[tonbo0422]

A relative of mine has possibly hundreds of slides that they want me to scan. They'd pay for the scanner.

Does anyone know anything about slide scanners for the Mac? I have a G4 350 with tons of RAM and lots of HD space. I think I read somewhere that SCSI is much faster than USB for this type of stuff, and I do have a KeySpan SCSI adapter.

Any suggestions? The optimum would be a high-quality scanner with the capability of doing 5 or 6 slides at once.

Yes, I know about commercial places that do scanning services, but I'd rather spend the money and do it myself.

[Captain Obvious]

I used a Nikon one a while back with Photoshop 5.5. It was a single slide scanner and was SCSI. It worked well and fast but if you want i can get you the model number I can get it to you next week.

[tonbo0422]

Thanks, skipper, but doing one slide at a time would obviously take a mighty long time . . . still, it might have a multi-slide tray attachment.

[meetingpeopleiseasy]

Go for the Polaroid, it's about 700 now, and scans multiple slides at once. I got it at work and it seems to work pretty fine.

[tonbo0422]

Do you have the model number? Is it USB or SCSI?

Tnaks,

Nick

[Eric E.]

Tonbo... Go with a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000, which hooks up with Firewire (comparable with SCSI, and much faster with USB - it even comes with its own Firewire PCI adapter). It's fairly high res at 4000 dpi, and you can also purchase an optional 50 slide feeder. The only drawback is its price, which will be around $2100 with the slide feeder.

Take note, I'm not in Nikon's payroll. Just simply a Nikon SLR fan for years. I also read in an issue of Popular Photography a few months back about a comparison in slide/film scanners, and the Coolscan was the best overall in 35mm. I have plans of purchasing the Coolscan sometime next year, budget permitting.

Eric

[tonbo0422]

Eric,

Yes, I was already looking at the Coolscan--but not necessarily that model. $2100 is just a bit too much for "hobby" purposes. I could see it if I were going to use it for business, though.

But definitely, with all the Coolscan models out there, one of them will be my choice.

Thanks!

Nick

[3gg3]

While on the subject, can someone tell me if these high end scanners work with mounted slides? I just had a bad experience with an Epson 1650 Photo that didn't seem be able to acquire an image from mounted slides - and ALMOST ALL my slides are cardboard mounted.

[Eric E.]

egg3... I know that the Nikon & Polaroid film scanners accept mounted slides, as well as film strips & APS (you need an optional adapter for the Nikon), but I'm not quite sure about the ones from Olympus & Canon. Just check out the companies' respective web pages, or get a copy of the latest Popular Photography Magazine, which has lots of ads in its back pages, a few of which has details on these film scanners.

Eric

[emdash]

I can vouch for the Nikon Super Coolscan 4000. It is, indeed, supercool. :-) I got mine a week or two ago, and in my experience it's been relatively simple to use, and mind-bogglingly powerful at the same time.

If your slides are old, the "Digital ROC" feature of the Nikon 4000 may be of interest. It's some sort of magical processing that restores the original color of faded slides/negatives. There's some pretty amazing examples of this on steve's digicams.

Since I'm using it for new, non-faded 35mm negatives, I don't use ROC.... But the other two "Digital Ice Cubed" features are pretty stunning. "Digital ICE" (Image Correction and Enhancement) automatically removes scratches, dust, and other glitches, and "Digital GEM" (Grain Elimination and Management, or some such) removes artifacts due to film grain.

Truly an impressive machine. Check it out. I'm no more than a hobbyist myself (as far as photography goes), but this was so compelling that I had to dig into the wallet and make the purchase.

(I got a good price through provantage.com , incidentally -- I mention it because this vendor didn't show up on the usual comparison shopping sites.)

[3gg3]

Originally posted by Eric E.:
<STRONG>... or get a copy of the latest Popular Photography Magazine...

Eric</STRONG>

Thanks, Eric. Just happens, yesterday I picked up a copy of PhotoLife, a Cdn mag. Lo and behold, a review of the Nikon 4000 and the CanoScan FS4000! Overleaf was an ad for the Kodak RFS3600. (I've just noticed that this is in a special Digital Imaging supplement)

What struck me were the very large image sizes, long scan/transfer times and the PRICES. In Cdn $, the Coolscan is $2400, the CanoScan $1200. Ouch!!

Guess I've lost a lot of motivation for archiving my slide collection on my HD, or even Zip discs. (Tho' I note Steves Digicams 125K images look pretty good).

[tonbo0422]

3gg3,

I'm also in Canada (Montreal) and basically want to do the same thing you want to do. For my puposes I think anything over $600 USD would be overkill, but I'm definitely going to get a scanner in the next month or so, so will keep you apprised of how it goes from a Canadian perspective.

BTW, have you looked on EBay? That's where I'm looking at the moment. Do a search for "Coolscan" and a whole bunch come up.

[davidflas]

I can vouch for the Nikon Super Coolscan LS-2000. I've had one for a couple of years and I love it. It has a 2700dpi optical resolution and is pretty fast. I has most of the features of the new models and you could probably get one on ebay for $1000USD or less. I have mine connected to my G4/466 via a Initio Miles Bluenote scsi card and it works flawlessly. I'm also a lifelong fan of Nikon SLR's from the EM I got in 1985 to the F100 that I shoot now. Hope that helps you.

[nana2]

You generally pay more money for better dynamic range (shadow detail).