Advice on negative scanners

Having moved to digital photography a couple of years back I finally want to get round to uploading some of my old 35mm photo's.

Can anyone recommend a good negative scanner for my old 35mm photo's.

If I am honest i probably don't want to spend too much (less than £50)

All advice appreciated

thanks

Stuart

 

Hi there.

I currently have an Epson Perfection V100 Photo scanner. It does slides and negatives along with regular scanning and cost about £70. I have used it almost constantly for the last year, scanning slides for the Middleton Railway archive along with old issues of the railways members mag. It came with its own scanning program, which I normaly adviod using, but this one was really good, allowing me to scan directly to different file types, size resolution etc. I would certainly recomend it!

Andy

 

With scanners you get what you pay for, i.e. you can't expect a top quality specification for a budget price. You should definitely go for a dedicated photographic scanner rather than a general purpose type, such as the flat-bed scanners which are mainly used for documents but claim they can do photographs as well.They will not give the results you are looking for. The cheaper types of photographic scanners may lack the ability to scan different sizes of slides and negatives and may not offer the option of saving your scans in a choice of file formats. So try to avoid the lower end of the price range. Epson make a range of scanners and it might be worth your while to look on EBay where they often turn up at reasonable prices. I bought my Epson scannerthat way.

 

Stuart,

I purchased a dedicated Minolta film scanner for 35mm a few years back but recently got a Canon 8800F flat bed for medium format and it is excellent. I can pm you some results if interested.

Many medium format photographers use decent flatbeds as you can get a new car for less than a dedicated film scanner! Epson also produce some good uns.

Cheers,

 

Many thanks for the replies, I will definitely now no go for a budget scanner.
I already have a flatbed scanner, produces reasonable results, so it was a negaitve scanner I was after.

Thanks

Stuart

 

Here's a budget way to scan slides/negatives using a flat-bed scanner. Don't know what the results are like though:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/18/slides-into-digital-images

Richard

 

I have an Epson 4180 Photo scanner. It can scan film positives and negatives as well as paper media. I can't remember how much it cost but I would doubt if it was expensive, because I don't do expensive. It does all I would want a scanner to do.

One thing to remember with photoscanners is the need to keep the machine clean! Any dust will be magnified lots.

I tried to upload a scanned image but couldn't work out how to do it, sorry!

Regards