FILM SCANNERS

(Transferring Negative and Slide Film to Your Computer)

byTed Peterson
Almost every person has a number of slides or negatives they would like to place on their computers, both black/white and color. Maybe they would like to protect them so if they lose them they would have a copy or, maybe save them from fading out. Most film will go bad in time. Maybe the person would like to change the tint, make it brighter, take out something (like a pole behind the person's head) or add something to the picture.
After the pictures are on the computer the maker can then record them on a CD and have a backup copy. If they would like a new slide the person could copy the picture from their CD onto a Zip disk and have a new slide made for under $4.00.
Scanning film works different then scanning printed pictures. When you scan a printed picture you would use a flatbed scanner and as the light is below it will work like a copy machine. When you scan a piece of film you must have the light going through the film and then the scanner will scan the projected picture. Because of this most flatbed scanners will not work.
There are 2 different ways to scan a film picture into the computer. The first one never worked out good and is not being used at the present time. How it worked is that some flatbed scanners, inclosed an item with the scanners that the maker could place the slide or negative film in and the item would project a light through the film onto the flatbed scanner. Most of the time the printed picture was so bad you could only make a picture up to about 3X5 inch. At this time I do not know of any flatbed scanners doing this. The trouble was the timing it took the below camera light to travel across the film.
The 2nd way is the one that most people are using. These are stand alone film scanners that you insert the slide or negative into and the scanner will scan the pictures. These scanners will cost a lot more then flatbed scanners. A good flatbed scanner will cost from $39.00 to about $129.00. Film scanners will start at $299.99, or about 10 times and up.
We will talk about some of the lower price ones. I have 2 of them. The schools are buying the Polaroid, but it is the one that cost the most for the amateur, around $1,200.00. The next one down is the Minolta Quick Scan 35 for around $750.00. Then the new model Minolta that sells for about $600.00 (I do not have any information on this one.) There is one that has been made and you might find for sale called Microtek for about $600.00. One of the lowest price one is the Hewlett Packard one for sale for $499.99, and there is one by Cannon for the same price. There are some one that cost less. Ron Mayer has one by Pacific Image that sells for about $200.00. (it is OK for pictures up that you make up to 5 X 7 as it only have a resulation of 1800.) There are 3 more for sale but they are out of the amateur photographers price range going from $1,900.00 to $3,999.00. I have the Minolta Quick Scan and the Hewlett Packard. I am using the Hewlett Packard model most of the time.
The main item you look for when you are looking at film scammers is the resolution. You need one with as high a number as you can. The Microtek has a resolution of 1950, the Hewlett Packard has 2400, the Quick Scan has 2820, and the Polaroid has 2850.
These scanners can be adjusted to scan at the higest point or at a point lower. When you have Kodak or some other lab make a CD disk the 35mm pictures will each take 8.0 meg of disk space (or about 1800 res.). This is about the rate that the Mictotek takes. The Minolta Quick Scan and Polaroid will use 32 meg at full resolution but most of the time you will not use this as this will take a lot of space (18 pictures on a CD). When you get the 8 meg picture CD back they can have up to about 80 on them. The Hewlett Packard that I use will take 17.8 meg for slides and 19 meg for megative.(color). If you are scanning B/W you can have a large number. If you want to you can cut down the resolution and the scan will take less space.
Another thing that you may want to check on is the time it takes to scan a picture. The Hewlett Packard will take 1.48 min.a slide (about 33 an hour). The Polaroid will take about 2 1/2 minutes a picture and the Minolta Quick Scan will take about 5 minutes each. If you are going to take a large number of scans the time can be a problem. I had 960 slides to scan one week and by using the Hewlett Packard I got it done quick.
If you have slides or negatives other then 35mm you need to make some adjustments to the above. The Minolta has came out with a large industrial scanner that will take all from 16mm to to 6X9, (120/220/, 6x 4.5, 6X6, 6X7, 6X9, 17.28mm, 16mm, and Microscope 56,16mm). They have holders for them all. The cost is $2,500 with a dpi of 2,850 resolutions.
After you have the pictures on your computer you will want to correct them and then output them to a printer or to a lab to have a slide or negative made. See other article about doing this.
I hope that this clear up how to transfer images from your films to your computer. Good Luck
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