Scanning 127 slides with a 35mm film scanner

I am contemplating the purchase of a film scanner, either a Minolta

IV or a Nikon V. I have many slides from when I was a child that are

in 2 inch cardboard mounts and were from 127 film I believe. The

slides is square nearly fills the 2x2 mount. Does anyone know if

either of these scanners will allow me to scan the full area of these

slides? As you would expect there is no mention of 127 film in the

manufacturer's information. Thanks.

I'm pretty sure 127 slides were the same mount as 35mm. If they can fit in your slide projector, they should fit in a slide scanner.

No, these scanners wouldn't do it. Even 126 film doesn't get full frame.

You may want to check out the Epson Perfection flatbed scanners, as you can use them without the built-in mask found on 35mm dedicated scanners. Also the Epson 4870 can do 24 slides at once.

 

I've been pretty impressed with some medium-format slides I've seen scanned on the Epson 3200.

I have a bunch of 127 slides. They fit in the scanner but My Coolscan IV, at least, cannot cover the entire area. If you're lucky (or didn't compose very tight back then) you can still get a pretty good scan of the central rectangle, but you cannot move the coverage off center. It is possible to demount a slide and insert it into the loose film carrier of the Coolscan, and get it off center that way, but there is no way to increase coverage.

They'll fit, but you cannot scan the entire frame.

I have a Canoscan 5000F and use the Scangear CS driver that comes with it. I have discovered that if you go to 'Advanced Mode' and remove the tick from the 'Display thumbnail' you can scan an area of 4.84 x 1.33 inches. Good enough for most of the old negs in my Mums collection. Looks brilliant when written to a CD and shown on a large TV.<div></div>

Before someone tells me that my scanner is a cheap old flatbed scanner and not a film scanner. I was trying to show that you can have fun with old negs that have not been seen the light of day for 50 years with what you have.

I have used an Epson Perfection 4870 scanner to process my several thousand 127 slides and store them on CDs. A combination of the software "Epson Scan" and "Adobe Photoshop Elements" (included with the scanner) have done a terrific job of making my photos seem much better than the originals.

 

It's a slow process involving scanning eight slides at a time and then cropping the single output image (an Adobe .PSD image file) into eight individual customized photos (I use the .JPG format). Luckily the scanner can be running in parallel with me working with Photoshop and, depending on the amount of cropping, image enhancing and the like that the slide needs, the scanner usually stays ahead of me. If you scan, edit, scan in serial rather than parallel fashion, you're not going to have very good through-put.

 

I've been wildly enthusiastic about the results.