Archival photo scanning of slides/negatives with Epson V300/V600?
 

I posted some while back about scanning my slides & negatives myself versus sending them in somewhere to be done. This was before I had my own computer, monitor, & Photoshop, now I do. Now that I have some of my own equipment, would like some advice.

I currently have a mac mini with a 20 inch apple cinema display. I have Photoshop CS6, although my monitor and scanner are not calibrated, at least I have not done that for all my scans of album art & sketches, so far I just scanned & then after I just did some auto adjustments of color & contrast in Photoshop. I don't know how this would work with scanning negatives or slides.

I also have about 2 large nylon zippered notebooks full of negatives of various sizes, mostly 35mm, & some older ones.

I also have notebooks full of mounted 35mm slides.

I have an Epson perfection photo 4490, but have seen a lot of references to the Epson V300 & V600 flatbeds for slide & negative scanning.

I am not a pro by any means, but I want to archive my content into digital formats for easier viewing for today, & more compact storage & archiving, for small safety deposit boxes, etc, large bulky notebooks are a bit too much.

I would like to get a good digital copy, of my slides & negatives. Where the quality is good enough to make at least 8 x 10 or little bigger prints if I had to.

Should I get a dedicated slide & negative scanner? or would one of the above mentioned Epson's work?

Is this a job I can or should do myself? or would I be best to send my material to some kind of lab to have it done?

I am also looking to keep my budget down, cant afford thousands on equipment, and also looking for something that is easy to use, & not too time consuming to do a scan.

For slides, the Epson V600 is excellent. For negatives, it's mediocre.
Negative scanners are the best for negatives -- but it varies for slide quality. Just the nature of the beast, I'm afraid. That why I have both.
How many slides do you have?

I have about 300+ or more, maybe about 10 rolls of 36 frame slides, & have many more negatives, don't know exactly, about 50 + or more rolls of 24 & 36 frame 35mm negatives.

I have kept these in zippered 3 ring notebooks, slides & negatives are in pages for slides & negatives.

I looked at another thread in this section, & Plustek scanners were suggested.

I have also been cruising ebay looking at Nikon slide & negative scanners, as well as the plustek slide & negative scanners.

The Nikon ones are expensive, & they do not seem to be compatible with modern oses on mac or windows, some connected through SCSI, I would need at least USB.

The plustek ones seem to be a little less expensive & more compatible with modern oses.

Plustek has the i varieties, which have infrared dust removal, and cost much more, than the ones without.

It seems for this job a dedicated unit would be best, as I want to do this one time if possible, & not have to go back & rescan.

I would like to keep the cost for a unit under $600.00

what settings would be best? alot of these say 7200 dpi, that is alot, I would like the scans to be print quality, to be able to make at least 8 x 10 inch prints or a bit bigger.

The Nikon V was USB2, and that's what you want for the negatives, for Mac OS X or Windows -- not the older SCSI models. Plustek is fine, but still not Nikkor quality glass. That's what you're paying for -- better glass. And when you're scanning tiny images, that's what matters. That's why flatbeds and lower-grade scanners are mediocre (at best!) with negatives. Nikon also has the ICE to remove dirt, dust and debris from images.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...R4EXQSENCVBNOF

Yes, it's not cheap. Buy it, use it, resell it. They don't really make good negative scanners anymore, so these will no lose value. They have not in the past 10 years! Note that I currently see used ones there in the $600 range. Back in the 2000s, that was actually the new price! Yes, prices for the unit went up!

The ICE is why you also want the Epson V600 (or V500), not the without-ICE V300.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...GKFU5UP554CI5B
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...37QFMN6K3NNDRJ

Epson is really good at slide scanning -- better than both Nikon and Canon ever were. One of these is only $200 or so.

Minolta was also good at slides, but costs more.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...NJBH2KANIXVN7X

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