I have a simple question. What is the best color slide film scanner on the market today? I have researched this subject many times over years and have never found one that generates image quality close to the original slide. I did have some slides scanned by Keeble and Schucat in Palo Alto that came our really good but they have since gone out of business and I don’t know what they used. Probably couldn’t afford it anyway.
Igor, like many things prices have much to do with it. For the most part the analog group I interface with use flabed scanners. I do as well and have had the same unit for 20 years now at least. My unit is made by Microtek. It is the i900 which became the M10 as I recall. It will scan as high as 3200 ppi and with interpolation go to 6400 ppi. Both way overkill for MF & LF scans. But I’ve done some of my ancient 35mm at 3200 as I remember.
Most of the folks I interface with use later Epson units. They have quite a few units at different scanning qualities and price ranges.
Very serious scans are still done with drum scanners. There are groups or labs that still perform that work when needed.
NPN member from years back Ben Horne has some of his work drum scanned by a friend of his down in Carlsbad, Ca. area now that I think about those units.
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Igor, I have a Microtek 1800F flatbed scanner. It has a tray for mounted 35mm slides. It does an OK job, but it’s best with 4x5, or medium format film. It can use either FireWire 400 or USB, The problem is software. I use ViewScan, but it won’t allow scans greater than 1800 dpi on my scanner. SilverFast, and Microtek stopped supporting it years ago. I believe the ‘new model’ is called the M-1.
You might poke around and look for a Nikon slide scanner, but, since they are no longer made you may have connectivity and software issues. I believe Minolta also made a slide scanner.
My suggestion would be to have a service scan the slides for you. A flatbed scan would likely not be super-costly. A drum scan would be.
I hope this helps.
-P
Igor, here is a link to the many popular Epson scanners. Most of the folks I know use the V-550 thru V-850 units.
Epson Scanners
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