Slide scanners

I'm hardly an expert on the current market or state of the art since I bought my Polaroid unit about six years ago on Curt Bianchi's advice, and have been happy with it. However it is getting old, and like most high tech things these days, is not made for easy maintenance like cleaning the sensor.

Good slide scanners are fairly specialized and expensive, and I have never seen slide scanners at any of the typical electronics stores.

I would suggest going to one of the photo shop websites like B&H or Adorama and seeing what they list. There also have been some pretty good discussions of slide scanners at trainorders.com in the railfan electronics section. And this website might be useful, although I don't know how up to date it is: Scantips

A "good" slide scanner is probably in the order of $1000, although you can probably spend a fraction of that if you are either smart or lucky. Beware of flatbed scanners with slide adaptors. In general those do not have have enough resolution (dpi) to do a good job on slides. Occasionally I hear good stories about them, but rarely. It also depends on what kind of quality is acceptable to you. For posting on the net you don't need particularly high quality. If you want to make 11x14 prints you need more dpi.

One great thing about scanning slides is you can then "fix" them in Photoshop or similar program. Many of my oldest slides were taken on Anscochrome or Ektachrome and have faded or had the colors shift. Much of that can be fixed with Photoshop.

JBWX



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2007 12:17PM by John West.