Slide Scanner

[Headance99]

Any recommendations on best slide scanner - circa £100 new or 2nd hand.

Happy to load one at time but need advice on speed, quality etc.

[Archer]

At that price point, it will be difficult to get a good one. A lot of the cheap ones are no more than small digicams in a housing that allows loading of slides or negatives. I have used Plustek scanners for several years now and would recommend looking for a 2nd hand one from the 7400 up. I have used the OpticFilm 7400 model and together with SilverFast software it can get more out of a 35mm slide or negative than my crappy cameras ever stored in the emulsion (I scan at 2400 ppi and that gets me an approximately 6 MP image file). Keep in mind that you will most likely need to pay for a newer version of SilverFast as well... if you buy an older 2nd hand one you should find an included SilverFast licence but it may be for an old version that may not run (well) on newer systems. Just my two cents.

Edited to add: it is not a quick process, it takes a 1-2 minutes per frame to prescan, tweak settings, scan and store. At the settings I mentioned earlier I cannot get more resolution from my negatives and slides, the scanner delivers up to 3000-3300 ppi and at those numbers you're looking at the film grain for most negatives. Slides may be better, but how large do you need the scans to be?

[xkekeith]

Scanner economics - bought an good quality second hand multi scanner, scanned 10,000 plus K64 slides and then sold the scanner for the same price I paid for it …….. Cost per scanned slide zero !