best scanner for transparencies??

M
Posted By
maya
Sep 12, 2008
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429
Replies
2
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Closed
hi,

I know that scanning transparencies is a bit tricky.. a few years ago I had some 35mm transparencies scanned, they had been shot in very high-quality film (Kodachrome 64) with a professional camera, yet they came out AWFUL.. VERY high contrast.. I asked around (in this same group maybe) why this is, and it was explained to me it’s very hard to get transparencies to scan properly.. that you can never capture tonal depth in transparency, etc.. I’m hoping this has improved by now.. does this one look like a good one?
http://www.jr.com/v500-photo-scanner/pe/EPS_V500PHOTO/

if not, what would you recommend? ideally I would like to purchase a scanner that is flat-bed but can also scan transparencies properly, if possible.. thank you very much…

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SC
Steve Chesney
Sep 18, 2008
I use a predecessor to the product you name below (Epson 4870).

I’m scanning 30+ years of family color slides (in various brands of film, including Kodachrome) and now that I have learned a few things — I’m pretty happy with the results after doing a thousand or so.

DISCLAIMER — my goals do not include producing 11×14 prints for juried art shows. I’ve been please by the quality of 8×10 prints, slide shows and web pages from the results. I use a filing scheme cross-referenced against tags in Photoshop Elements organizer so that if I ever want to, I can find a slide and have a better quality scan made. So far, I’ve not bothered.

All slides require manual tweaking in the histogram. Kodachrome more than others. But the pattern is pretty similar from slide to slide — I can tweak a slide in about a minute. www.scantips.com has a great write-up on how to do this. Of course, you can do more in Photoshop or whatever, but it saves a lot of time to do it in the scanner driver display before the file is written.

I’ve found the same basic steps work fine for color and black and white negatives too. Color negatives are a bit easier to tweak by histogram than slides but not much.

Of course, your mileage may vary.

"maya" wrote in message
hi,

I know that scanning transparencies is a bit tricky.. a few years ago I had some 35mm transparencies scanned, they had been shot in very high-quality film (Kodachrome 64) with a professional camera, yet they came out AWFUL.. VERY high contrast.. I asked around (in this same group maybe) why this is, and it was explained to me it’s very hard to get transparencies to scan properly.. that you can never capture tonal depth in transparency, etc.. I’m hoping this has improved by now.. does this one look like a good one?
http://www.jr.com/v500-photo-scanner/pe/EPS_V500PHOTO/

if not, what would you recommend? ideally I would like to purchase a scanner that is flat-bed but can also scan transparencies properly, if possible.. thank you very much…

S
SDA
Sep 22, 2008
On 2008-09-12, maya wrote:
hi,

I know that scanning transparencies is a bit tricky.. a few years ago I had some 35mm transparencies scanned, they had been shot in very high-quality film (Kodachrome 64) with a professional camera, yet they came out AWFUL.. VERY high contrast.. I asked around (in this same group maybe) why this is, and it was explained to me it’s very hard to get transparencies to scan properly.. that you can never capture tonal depth in transparency, etc.. I’m hoping this has improved by now.. does this one look like a good one?
http://www.jr.com/v500-photo-scanner/pe/EPS_V500PHOTO/

if not, what would you recommend? ideally I would like to purchase a scanner that is flat-bed but can also scan transparencies properly, if possible.. thank you very much…

For transparencies the best are drum scanners, where one mounts the trannie on top of oil, under mylar. There are flatbeds that do a pretty decent job; generally anything by Canon or Minolta are good bets.

How to Master Sharpening in Photoshop

Give your photos a professional finish with sharpening in Photoshop. Learn to enhance details, create contrast, and prepare your images for print, web, and social media.

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