photogeeks, any inexpensive and good slide scanners?

[AJ Dual]

We (Mrs. Dual, really) are in the process of digitally archiving most all family photos we can find, and building slide-show DVD's for relatives etc.

The first four years of my life, my father was mostly invested in 35mm slides, and we need to scan these in.

I know some are "slide converters" which essentially is a cheap fixed focus digital camera photobox and not really a "scanner". It'll take a 5-6 megapixel picture of the slide, but not really scan it. And I know that an actuall 7200dpi scanner is better because within that "dpi" you've only got about a 1" square slide to work with.

I'm loath to invest a lot into this, because once the slides are scanned, understandably we're done with the thing. Is there anything under $150 that's worth the money for archival family purposes.?

[zahc]

Consider using a conversion service.

Sorry, but it's not a very easy thing to do. I have an Epson V500 and it scan slides...but it's slow as hell. The results are pretty good, maybe not perfect or good enough to enlarge giant and hang in a museum but certainly good enough for 8x10 prints. After spotting the dust out by hand at about 5 minutes a slide or more.

My friend has one of those cheapie slide-imagers. It works, but it's only web-quality at best. The dynamic range is bad.

I like the concept of imaging in one shot rather than scanning though...if I had a good DSLR I would probably cook up a system using a Kodak slide projector, diffusive light source and microcontroller and make one of the slide-imagers that works at high quality.

[AJ Dual]

Yeah.. further research has indicated that the animal I seek may not exist.

Although the speed issue does not alarm us. Right now, we leverage our flatbed scanner's ability to scan multiple photos in a single pass of the bed, separate them all, and do speck and dust cleanup automatically, which takes several minutes. We just set up the scanner and a laptop wherever we may be at the moment and make dinner, watch TV etc.

Mrs. Dual has already had some interest in offering her services to others for photo scanning and making DVD slide-shows for family events, memorials etc... If that heats up, we'll invest in some better gear then.

[mtnbkr]

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/3000slides.htm

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/scanrex.htm

Chris

[Harold Tuttle]

either use a digital camera to capture archive reference images or plan on using a nikon for many many daze.

We used these at Natty Geo:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN/CSIV/C4A.HTM

[coppertales]

I just bought an Epson V500 scanner.  It does a great job on slides and has a dust and scratch remover software function.  It also has a photoshop CD included.  I have not tried that yet.  It will also scan film negatives but I have not figured out how to do that yet.  It is limited on what Kodak film it will scan.  That may be my issue.  It has a frame for scanning 126 size film too.  I have not tried to scan a regular photograph yet.  It was 186 bucks delivered.  I don't remember where I got it from but it was on line.....chris3

[41magsnub]

Wish I could help but my only slide scanning experience was using the drum scanner at the print plant I worked at in college (my job title was scan boy).  Good scanner, used it to do art prints as well as catalogs but it was spendy!