SLIDE SCANNERS

[aircharter]

can anyone recommend a good quality slide scanner that gets the colour right first time, I have recently purchased a plustek 8200 that is so complicated that I dare not use it anymore all my attempts with Kodachrome slides come out green whatever I do to adjust it so I am now fed up and wish to aquire something simple yet perfect

[Supra]

Ah ha... "simple yet perfect". Luckily I've never been either of these !

[Morseman]

Wife uses the Epson perfection v100 photo scanner with very good results. Not sure if they are still around.

[PaulN]

Hi

I use a Plustek Optic Film 7400 with Hammrick Vue Scan 9 X 64 software , I just use Windows photo editor to "clean " things up , find it works well , have scanned 1000,s of slides , Kodak , Fuji Film , Agfa etc , copes very well .

Here is a 40 year old slide scanned using this

2019-09-16-0025 by pip1047, on Flickr

HTH

Paul

[Knife 04]

Hi

I would recommend the Konica Minolta Dimage Scan Dual IV - no longer available (mine is circa 2003) but there are examples available on E-bay - for example

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/133774017132 ... SwYl9gsOaf

Looks like this one has it all (slide / neg holders, software) judging by the pictures. NB - The software was for Windows XP - if you are using Windows 10 there is a patch on line which enables it to be used and works perfectly well (if you go down this road I can send over the patch). Or you could use Vue Scan as Paul does

As Paul has indicated some work is required to bring the slide / neg back to life as a lot of mine have also deteriorated and are a nightmare with scratches / colour etc. When I started out scanning mine I did some research on line. It was recommended that no adjustments (colour, lighting etc) should be made to the image prior to scanning - scan the image as it is and make the adjustments after with processing software. Others may disagree with this

As an example (not as old as Paul's) - 27 year old slide before and after using Photoshop Elements 9 (2009 edition)
Before! - F-15E - 90-0248 / LN - 492d FS, RAF Lakenheath by Darren Currie, on Flickr

F-15E - 90-0248 / LN '48FW' - 492d FS, RAF Lakenheath by Darren Currie, on Flickr

Hope this helps

Darren

[paulh]

You have done a great job on that F-15E shot Darren, good to see the before and after work on it as well

Cheers - Paul.

[Doughnut]

Very pleased with the results from a Reflecta Digit Dia 5000 slider scanner. Previously used a Plustek but the "straight from the scanner" results are quiet remarkable, some editing is required to straighten, crop, colour balance and sharpen.
I have found the biggest improvement has been speed, the Plustek required four slides to be mounted and manually inserted into the scanner, the Reflecta takes a magazine box of 50 slides and can be left unattended, six hours later job done !!
Attached is a 3600dpi scan of a Fuji 100ASA slide, taken 1994, original file size was 10Mb reduced to 3Mb after basic processing in Photoshop.

101-41 by paul marsh, on Flickr

101-41 mod by paul marsh, on Flickr

[Tanker Ray]

Hi Aircharter,

I recommend you persevere with Plustek 8200. I've had mine about a year and have been very pleased with the results. It does take a bit of trial and error to get it to your taste, and note that Kodachrome slides have a different scanning setting to other types. For the money I think the Plustek is the best scanner currently on the market and I've previously used the Minolta Dimage and Canon Canoscan 9000F. Together with Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 for post processing, I'm getting quite pleasing results, an example of which is this 48 year old slide beneath.

KC97-1a_edited-3 by Mark Young, on Flickr

Mark