Huge Scanning Job Finished (yet again!)

<p>I will never scan again.</p>

<p>Oh I wish that were true. I bought my first slide scanner over 20 years ago. It was a 3 pass scanner that scanned at 1800ppi. I then went with a 2700ppi Polaroid scanner and now I have a Nikon Coolscan V.</p>

<p>My rescanning has been both a product of getting a better scanner and newer software. My newer scans do look a great deal better but the process is still drudgery.</p>

<p>The best scanner accessory I have found is a good light table. I have a Just Normlicht 5000 that allows me to view 2 pages of slides at a time. I can easily mark which slides to scan and label the subject matter.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>OK, you asked for it.<br /> Between work and play, I was able to visit archaeological sites all over the place. As I began to accumulate large numbers of slides and other images, it soon became obvious that some kind of organization was needed or I could never put my hand on the image I needed. <br /> The images were often like the above shot: records of excavations. However, as a teacher I also accumulated a lot of images that I used in teaching. I had originally had slides in Airequipt metal magazines, later in Kodak Carrousel holders, but this quickly became unmanageable. I tried culling out the "best ones" and using plastic pages, but the supposed ease of finding the images in three ring binders seemed not so easy as some find it, and getting the slides in and out of the danged things was troublesome, for me, anyhow. I used lots of slides (I was once called the "Marquis de Slides")</p>

<p><br /> So I finally settled on metal slide boxes of the sort shown in the picture below. A single box would hold a large number - in groups. I organized them by date and roll #-#. When I was using them for class presentations, I also sorted out the 'good ones' from the others and kept them separate in one part of the box, and the others in order in the rest of the box. This made it easy to find ones for projection in classes, while making it easy to find other images of the same place or item if the first one didn't serve.<br /> A lot of this was years before 1978, when I got my first personal computer (not counting the many years I was using mainframe IBM machines). The options for scanning and such then were very primitive, and not suitable for prime time.<br /> As slides became obsolete, I started the project of scanning in images to use in PowerPoint and other presentation applications. At that point, Aperture and Lightroom were in their infancy at best, and my images were already self-indexed by the system of organization. I looked at Aperture and Lightroom, but I found that to move my data into those programs would give me little advantage (IMO) and involve lots of work. Right or wrong, I found that the combination of Bridge and Photoshop (I started using the latter with version 2.5 and the pre-Bridge features included a simple browser, as I recall) were good enough for me.<br /> Because I thought I had, in retirement, more time than money, I found that the Canon film scanner, the Canoscan 4000 FS US would do 4000 ppi images. I quickly found that no body had THAT much time, and made the situation better by using super SCSI input, instead of the USB1 that was its default. Even then, SCSI was losing market, and I had to install a SCSI card in my then brand-new tower 400 MHz Power PC G4 (the one called the Yikes! model, a strange hypbrid, but that's another story). The SCSI interface made the flow from the scanner to the CPU much more tolerable, if not exactly speedy. The problem was not with the scanning speed, per se, but with the time to get the data across to the computer. To this day, the need to use SCSI has tied my scanning with the 4000 to that machine. I also have a Canoscan 9000F flatbed scanner for larger (120 film and others). It will scan higher than 4000 ppi, but (1) as I have already said, that doesn't seem to yield more image definition, merely more detail from the film itself, and (2) The automatic feed-in dedicated scanner is actually faster in workflow, if slower in scanning time.</p>

<p>I have my old computer behind me, with the FS4000, I load a stick of 4 slides, having set up name, metadata, etc. in VueScan, which I now use by preference to the proprietary software, even for the 9000. I swivel my chair around to my iMac and work away while the scanner scans. When it beeps that it has finished a stick of slides, I reload the stick and so on until I have to change the settings for the next roll of film. I learned from earlier experience, that really cleaning the slides before scanning was much easier than manual spotting, and with Kodachrome (but not only Kodachrome) I found the "automatic" removal routines unsatisfactory in the original scanning or in the post processing. Your experience may differ. Even with cleaning there are always a few specks. The more the slide was used in projection, usually the dirtier it is, BTW.</p><div></div>

<p>Instead of tying up my WiFi, I just copy the files over to a memory stick and then plug that into the iMac. I then display the scans in Bridge, and use Photoshop and/or ACR to get the slide fuzzy corners cleaned up, adjust exposure, highlight and dark adjustments, and so on.<br /> As I said, "spotting" images is better than knitting for me. If it's not too much, it can even be a sort of "fun", if you're a little "funny".</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

<p>If I were starting from scratch, I would have got one of the very much more expensive Nikon scanners, and I would have done maximum scans at the beginning. <br>

BTW, if you do a full 64-bit RAW scan the individual file is about 150 MB. I only have 4.5 Terabytes of hardisk. :(</p>

<p>That's quite an endeavor, JDM! I get daunted just looking at a few boxes of slides, let alone 60,000 of them!</p>

<p>I've often thought that, if I were to go through all of my slides and negatives, and scan them, that I would scan at a reasonable resolution to speed the process along, and to provide a reasonably-sized image for sharing with family or friends. I figure I don't need to send everyone a 15MP image! So long as I've got a good method of organization, I can always go back later and do the TIFFs of the images I select for other purposes, like enlargements.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>JDM, I'm very glad you started this thread. A combination of "old times back in the day" and great info. I started with a CanoScan 2800, what a piece of crap. The Minalta 54 had a steep learning curve but eventually I got fine results.<br>

Mendel, I had heard in some long lost forum that it wouldn't work in Vista and there were no new drivers coming out, so I never tried it when I got 7. But it sounds like I'd be better off with ViewScan anyway. But thanks.<br>

Decades back when I used my Spotmatic, I had a Spirotone slide copier that worked pretty well, considering. I can't help thinking that a high quality item used with a high megapixel DSLR would be the ticket. Sooo much faster.</p>

<p>Jim, Vuescan is a very worthwhile program, get the Pro version ("raw" file output, lifetime upgrades). The main downside is it's cleaning, at least last time I checked: just not as good as the proprietory ICE that comes bundled with DimageScan. I find both useful.</p>

<p>And if you're doing *any* kind of scanning, Vuescan is handy. These days it's mainly my wife scanning documents on a flatbed that we're using it for: it's possible to set up configurations, with scan settings, auto naming, file save formats and locations, and so on.</p>

<p>"Scan high, scan once" -- Love it!<br>

<br /><p><b>Moderator: Link removed. Not allowed per photo.net Terms of Use.</b></p></p>

<p>Well, I did a test of the CanoScan 9000F scanner against my old CanoScan FS 4000US.<br>

http://www.photo.net/digital-darkroom-forum/00b9l6?unified_p=1<br>

Unfortunately it raises the issue of how good the scans on the latter are. I may yet need to do this one more time, perhaps with some really high-range scanner. :(</p>

<blockquote>"Scan high, scan once"</blockquote>

<p>Something similar used to be (maybe still is) a slogan at West Coast Imaging. But then they were selling drum scans and the bigger the better. I have a different perspective. </p>

<p>I know it annoying when it turns out that your first scan won't support a big print that you need to make again, maybe on a different scanner, but it not just how many times that happens which determines the success of your strategy- its how many times it doesn't. The vast majority of the time , scanning only when I need to,and then to a size I know I need works just fine and I have to re-scan very few. The only images I hve scanned are those which I had to get done for stock agencies; which I needed to get a print made; or which I've needed for the web/my website. <br>

JDM- what do you think is the probabiity of you needing something better than you've got from a particular original. If its 90% and you own the right scanner, and have some time, then thats clear cut one way. If its 5% then rescanning is going to prove a waste of time 95% of the time, and the only benefit I can see is that when you need a bigger scan then its available now rather than in a half hour (if I can make it myself) or a week (if I have to send it out). </p>

<p>David, I don't suggest that everyone needs super-hi-res images.<br>

However, as I have mentioned above, a substantial percentage of my images are records of research, and part of a the (hopefully) permanent record of things now destroyed and gone. "Good enough" is not a concept that applies there. </p>

<p>Moreover, I have also discovered that many of my "seconds" were revealed by higher quality scans to be worthy, after all. </p>

<p>Besides, sorting out little 2" squares of cardboard and film on a light table is so, well, "twentieth century". I can deal with them much more efficiently on the computer than in messy, physical reality. :)</p>