Film scanner recommendation!

[seanlim]

Hi guys, which film scanner would you guys recommend?
Budget say, <$2000. (if a thousand is enough, just recommend one in that range)

color slides, B&W. I'm new to this.

Is it better off just getting lab scanned? or self develop (B&W) and scan myself. Very willing to do it DIY if the results are better plus i also find it more therapeutic.

 

[ricohflex]

wow U got high budget. Think DIY is always better if U are hobbyist (i.e. not a pro who shoots thousands of pics in a short time) because U got the time to scan & control everything. Otherwise the little gal in the shop will "anyhow" do for U & collect $.

 

[adamadam]

I use Coolscan V, but I think a Coolscan 5000 is faster and more bits

It does cool scans.

 

[seanlim]

haha any specific models to recommend?

 

[sequitur]

actually a few hundred is enough. you'll need to spend on the software.

8800f $200-300 and a licensed vuescan/pro US$40/80 or silverfast (>US$120).



edit: not to mention that it does beautiful scans into DNG with vuescan, but i take like 4 hours to scan one roll at the highest dpi. if you're not willing to spend that kind of time, a good lab can do a 16base for a low cost, or find someone who's doing scanning services on the forum.

 

[blueshift]

hi. do you mind sharing. with 8800f highest resoloution setting, how large we can print?

 

[shaoken]

Wah! Such a high budget??
You can DIY and get nice scans but you must have a laser scanner like what those photo labs have.

 

[sequitur]

hi. do you mind sharing. with 8800f highest resoloution setting, how large we can print?

i'm not sure.. i don't print my photos.

but the general idea is that if you scan them at highest resolution, largest image dimensions, and output them to a DNG, one roll of film takes up about 1.7gb, which works out to be about 50mb per dng... so i suppose to some extent works out to some amount of detail.

you can always up-res the final output if you go the DNG path.. just use ACR/LR and output to a few times the megapixels and you should be fine.

i've done enlargements of A1 size from 4mp raw files simply by blowing them up in ACR.. i'm not sure if they can go bigger than that 'coz i never tried. that should give you a rough idea of how you can whack the printing resolution with the proper workflow..