Flatbed Scanners-Educate me a bit, please!

[njtaco]

I'll cut to the chase... My Mom gave me pictures on Christmas that date back 45 years. Some are from Polaroids, some 110, some 35mm, and I have some negatives and loads of slides.

I figure I am eventually going to end up scanning between 1500 and 2000 of the above so the family can all share the files on our computers. I hope to scan and organize everything into folders, and give each family member an SD card with all the files. I may use Picassa or something to tune up some of the photos too.

However...I am on a tight budget, and don't have a working scanner. I see all kinds ranging from $50 to $500, using various technology (different image sensors and resolution mainly). I'd like to stay in the neighborhood of $100 to $150, including shipping if I can.

I'm open to suggestions here, and would appreciate any commentary on what has worked for you, as well as what the pros and cons of the different sensors are. Also how many scans can I expect before it "wears out" and what resolution should I be buying. I'm not printing posters here...though I may have images enlarged up to 8x10s to frame.

I do NOT need an all-in-one printer, so I am ruling those out of the running for now.

I'm a fan of Newegg usually, and NOT a fan of Best Buy, Target or Walmart, so if there is a deal you know of, fire away! I also have Staples, Costco, and the other usual Big Box stores in my area.

Thanks for the help...

 

[JackW]

I just bought a Canon 9000F flatbed scanner from B&H Photo - $174 with free shipping. Much better than my previous Hewlett Packard flatbed and it scans slides at 9600dpi. All flatbed scanners are somewhat slow when scanning film or negatives but this one does a good job (and a great job on prints). I'm thinking of upgrading to Silverfast scanning software - it's very highly rated and is included with the Canon scanners in Europe. The software that comes with the US model Canon scanners is pretty good though - just not as good as Silverfast.

Scanner reviews here:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN1.HTM

The Epson scanners are highly rated as well but the software that comes with them is not as good - some reviews say its a little balky and hard to manipulate.

I scanned this old black & white print last night of a friend of mine autocrossing his Porsche 550A Spyder back in the 1970's - had to do a lot of repair work to it but I really like my Canon scanner. It's the best scanner I've used and does a good job when you've got several prints laid out in the scan area at once - something that seemed to confuse my HP.

 

[DrMoab]

Don't know how much money you and your family has but for that many, it might be worth looking into a company like www.scancafe.com.

Seems like they charge about $.30 an image which can add up fast but you have to ask yourself how much your time is worth. 1500-2000 is a ton of time.

 

[cwsqbm]

Having done the same, I'd pay a photo store to scan them for me. It takes a long time to scan that many photos and slides.

That said, my $50 scanner did just fine with the 1000+ pictures I've scanned on it.

 

[njtaco]

I thought about having a "service" scan the images, but I wanted to sit and review, tag, and comment on them at the same time.

I'm sort of reliving some memories at the same time too. When I look at so many of these images I have "Hey, I forgot about that!" moments. I will miss out on that if I let someone else scan and organize them.

It isn't like I'm in a rush either...if it takes a year to do, so be it. Heck, it will probably take two years or more!

 

[ducktapeguy]

I've been pretty happy with my Epson V500. I paid <$200 a few years ago, you could probably get it even cheaper now. The main reason I chose the epson was for the Digital ICE (Image correction and enhancement). It automatically removes the dust and scratches from the negatives, which will save you a lot of time in post processing. No matter how much I try and clean the negatives I couldn't get them dust free, and a the older (40+ years) negatives had some scratches.

I've used it for 35mm and 120mm, it does a few other film formats but I haven't tried it. It takes about 5-7 minutes per frame for 35mm, maybe about half that if you turn off ICE. I can scan 2 strips of up to 6 pics at a time, so you can load it up, let it run for an hour, then come back. The max resolution is 6400dpi, but I settled on scanning somewhere around 3500-4000dpi because the added resolution wasn't noticable on old family pictures, plus it took much, much longer and the uncompressed file sizes were topping 100MB.

I've scanned about 4000 pics so far doing it on and off in the last 3 years, it does take a lot of time but if you can setup a clean corner of an office then you can just let it run. if you're doing a lot of negatives, I'd recommend either a lot of canned air or setup an air compressor nearby to blow off dust, and a backlight to make it easier to view the negatives. And buy a 1TB hard drive to backup all the pictures. I kind wish I bought the V7000 just because it could scan more negatives at one time.

 

[off-roader]

I purchased an Epsom v300 photo for $99 earlier this year. 4800 dpi native resolution, came with photo editing software, etc. (although I used Photoshop). It came with a slide scanner, has the ability to open flat so you can scan books (I scanned my parents bound wedding album), a transparency/negative holder, etc.

I was very pleased with it's abilities and my results.

One thing I came to find out is that it will out-scan most printing processes so don't worry about every single 'artifact' you see after the scans. Especially when you can see them on the screen. I found I was literally over correcting these artifacts when in fact they didn't show up on any of the full sized 8x10 prints I made (>50).

 

[njtaco]

I purchased an Epsom v300 photo for $99 earlier this year.

The V300 is one I had been considering, so I just ordered one from B&H for $99 shipped, no tax.

Thanks for the input everyone!

 

[AchillesBogart]

I have an older Epson scanner that I'm very happy with.

Are most of your negatives 35mm? I have scanned some old negatives 4x5, glass plates, etc. and having a large film scanning area can come in very handy for uncommon sizes. You can do more than one strip of 35mm film at once which is really nice. Though they do cost a little more.