Digitising sailing slides shot on my old canon AE1 -advice sought

dylanwinter

dylanwinter

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www.keepturningleft.co.uk
back in the day anyone who took pictures at all seriously captured them on Kodachrome or the Ilford equivalent

My weapon of choice was an AE1 with a telephoto lens

I have boxes of slides of sailing boats taken during the late 70's and early 80's

Some of them were good enough to sell to sailing magazines

most are rubbish

It is time I didgitised them. Last year I bought a maplins digitiser and it was truly awful

- they came out soupy and horrible

How much do I have to spend in order to capture them in focus and at maybe 4,000 x 3,000 pixels ?

One that just quietly works through a stack of slides all by itself would be wonderful

Does anyone have first hand experience of such devices

amazon links gratefully followed up


Dylan
 
The alternative is to pick out the best and send them away to a digitising company. I did this around 2-3 years ago - can't remember the cost but it was per slide and the results were very good. Just Google to find companies - ours was a one-person operation near/in Holmfirth, Yorks.
 
reeac said:
The alternative is to pick out the best and send them away to a digitising company. I did this around 2-3 years ago - can't remember the cost but it was per slide and the results were very good. Just Google to find companies - ours was a one-person operation near/in Holmfirth, Yorks.
Click to expand...



The trouble is that there thousands of them and I can edit and crop them on the computer
 
I displayed mine on a screen and took a digital pic with the camera on a tripod. Much better than any domestic digitiser, that i have tried and probably as fast.
 
I used my Agfa e50 Snapscan scanner to scan dozens of slides. A4, 2400dpi as I recall. 1200dpi gives a much faster scan. No longer available, but frequently available on eBay. It came with a plastic carrier, to contain 6 slides at time. Slides are backlit with light and diffuser in the lid.

The quality is very good. A problem inherent in scanning slides is that they're a lot smaller than prints, so dust and scratches are relatively bigger. A lot of work with Photoshop was required. It'll also scan negatives, with the supplied holder. Making them positive is simple in Photoshop.

If buying second hand, make sure the slide and negative carriers are included.
 
As you are wanting to sell the images they have to be as good as you can get. Nikon Coolscan is the route.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Nikon-Coo...1265156572?pt=UK_Scanners&hash=item19e7eb8ddc
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Nikon-Coo...ilm-Scanner-/221359544530?hash=item338a0e98d2

Better but, Ouch!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nikon-Super-Coolscan-5000-ED/dp/B0001JZNR0

If you want the DBs try to find an Imacon Flextight secondhand.

For what you are doing don't even consider a flatbed scanner, however wonderful they are supposed to be.
 
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Lakesailor said:
As you are wanting to sell the images they have to be as good as you can get. Nikon Coolscan is the route.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Nikon-Coo...1265156572?pt=UK_Scanners&hash=item19e7eb8ddc
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Nikon-Coo...ilm-Scanner-/221359544530?hash=item338a0e98d2

Better but, Ouch!
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Nikon-Super-Coolscan-5000-ED/dp/B0001JZNR0

If you want the DBs try to find an Imacon Flextight secondhand.

For what you are doing don't even consider a flatbed scanner, however wonderful they are supposed to be.
Click to expand...

I am assuming that aldi is no better than maplins

but I might be wrong

the coolscan completed listings show prices of between £500 and £700

http://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_f...Nikon+CoolScan+V+ED+Photo&LH_Complete=1&rt=nc


all other suggestions gratefully considered and investigated
 
alahol2 said:
Aldi had one recently... https://www.aldi.co.uk/en/specialbuys/hurry-while-stocks-last/hurry-while-stocks-last-product-detail-page/ps/p/multi-scanner/
Not quite the resolution you're after.
Click to expand...
I bought one of those last year, in fact there was a thread about it to which I contributed. Dylan did too, he was asking if it was any good. It is here :
http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?353806-Aldi-film-and-transparency-scanner

You are right, not perfect, but not bad for the price.
 
Realise assets

Barnac1e said:
I bought one of those last year, in fact there was a thread about it to which I contributed. Dylan did too, he was asking if it was any good. It is here :
http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?353806-Aldi-film-and-transparency-scanner

You are right, not perfect, but not bad for the price.
Click to expand...

I think that if I need to capture them as they are and if I am to sell them off or use them then I am probably going to have to go above Aldi

but with any luck there might be something below £700

I can always buy the coolscan and sell it again once I have finished with it

after all I will never need it again

D
 
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View attachment 39370My son did ours on a basic scanner, but then he is very good with Photoshop at correcting any colour balance/ exposure issues or dirt & scratches. It is also quite time consuming he tells me.

I know this is a low res version, but the pic was taken on a Boots Bierette 35mm compact using Agfa stock some 40 years ago. I am very pleased with the digitised result. Incidentally, this is not a tender, it is a small open boat we used to cross Bardsey Sound on our first "pilgrimage" to Bardsey.
 
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Searush said:
My son did ours on a basic scanner, but then he is very good with Photoshop at correcting any colour balance/ exposure issues or dirt & scratches. It is also quite time consuming he tells me.
Click to expand...

he must really love his dad

I can work on them on the laptop on the boat once I have captured them

but I would like the capturing process to be fairly labour free

D
 
If you have really good images a top scanner will provide produce very good results.
If the pics are so-so the scanner may give you the option to enhance them.
If the scanner is poo the good images will be degraded. The so-so images will be absolute naff.

Nikon come with excellent software to help you enhance the images, after doing the deed you will be able to stick it back on e-bay are regain some of your money.

The cheap scanners won't allow 4000x2700 resolution. They may be able to do it using interpolation but Photoshop and other software like Genuine Fractals would do that operation better.

If you are wanting to sell the images there is no choice. You need a top quality scanner.
 
Lakesailor said:
If you have really good images a top scanner will provide produce very good results.
If the pics are so-so the scanner may give you the option to enhance them.
If the scanner is poo the good images will be degraded. The so-so images will be absolute naff.

Nikon come with excellent software to help you enhance the images, after doing the deed you will be able to stick it back on e-bay are regain some of your money.

The cheap scanners won't allow 4000x2700 resolution. They may be able to do it using interpolation but Photoshop and other software like Genuine Fractals would do that operation better.

If you are wanting to sell the images there is no choice. You need a top quality scanner.
Click to expand...

Righto

£500/600/700 it is then

does anyone want to form a syndicate

D
 
dylanwinter said:
back in the day anyone who took pictures at all seriously captured them on Kodachrome or the Ilford equivalent

My weapon of choice was an AE1 with a telephoto lens

I have boxes of slides of sailing boats taken during the late 70's and early 80's

Some of them were good enough to sell to sailing magazines

most are rubbish

It is time I didgitised them. Last year I bought a maplins digitiser and it was truly awful

- they came out soupy and horrible

How much do I have to spend in order to capture them in focus and at maybe 4,000 x 3,000 pixels ?

One that just quietly works through a stack of slides all by itself would be wonderful

Does anyone have first hand experience of such devices

amazon links gratefully followed up


Dylan
Click to expand...

About 6 years ago I bought a 2nd hand Nikon film and slide scanner with a slide autochanger that holds about 50 slides at a go. It was already old but the optics were good. The scanner required a SCSI port, so I also bought a cheap one of those for a desktop PC (which is what I had a the time). The autochanger worked well and the Nikon scan quality was good. The only problem I had was that the scanner focus mechanism struck from time to time and needed freeing.

My initial plan was to scan at a resolution to give me 300 dpi if I blew the slides up to fit on an A4 page (about 2500 dpi at 35mm) but I quickly realised that scanning all my slides at that resolution would take a very long time. So I chose a resolution that would look OK on a large monitor but scan in a reasonable time. I reasoned that I could rescan the small number of slides that I might want at the higher resolution on an ad-hoc basis. A few years previously I had indexed all of my slides and chucked the really bad ones out, so it is easy to find a specific slide.

You might be able to make a sort of "contact print" scan by placing the slides on a cheap A4 flatbed scanner and invest in a good slide scanner without an autochanger if you only need to do a few at higher resolution and with good optics.

It took me a couple of months to scan 3000 slides. My work is largely done at the desk and on the PC, so I scanned the slides in batches and kept an eye out for jams (inevitable with damaged card mounts) while I worked.
 
Dylan.

If you want to do a joint purchase on the Nikon, I'm up for it. We use it and then resell.

I've been toying with scanning 4-5,000 negatives for years, as Lakey and P'dog probably remember. Yesterday I nearly gave in and started scanning prints. Luckily prevarication reared it's head.
 
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