Good medium-price scanner for 6x9 slides

Hi,

 

I would like to have your recommendation for a good scanner for 6x9

slides. I am looking for a multi-purpose scanner that is good enough

for scanning medium format slides for less than $300 US.

The Epson Perfection 636 is a flatbed scanner that sells for about

$230 (from buy.com or other on-line shopping networks). You will need

the transparency adapter which costs an additional $70. That puts

you right at $300, but we forewarned, scanners in this price range

may not do your originals justice. I own this scanner and I can tell

you that it does a decent job. With enough tweaking, you can get

reasonably good prints from a printer like the Epson Photo EX

(which I also own). But in general, the scans leave a little bit to

be desired. The darker areas suffer from digital "noise" which puts

specks of color where there shouldn't be.

 

There are a lot of other scanners in this price range from other

manufacturers as well. I bought the Epson based on it's

specifications: 36-bit color depth, 600 dpi optical resolution, a

transparency adapter that allows you to scan film up to 4x5",

and a very good review in Shutterbug several months ago.

Well for printing, to get decent results you are going to need a scanner capable of at least 1200dpi optical resolution and a Dmax of 3.4 or better and that machine does not exist for anywhere near $300. If all you want is Web use than the machine the previous poster mentioned would probably be OK but as he mentioned it has its limitations.

Does anyone know of a flatbed scanner in this price range that accepts 8x10 transparencies?

 

I have a Minolta Multi Scan for higher quality scans. I would like to do digital "contact sheets" and print out to proof/file.

 

Right now I scan negatives that look appealing but never get to see most images scanned.

 

Other suggestions? I've tried flatbed (w/o a transparency adapter) with little success.

Probably there is none. I would like to see the low cost ($500) film scanner like Minolta Dimage Multi at about 600 DPI. I think a lot people just want to see the proof on their monitor or any thing for web page publishing. There is no need to print, so 600 DPI seems enough. It must be film scan only in order to save desk top space.

I'm working with a friend to convert the HP Photo scanner to take 120 or 220. It needs a "film carrier" and a way to fool the scanner so that machanically it is in the 5x7 print scan mode while electronically it is in the film scan mode. Since it only scan 24mm

at a time, and 120/220 is 54mm~60mm wide, it'll take three passes and

some software to complete the job.

Agfa has a flatbed scanner, Duoscan T 1200, that is able to scan slides up to 8x10". I have one and it works rather good for bigger films, but I'm not sure if the quality keeps anymore for medium or smaller originals. Price here in Finland is about 1000$. Optical resolution is 600x1200 dpi.

Niloy,

 

I have the HP Photosmart s20 film scanner. If you can make it work for 120 film, please let me know. The Photosmart has good potential

to be the low cost scanner for the medium format film. HP, are you listening?