Nikon, Minolta and Plustek scanners on eBay? Or send my stuff to a lab?
 

I know I have posted something similar to this not too long ago, but half way through the thread I was asked how many or how much material I have, & I never got a response, the thread was sort of left hanging. If I take this on, it is going to cost me in time & money, & since there are experts here, I don't want to make a bad buy off ebay, or waste time & money on something that is not right. I have read the ICE thread, & the Epsons V300 & 600 have been mentioned, but I already have a flatbed, the Epson perfection 4490, I dont know if cramming another flatbed on my small crowded desk is the answer either. I will get it the V300 or 600 if they are as good as a dedicated slide & negative scanner, they are cheaper.

I have about 2 large notebooks (about 70+ rolls of 24 & 36 frame rolls) full of 35mm negatives, & 1 full of slides; (about 20 rolls of 24 & 36 frames). I also have a few other type of film strips, that is similar to 35mm, but are very skinny. I would like to digitize these, and am finding the dedicated scanners quite expensive.

It seems from what I have read, that the dedicated ones are the best, & if I am going to take on this job myself, I am willing to spend a bit to get good results. I don't want to use something sub par, I would prefer to only scan all this one time.

I would like to keep it under $1,200, & even less if possible.

I have seen alot of Nikon slide scanners on ebay, with 4000 dpi, & 48 bit, but most are very expensive,

Then there are some Nikons that are rated at 2900 x 2900 dpi, 14 bit that are about half as much. Would one of these work?

I would like my scans to be of a resolution that I could get decent 8 x 10 inch or bigger prints from. I will probably view most of my images on a screen, but it would be nice to know I could do a print, & for file sizes, I could always downsize, but I cannot or it would be hard to rescan for better resolutions.

Some of my slides I am scanning are slide shots of my artwork, I want to have reproduction quality scans of my art. So I would need to know what would be a good resolution, bit depth, & color space to use for my art slides. I also do this if one of my artworks leaves my possession, & I cannot get it back, I would want a good images of it.

I also see what looks like to be a newer type of scanner called Plustek, are these good scanners? they are not as much as the Nikons. I have also read about the Minolta elite, but there seems to reviews saying that the slide or negative feeder mechanism jams.

Then there is the option of just sending my content to a photo lab, but they seem to be expensive for just 4 x 6 inch print quality scans, & if that is the case, maybe doing it myself is better, but I do have alot of material.

There is no rush in this project, since there is so much, if I do this myself, what I would do is 1st, go through, & pick out are what I feel are my better rolls of film, & do those 1st, & if I do not get to all of it that is ok.

A good scanning service will give you output suitable for 8x10 sized prints, preferably as TIFF. Many of them have the dedicated Nikon slide/negative scanners, so quality shouldn't be an issue. Storage space is so cheap nowadays that having big TIFF files is no longer an issue.

Thanks for the reply, I take from the brief mention of labs that is the opinion that I should send my material to a lab.

What resolutions should I pick? or is there a good general resolution to pick? These would be scans from slides of my artwork as well as from slides of other content.