Is this scanning setup an Rx for infuriating headaches?

[John Di Leo]

<p>I am in the process of digitizing my family photos/slides/negatives. My setup is an early 2008 iMac, Mavericks, 4gb ram, solid state hard drive, multiple externals. I used a nikon slide copying adapter on a Nikon micro Nikkor on my d700. I am satisfied how that went.<br>

Now for prints and negatives including some 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 s.<br>

For this I want to use a flatbed scanner. I have a CanoScan 9900F and an old windows xp laptop (Dell Inspiron 4150). There is no, as far as I can tell, no software to link the canon scanner with my mac, neither from Canon nor VueScan...if incorrect please advise.<br>

So, if I go with the scanner to windows laptop, I am assuming that the "quality limiting factor" will be the scanner's abilities, rather than anything in the laptop; again, correct me if I am wrong. If I go with the windows setup I would load the files onto an external drive, and pp on the Mac in Lightroom 5. <br>

The alternative is spend $230 for perhaps an epson v600 or at least something that can do the job and is OSX compliant.<br>

When I went to mac I couldn't then believe how "easy" they were. I fear that if I go with the "free" windows setup as described above I am asking for glacial performance, infuriating error messages, numerous crashes, restarts aplenty, and ultimately buying a new scanner for my mac. It would seem the prudent solution is to try out the windows setup and decide, but would you be satisfied with the performance of a 7-8 year old system? Right now I am cleaning and updating the windows computer and in windows fashion, it is taking hours to delete programs and update the system. </p>

[John Di Leo]

<p>No, I hope not self fulfilling, but I understand your point, and thanks. Put it another way. Has the technology for hassle free scanning advanced significantly since windows Xp and CanoScan 9900F to justify buying a new scanner? Obviously a personal and financial question, but has the tech part improved that much for the better? If it's pretty much the same or only marginally better, I am willing to chance the possible headaches, but if things have gotten much better, then the $230 outlay would pale over the time saved. </p>

[jim_a]

<p>John,<br>

Why not copy the prints with your D700? Seems much faster than a flatbed.</p>

[John Di Leo]

<p>decades of stuff and very old family photos (100 year old stuff)...I haven't even rounded them up yet, but it is a substantial number, likely well into the hundreds to a couple thousand? Plus negatives, including 2.25 sq maybe 2k of those???</p>

<p>Jim, couple of reasons, have not considered the d700 route. To copy well, I would think some sort of copy setup would be required if not for the camera, then for the prints, that are different sizes, maybe for both the camera and the print. Likely something much more than a tripod. Then to set up some nice lighting would be another issue. I had an old XRay box that worked well for the slides, but for the prints there would be some jerry-rigged arrangement. Prob cheaper and better with a scanner to avoid hot spots and glare.<br>

And Les, you make a hitting home point if the scan time is half on the newer scanners. That's the type of info I seek.<br>

> Typically post work can take more with this level of scanners. Likely it may provide similar results in terms of quality of scans.<<br>

post can take longer with the older scanners? Is that what you're saying, in order to produce similar quality to the newer scanners? If so, good point. I would not pp everything, but certainly quite a few, and that does take time.</p>

 

[John Di Leo]

<p>It's not the CanoScan 9000; the one I have is the CanoScan 9900F-an earlier model</p>

[User_1172872]

<p>I have a Canon 9900F in the closet. Never could get the infrared channel (dust/scratch removal) to work right. Tried Vuescan without improvement. That doesn't mean you won't obtain better results - I gave up long ago and the current Vuescan might be much different - but based on my experience I wouldn't recommend the 9900F. When I migrated to Windows 7 from XP I couldn't find drivers for the 9900F so I purchased an Epson V500. I'd easily recommend a new Epson over the 9900F - I think you'll save yourself a lot of grief. For 35mm I use a Nikon coolscan V, with much better results than the Epson. But the coolscan won't handle medium format.</p>

[cegeiss]

<p>Get the latest scanner driver for Win XP, install it and scan away. Drivers should be <a href="http://www.usa.canon.com/cusa/support/consumer/scanners/canoscan_series/canoscan_9900f#DriversAndSoftware">here</a>.<br>

Try it for half an hour and see what you get. If your 13-year old Dell moves too slow, crashes etc. buy a new scanner for your Mac, if not, go with it. As far as I remember, the Inspiron had only one USB drive, which means you cannot save straight to an external HD. The scanning part seems the time-consuming laborious part, copying files may be tedious, but you can go for a beer while your old Dell chugs away. So, what do you have to lose?</p>

 

[John Di Leo]

<p>good advice all. Right, what do I have to lose. At this point having the Dell pretty bare bone and OS updated, I'll try the 9900f. if it works, fine. <br>

Prof K, that was my experience when I did have it working(?) on the mac in earlier versions of OSx. </p>

<p>I'll give it an hour, and if I am running for the Fioricet, I'll have my answer. Thanks all.</p>

[lex_jenkins]

<p>One advantage to some Epson flatbed/film scanners is the ability to simultaneously scan multiple photos (prints, negatives or slides) and have each saved as separate images. The original Epson scanning software enables this - relatively easily for film, a little more effort for prints.</p>

<p>I haven't been able to duplicate this feature with VueScan, which is a bit of a disappointment. There may be some way to do it but it's not intuitive. And the results from single scans of negatives, slides and prints are no better than I can get with the stock Epson software. Years ago VueScan offered a significant advantage over the standard driver that came with the original Minolta Scan Dual film scanner. But the current version of VueScan offers no significant advantages over the software included with the older Epson 3170 Photo flatbed/film scanner.</p>

<p>Regarding equipment, almost any Windows Pentium PC can handle scanning. I still have an old Pentium 3 running Windows ME for use with my old Minolta Scan Dual film scanner, because it needs a SCSI card which I have for that PC. That PC has only 512 MB RAM and an 80 GB HD, but it's adequate for maximum resolution scans saved to TIFF files. Before then I ran the same SCSI scanner on a Pentium 1 with Windows 95 and 128 MB RAM. And the 10 year old Epson 3170 runs just fine on my Windows 7 laptop with 4 GB RAM and 1.5 GHz CPU. No compatibility issues or glitches.</p>

[JRCrowe]

<p>With the Epson software in Pro mode I found that when scanning photos if they are sorted by size you can set that size in the software and repeatedly and rapidly scan large numbers of images fairly quickly without having to change settings. You just have to lay the photos in the same place on the scanner click on the scan button. It seems to be faster than laying a group of photos on the glass and then selecting each photo. You could scan all your 5x7 and 4x6 photos and then crop later.</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>If you're only going to use this system for scanning, and nothing else, then the risk of Windows going to give you grieve is also a lot lower. Less software installed should make life a lot easier. Plus, compared to much more recent OSes (which Mavericks obviously is), Windows XP is a security swiss cheese which is where most of the headaches starts. On a clean installation with basically only the Canon drivers and something like VueScan, it should be pretty smooth. If it isn't, it's more likely to be due to hardware about to go. 7-8 years is quite old for a notebook. I especially wouldn't trust a 7-year old hard disk too much (so copy the files over to an external drive frequently).<br>

If you've got the possibility on the laptop to move to Windows 7 32-bits, it is a step forward though (there are no 64-bits drivers for your scanner, so better stick with 32-bits).</p>

[John Di Leo]

<p>Again, more good advice. Thank you.<br>

I have been cleaning, cleaning cleaning the laptop. I did a successful test drive with an external drive. I'll download the canon drivers and give her a whirl.</p>

[JDMvW]

<blockquote>

<p>I have a CanoScan 9900F and an old windows xp laptop (Dell Inspiron 4150). There is no, as far as I can tell, no software to link the canon scanner with my mac, neither from Canon nor VueScan...if incorrect please advise.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I don't have a CanoScan 9900F, but I do have a CanoScan 9950, a 9000F, and now defunct CanoScan 4000 film scanner. All of them have worked just fine with VueScan on everything from Mac OS X Lion and now up to Mac OS X Mavericks. I'm surprised to hear it doesn't work with the 9900.<br /> VueScan is better than the Canon software anyhow, IMHO.</p>

<p>"Friends don't let friends use Windows"</p>

[John Di Leo]

<p>OK, starting to get a little throbbing in the temples...<br>

Got it all set up; seems to be working, EXCEPT,<br>

I am using the film holder for 35mm color negatives. Something, software-the canon stuff, user setting error, hardware, film holder, something is causing the negatives to be broken into pieces. I am using a strip of 4, the first one's scanned image is more than the original, the second is half of the second and part of the third, etc. It just doesn't seem to know where the image breaks are. <br>

Using the canoScan software, latest for XP. I've only done 2 prints so far, but they seem to scan properly.<br>

JvW, the 9900f is not supported from Mountain Lion on. It just will not play</p>

<p>Any help appreciated, and I am well beyond the hour I said I would give it.<br>

PS Tried it without the film holder with the same unacceptable result</p>

 

[John Di Leo]

<p>addendum:<br>

I tried some B&W film strips and filled the carrier. The film breaks appear correctly. So, the question is does the carrier need be filled completely to get proper separation?</p>

[John Di Leo]

<p>followup: Even though I got the scanner and the laptop to what I believe are optimal levels of performance--as good as I am going to get them- things are so slow that alternatives must be sought. I am going through a USB 1.0 port and that plays a role I'm sure. Even though I spent the better part of a day deleting old programs and updating XP to the point that I was "up to date," I am again, with each boot advised to update. There is no way to see exactly what needs to update. I find the Canon software to be difficult to use. I tried an old copy of VuePro32 and it wasn't much better. It was, to me, the same old Windows song, ie spending more time on Windows than on the job<br>

So, as Jim, a couple of days ago advised, I rigged my d700 to do the copy of the 35mm negatives. I found an unused plastic slide mount and modified it to act as a negative holder that fit right in to the Nikon ES-1 slide copy adapter. My images are 10mb out of the camera vs 30ish from the scanner, they are in RAW, and they look better. Prints and 6x6 negs are a problem as my only means for duping at this point is the CanoScan/Dell combo...but that is a few thousand 35mm negs away, a problem for another day. Maybe I'll figure something out<br>

The only minor issue was converting negative to positive in LightRoom, but that can be done, and I have a preset for it.<br>

Thanks to all for the support and advice</p>

[greg_campbell1]

Depending on which generation of FireWire the scanner has, running it on a FW equipped MAC may improve it's speed significantly over USB 2.0 and a Windows box. In terms of pure image quality, I suspect that the computer and OS really don't matter. If you've got the time, that old laptop will crank out all the scanner can deliver.