or was is IV) do you lose much detail?

I saw your photos of your secret place in the Sierra and they and reminded me to ask this question. Your secret place could be a hundred different places along the JMT, or in the Pioneers or Sawtooths of Idaho.”

“Hi Bob! I scan with a Nikon Coolscan IV ED. Yes, the detail loss compared to the original slide is significant. The shadow details, the crispness, the contrast, etc., all suffers when I scan, although it is a very good scanner. That's just the nature of scanning. That's why digital photos tend to look better online than scanned film, it obviously doesn't have to go through this process. But I still love film, and I like holding a slide up to light, and I love the colors of a Velvia slide. But hey, it's all headed towards digital. I'm lookin' at getting that new Canon Digital Rebel SLR camera, although I'll still always bring my film camera along loaded with Fuji Velvia for those magical hours. Oh yaaa, baby.”

“When you scan with the coolscan, what kind of file size to you end up with? I've been scanning slides with an HP scanner with a slide scanning attachment. The color looks pretty good, and it looks good on the screen, but I can see some loss of detail. I thought maybe the coolscan would to a lot better.

Would you email me one at scanned resolution so I can see how it looks for detail? (shaver@dykaslaw.com)”

“When you scan with the coolscan, what kind of file size to you end up with? I've been scanning slides with an HP scanner with a slide scanning attachment. The color looks pretty good, and it looks good on the screen, but I can see some loss of detail. I thought maybe the coolscan would to a lot better.

Would you email me one at scanned resolution so I can see how it looks for detail? (shaver@dykaslaw.com)”

“oops!”

“Bob, which post do you want me to respond to, you posted the same thing twice? HA HA HA HA! Okay, sorry. I would be happy to e-mail you a scan. My stuff is at home so it'll probably be later this evening/night when I can do this.

My guess is the results from a dedicated slide scanner will be substantially better than a flatbed with an adapter (I used to use an Epson Perfection with a flatbed slide adapter, but I think your HP is better than my old Epson), but still, it's tough to beat those Nikons. It'll cost you one month's mortgage to buy one, which is why I don't have a steeeeenkin' mortgage! :^D”

“My scanner has a slide and film attachment which has its own light, and shines through the slide onto the scanner. It wants to scan at 200 dpi, and says that gives the best results, even though higher resolutions are available. I wonder if putting the slide image in a glass slide frame, where it is held flat by two panes of glass, would improve the scan any?”

“Where the heck do you buy the slide adaptor for scanners, and how much do they usually cost?”

“Mine came with the scanner, and I think the two have to be made as one package. When the software on the computer is set to "slide" the light in the flatbed scanner turns off and the light in the slide scanner turns on. I don't think you can add that feature to scanners after the fact.

I'll post a scanned slide and you can check it out. Buck will have to tell me how to post a photo, however.”

“Bob, I'm not sure about your glass slide frame thing, as I'm not that techy. I just cram my slides into my Nikon and hit "scan".

Budda Bear, not all flatbed scanners have this adapter option of scanning slides. You would have to check with the manufacturer and model of your scanner to see if it's an option or not. Trollface.”

“Slide scanner recommendations? I've done a little perusing of the Canon that's around $300 and also a low-end Nikon Coolscan around $700.

also, Buck, do you have an inkjet to print and potentially sell shots (you could be selling shots, BUCK!)....”

“Hi lizs! As for slide scanner recommendations, hey, it's all about what you wanna spend and what you wanna do with your scans. If you just wanna show scans online, you don't need anything fancy, as the computer monitor only goes like, what, 75 dpi or sumpthin'? If you wanna make your own prints, let's say up to 5x7 (inches, not feet :^D), then you'll need a certain dpi, if you wanna go 8x10, you'll need more, etc., etc.

To get a high end scanner (but not top-o-the-line) you could be nearing a grand ($700-900-ish?), which for THAT kind of money you can darn near get the new Canon Digital Rebel, which is a 6.3 megapixel digital slr KICKBUTT camera that would take suh-weet photos, with no scanning required. If you already have a bazillion slides/negatives, you may wanna still get a decent scanner though. My advice, sell your house and move into a garage.”

“I bought an HP scanner that was more high end than I needed, because it had a slide and negative scanner attachment. It was $400 or $450. It does OK, but I can see a slight loss of some detail in my slides.”

“Hi Bob! As you know, you'll lose some detail through scanning, and then you'll lose some more detail if you save it as a jpeg file (compression artifacts), and then you lose lots more when you upload it online, which compresses the file even more. So what you see online always SUCKS LIKE H*LL compared to the original slide. But still, it's better than sitting through a 2-hour slide show in someone's living room, eh?”

“Buck, yeah, I know all that. (Miss Come-upance, huh?? LOL)

I am just really debating, mostly, the inkjet end of things. I know there's an Epson around $700 that does up to 13x18 prints with some kinda archival chroma inks (or some such thing). Sounds like the prints would last forever! I hate the idea that inkjets really fade.

There's also a Canon inkjet, maybe around $300 (??) that also does 11x13s... and I've heard it's a lot more user friendly in photo chats. (do YOU do photo chats, Buck?? Ohhhhhhhh, the addiction. lol)

The last time I was chatting on usefilm, they all thought I was nuts to get a good inkject so I could print single prints to sell. They said, just take it to a photo lab. But I am far from city photo labs... and still, you need to get a set number -- maybe 5 or 6 prints -- to hit a over a break-even pricing on the prints. (well, to actually attempt to make enough to try to live on.......hack, cough)

The digital idea has merit. I work at a paper and have a Nikon Coolpix 885.. or 880? It's discontinued whatever it is. I like it for hiking. Of course, it is not the HUGE F2.8 70-210 zoom I have for my Canon EOS Elan 35 mm, but then again you shoot knowing that. One thing I don't like with that Nikon diggie... it seems I don't get the great greens of Velvia (ahhhhhhhh, yes, another Velvia baby here!!! LOL! "THOSE ARE THE COLORS OF REAL LIFE, WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY'RE NOT?!?!".... lol)

I expect great, vivid, saturated, to-die-for greens. The Nikon diggie doesn't do it. Does anybody's digital get that kind of accurate rendering?

And when all is said and done I have 3 trileeeeon slides around that need scanning.

Been nice chatting, Buck......... lol”

“I'm lookin' at getting that new Canon Digital Rebel SLR camera

I recommend you very carefully consider the feature limitations built into the Digital Rebel in comparison to the 10D. No biggie if you shoot all manual, but the DR is truly a "Rebel" in its feature set and you might find it limiting.

Some of those limitations are: No on-camera control of Flash-Exposure-Compensation, camera decides what autofocus and auto-exposure mode to use based on the "Mode" setting, and more I'm not remembering. Check out the discussions on http://www.dpreview.com/ for more info.

Don't get me wrong, the DR is a good camera if you can live with its limitations. Canon's just doing on the digital side what they've done for years on the film side.”

“Hi deeddawg! As for the Digital Rebel, it's the price/quality that interested me, not so much the features. I will still be shooting Velvia film as my primary method of photography, but I wanted a digital slr for my "documentation" type shots. That would save me lots of $$ in film costs and processing for otherwise unspectacular shots. The 10D has more functions, but they both share the same 6.3 megapixel quality, and the Digital Rebel is many hundreds of dollars cheaper. The way digital is going, the 10D will be the free toy in a box of Cracker Jacks® in a couple years, so I don't wanna spend the extra $$. Wait, the 10D won't fit in a little Cracker Jacks box... how 'bout Lucky Charms? Still too small of a box. Okay, how about those BIG boxes of Honeycomb? Mmmm mmmm. But you are certainly correct, the 10D is geared more towards serious photographers and has better control over the image. But like I said, I just want a digital slr that I can still use my existing Canon lenses with for documentation shots and online stuff. I still prefer the look and feel of film. Someone will hafta pry that Elan 7 out of my hands with a very serious hand-prying device to get me to relinquish it. But I know it's eventually coming. I'm waiting for full-framed CMOS chips (like the Canon 1Ds) to become mucho less expensive-o. Being a landscape guy, I don't like the 1.6x factor, making my wide-angle lenses into normal lenses, and my zooms into super zooms. So before I really invest in digital, I'm gonna wait a bit. It's really changing fast. But the Canon Digital Rebel allows use of existing lenses, has the same quality of image as the 10D, and is listed under a $1,000. I think it's time for me to jump on that puppy. If it were my "film replacement" camera, I would certainly fork out the extra $$ for the 10D, no doubt.”

“Hey lizs! By the way, how to you pronounce your name? I seem to spit and slobber everytime I try and pronounce it. Or do you just make me drool? Hmmmm.

Anyway, sorry if I misinterpreted your question above. I do that a lot. I have zippo experience with serious inkjet printing of images. The only images I've printed on my inkjet printer are downloaded bikini girlz, and I wasn't really concerned about super high quality at the time. HA HA! Just kidding. Ahem. Anywho, I've also never heard of photo chats? Sounds interesting... I think. I have never attempted to sell a photo, nor have I attempted to make a serious enlargement print of a slide from a lab.

As for Velvia, I have heard that you can preset some digital cameras with "Velvia-like" results, bumping up the saturation settings and kicking up the contrast. I have no clue though. Velvia rules the world. Those ARE natural colors... people are just used to seeing bland colors in photographs. In real life colors are AMAZING!

If you have tres treeeellion slides stacked all around you... whoa, let's just say we could never live together. All those slides under one roof. I think that would break some sort of city code or something.”

“I went mid range on a slide scanner for old stuff. I have gotten some pretty scans off of Kodachrome slides, not so bad off of color negatives and mediocre at best off of Ektachrome slides. Minolta Dimage II

These are scanned from APS film.

Scanned from APS


Then I bought a Nikon Coolpix.”

“I need to make those images larger and the banner smaller.”