Choices - Choices - Scanner or Digital Camera.

[karthik_nandyal]

I am scanning too many slides these days. It costs me around 50$ a

roll to scan it (for decent sizes). For example now I have 8 rolls

of slides sitting on my desk that I need to scan. That is 400$. I

am thinking of buying on a good scanner that costs 1000$. (Something

like F4000)

 

But then again, for 1200$ I can get a Canon Digital Camera (EOS-10D)

that is comaptiable with all the lenses I have. It is EOS camera

with 6 Mega Pixel ccd. However the only problem with this is the

lenses work on 1.6X factor. (Meaning my 24mm lens will "become"

38mm. That means all my wide angle shots will be limited to 38mm.

The positive side of this is - my 300mm lens will now "become"

480mm).

 

So if I still need to shoot 24mm, I will take the lens and fix it on

my existing canon elan IIe, body and shoot slides. I will get these

slides scanned by a regular lab and incur the marginal expense.

 

Which do you think I should do? Get a scanner and continue to shoot

slides. Or, get a digital camera body and use my lenses.

 

The outcome of a scan or a digital shoot will be same.

 

Karthik

[ellis_vener_photography]

I think you probably need to learn to edit unless there is some reason you need to

scan every frame on a roll of film.<P>The only concern I have with the Canon FS4000

scanner is the slow USB connection. If you have to scan a lot of images, you will

definitely find this to be a huge time sink. And getting good scans is not as simple as

"insert film here and push the button.", but then neither is using a digital camera and

getting high quality images; when you go digital you become not only the

photographer, but also the lab, and to a certain extent the film manufacturer as well.

[donald_choi]

It's inevitable that all photographers will be switching to digital, so you might as well do it now and get it over with. I would go out on a limb and say that a digital image from a 10D would produce a much cleaner image than a scan, even though they may be at the same resolution.

 

Your only problem would be at the wide angles. It's too bad that Canon is not following Nikon's lead in developing DX format wide angle lenses. It leaves people with the 1.6X crop factor with very little options.

[klix]

Either way, you'll need to do some post in Photoshop or similar sofwtare... so that being the case, you know, Canon does have a full frame Canon DSLR... if you have the money.

[ike k]

Hi Karthik,

 

 

I don't know where do you live but you said that it cost you $50/roll for scan service? it is way too expensive, here where I live in OC, California I only paid $12 per roll and other place is $20 for the first one and $10 each after.So If I were you off course I would go digital camera.

 

 

One more thing since that people still don't understand about crop meaning, it does not make your lens focal length longer but it is cropped! so your 300mm lens won't be 480mm lens! that's insane! your image only will be cropped and that's period!.So my advise is go with DSLR it will be more convinient for you to use since you already have canon system ( I alreaday did and happy extremely with it). Take care and happy shooting!

 

 

Ike

[bashir_lunat]

I used Minolta Scanmulty for my 35mm as well as MF and found that it was a much better solution than investing in a Digital system however I also learned that most consumer film scanners are somewhat a compromise here and there and a vital eliment which is "Dmax" is limited on those machines.The technology is available but the manufacturers are not releasing assuming that it is too soon. I dont know where you reside but in UK there are many labs who offer developing and CD service to consumers at very affordable price. Ofcourse it is horses for courses. Be careful that no domestic printers do as good job as "dark room" prints. If you can justify there are labs which have installed lightjet printers to offer real photographic prints at luxery price. One more thing which might be interesting to digital photographers that I found Genuine Fractals and VF Zomm to be excellent for scaling-up your images. Has anyone tried?

[river side]

For around $800 you can get the Minolta 5400dpi scanner.. but I assume for people who scan their slides/film that they are interested in image processing. In that case Digital becomes a viable alternative.

 

For $1300 u can get the D10 and for another $800 the 17-40L would take care of the wide angle issues if any.