The one that comes to mind…lower priced the ‘ Visioneer ‘ brands. I think there is a ‘One touch’ model that does slides and negs.
For slides and negatives, the Minolta Dimage decided slide and transparency scanner is a favorite of several people on the forum. I think ‘IV’ is the current model, but you could probably get one of the earlier ones – either II or III – on eBay for a budget price. Costco has had Primefilm scanners available for about $100, but I haven’t heard anything good about them yet, just mediocre or poor reviews to date.
You’ll probably have to decide on how you define "budget solution" and go from there. There are gadgets that attach to some cameras, too, but they’d be very slow since there’s a lot of fiddling to get one slide digitized. You’ll want to get a feel for how many slides and negatives you have to scan and balance how much your time is worth. I have an older HP S20 slide scanner that’s obsolete, but it still does nice scans, but at a lower resolution than newer ones.
Christer,
How many slides/negatives are you planning to scan? I bought an Epson flatbed with a built in slide/film adapter and it does a good job quality-wise. After scanning in literally hundreds of slides, however, if I had to do it all over again I’d get me one of those Minolta Dimage dedicated slide scanners that Beth mentioned.
Joe
If you have a Nikon Coolpix 990 or 950, I know of a great way to ‘digitize’ your slides. Not too many people have these cameras any more, but if you do, let me know here, and I will give you the info.
Jane
If you are doing only a few color slides now and then, you can use your digital camera and get excellent quality – better than a flatbed scanner with 35 mm slide capability. I have an Epson 3170 which does great color and B&w photo scans and medium format B&W negatives. The slide scans are just OK. I found a filter holder for my camera on the internet, bought a set of closeup lenses that add up to 7X, and use a light box for a light source. Lay the cleaned slide on the light box, put the camera on a copy stand or tripod to stabilize it at the proper distance, fill the frame with the image and slight border from the mount, and snap the shutter. Instant reproduction. No waiting for the scanner. Of course, if you are doing large numbers of slides, forget the "budget" solution and find a good used dedicated film and slide scanner. If you want to try the camera approach email me for more tips.
Color negatives are another story. You would do best with a scanner with color reversing software that is calibrated for eliminating the orange mask and giving truer color scans. I haven’t tried silverfast software with the new stand-alone startup routine. From what I read on their web site it should take a color negative scan or digitized negative image and reverse it with adjustment for the orange mask.
Go for the Minolta DiMAGE Dual Scan as Beth mentioned. I use the II which is great, but, as she said, IV is the current model and it is much better than the II or III.
