Matthew Newton, Feb 08, 2012; 03:31 p.m.
I haven't been on the boards in almost a year and I certainly haven't been paying attention to the world of scanners at all, but are there any decent new ones out there? I have an Epson 4490 right now for my scanning duties. However, my issues are two fold.
Scanning is slow(ish) as it takes a good 2hrs to scan a full roll of 36 with quick ICE turned on between scan time, reloading, etc. I am hoping maybe there is something a bit faster (under an hour for a roll of 36 would be really, really nice).
Next is resolution and dMax. The resolution is okay, but I'd wager at 3200dpi the effective resolution is probably only around 2200-2400dpi. I am just wondering if there is something that could up that game a little. I don't need 4000dpi of real resolution, but something pushing closer to 3000dpi would be nice. Also a higher dMax would be nice (I think the 4490 is rated at 3.4).
Any thoughts? Sadly my price range isn't much over $200 at the moment. I am guessing I am just SOL looking for something with higher resolution, faster scan speeds and better dMax at ~$200, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to ask. Thanks.
Marc Bergman 
, Feb 08, 2012; 07:41 p.m.
Matthew,
I still have my Epson 4490 scanner. I don't think the Epson 500 or 600 models would give you any more resolution. They all seem to top out at about 1800ppi. The next step up is the 700 and 750 models but I haven't seen any test of them going up over 2400ppi. You may get a higher dMax out of the newer models.
In terms of scanning speed I would look at a possible lack of computer memory when batch scanning. Scanning at 3200ppi x 36 images can severely tax your computer. How much memory do you have? Do you have other programs open? Your computer is probably having to write data to the hard drive.
To get 3000ppi and better dMax you are going to have to look at a dedicated slide scanner. Plustek is a company that still makes slide scanners. The big names have dropped out of the market.
Dan Ferrel , Feb 09, 2012; 12:03 p.m.
A dedicated 35mm scanner will give you better results, even if the specs say otherwise. A Nikon scanner is faster. I have an LS-2000 and it takes under 2 minutes for a single frame set to 2 passes with IR dust removal per frame of 35mm film. The speed lies in the fact that the Nikon scanner does the IR scan in the same pass as the RGB pass. I also have the film strip adapter, SA-20. With it you simply put the film in the mouth and the scanner sucks it in. If you have the software set to do so it just start scanning, then spits it out when done. Occasionally if the spacing of frames is off by enough you'll get cut off frames but that's easy enough to correct with a rescan. But the resolution from that 2700 dpi scanner is likely better than the Epson.
The Coolscan 5000 has a full roll adapter, but that's out of your price range.
Doug Fisher , Feb 09, 2012; 12:19 p.m.
>>Scanning is slow(ish) as it takes a good 2hrs to scan a full roll of 36 with quick ICE turned on between scan time, reloading, etc.<<
Before you buy a new scanner, the bottleneck could possibly be your computer more than the scanner. ICE takes lots of processing power and likes lots of RAM. What CPU, operating system and amount of RAM are you utilizing in your system.
>>I'd wager at 3200dpi the effective resolution is probably only around 2200-2400dpi<<
Yes, you should be able to get that, if not a little more, if your scanner is in good operating condition, no fog under the glass, the film is at the optimum film suspension height and it is being held flat in the holders.
A quality dedicated film scanner will be able to do better if you get a good one but I don't know how you are going to be able to do that within your budget, even used.
Victor Ho , Feb 09, 2012; 04:18 p.m.
Matt
At under $200 you really don't have any hardware solution. You might try turning off ICE or at least dialing down the settings. Try cleaning your film gently or at least blowing off the surface dust before scanning. Depending on the computer your scan time will also increase. I have been using a Nikon Coolscan 5000 with ICE setting on for ICE ROC and GEM but DEE turned off. Scan time is about 2-3 minutes a slide. Or, about 90 minutes for 30 slides. I have dedicated an older computer to do the work and use a slide feeder which allows me to work and infrequently make adjustments. On a faster computer, my scan time was under 2 minutes. There's always a tradeoff. Nikon stopped making scanners because everyone who needed one has one. There aren't going to be many people with thousands of slides who don't already have a scan solution. Good luck in your search.
Ian Gordon Bilson , Feb 09, 2012; 10:33 p.m.
The British Journal of Photography just reviewed the Reflecta MF 5000 - 35mm to 6x12cm.
1600 Euros + shipping from Germany.
Matthew Newton, Feb 10, 2012; 04:05 p.m.
Currently an E7500 Core 2 Duo running at 3.1ghz (slight overclock) and 4GB of memory. The only time I run out of RAM is if I do more than about 20-24 3200dpi scans and then it starts writing to the hard drive. I generally scan 16 negatives (4 film strips), do quick crops, edits and clean up and then save it all. Generally that only "adds" about 10 minutes in the middle of a roll of 36 (a roll of 24 I can generally get away with scanning the whole thing without running out of memory as I rarely scan every single negative, as I have the occasional obvious dud photo or near dupe with one being obviously better even at thumbnail sizes).
If it does roll over to hard disk writes, I have a 5GB slice of the 30GB SSD in my computer setup as a page file for Elements (I have a 60GB boot/app drive and a 30GB app/page file drive as well as a 7200rpm 500GB storage/app drive and a 2TB 5400rpm storage drive).
Those 10 minutes of quick edits (doing lengthier editing on choice negatives later) has to be done sometime, so it doesn't really add to the process much at all. It is all about the time taken to swap negative strips and the actual scanning process, which I doubt a faster processor or more memory would help significantly with. After a scan it takes maybe 4-5 seconds on the high end for the scanner to transfer the completed scan data to my computer and Elements to load it in.
