Tips for picking a film scannerApr 20 '01 (Updated Oct 21 '02) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Film scanners are special purpose hardware. You pay for the film formats it supports, speed, and the quality of the software that comes with it.
Film scanners, as the name implies are scanners created specifically to scan your positive or negative film images and create a digital computer file from those images. Film scanners come with a variety of capabilities and price ranges, from about $200.00 up to $10,000.00+. You pay for the software utilities that come with them, the film formats that they can handle, scanning speed, and the resolution they are capable of scanning at. Some flatbed scanners come with either an add-on attachment for scanning film/transparencies or have some type of drawer arrangement that opens to accommodate standard film sizes (most are limited to 35mm film only). The film scanning attachment that comes with some flatbed scanners is probably fine for the home user that just wants to scan a negative here and there but the results will not be anything close to what could be obtained with a dedicated film scanner. It's just not possible to create a single purpose scanner that can both scan paper and scan film well. The software provided with the flatbed scanner will probably also be quite lacking when dealing with film scans. I personally only have extensive experience with one very basic film scanner. Pacific Image Electronics makes the Prime Film 1800U. This unit is a 35mm only slide/negative scanner that connects to the computer through the usb port. For the $200.00 that this unit costs it is quite useable for the home user and comes with quite an acceptable suite of software. The scan utility has several color correcting features that can color correct old color shifted slides and color negatives shot under the wrong lighting (i.e. daylight film shot under tungsten lighting which tends to make the image very yellow). All film scanners have a common need for a fast system with a large amount of system ram. When considering a film scanner you should have the following concerns: 1. What formats can it handle? Professional photographers often use 35mm or 120/220 roll-film format & 4X5, 8X10 or larger sheet film formats. 2. What software comes with the scanner? Many scanners come with only limited software that you must pay extra to upgrade to full versions. How much memory does your software require to make high resolution scans? Most software is limited in scan resolution by how much system memory you have--not virtual memory. I.e. you may need to have 360K of system ram or more installed in your system to properly use your scanner's capabilities. 3. Look at the scanning platform. Does it provide some kind of film holder system to hold the slide or negative still during the scan? 4. How easy is it to clean the scanning platform? Many cheap scanners have problems with dust infiltration on the back of the scanning glass surface, if you can't easily get inside the unit to clean the glass your scans may have dust specks on them that will ruin your scans at high resolutions. A high priced scanner should be assembled in a clean room and hermetically sealed against dust infiltration. 5. Look for a name brand. Companies such as Kodak, Agfa, Minolta, Canon, Pentax, Nikon, Hasselblad, Leica, have all had vast experience in making photographic products. The best test of your new scanner is to take it home and use it. If the software seems hard to use, or the scan surface gets dusty and is hard to clean you probably will not like to use the scanner. A good scanner should have some method of holding the film in place, scan a large variety of resolutions (usually limited by the amount of system ram you have) and come with software that can do basic color correction and save images in different common formats. The last consideration would be how the scanner connects to the system, scsi scanners often must be turned on before the system boots unless you've got one of the newer interface cards that supports hot swapping. Although I have not seen a Firewire film scanner, I'm sure that they are on their way to market. (Firewire is different from SCSI but is of comparable speed.) USB is probably the simplest installation and can be plugged in and used without rebooting the computer (the speed is nowhere near as fast as scsi or firewire, but should be fine for the occasional user). A parallel or serial film scanner would be the slowest (and probably most troublesome) type due to limitations imposed by the ports that they use to connect to the computer.  |
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