digitalizing slides

[Ronaldsnl]

Hi all,

Does anyone has experience with below mentioned slide digitalizer?

http://www.amazon.com/Wolverine-F2D14-N ... B005P99KT8

The Wolverine F2D14 is a digital image converter "slidedigitalizer" and actually it looks like it is a small digital camera with a 14 Mpeg sensor where your slides or negatives fit in.

It looks like a good and especially fast way to digitalize all the slides, where no tripod or alternative lightsource is needed.

I write this is english because so far I can see this system is only available in the US.

But I'm very curious what the quality of the lightsource is.

It only generates Jpeg but for my slides K64 or even 100 that should be OK.

I hope someone has already experience with this solution.

Ronald

[Flyboy]

A quick look at the net reveals remarks like "good value for the money..."

"(The basic unit has been around for years (marketed by various companies). We've tried to arrange for review units, but the companies involved never responded.... A quick look around the Web reveals Costco sells them but commentaries at the Costco page are revealing (http://reviews.costco.com/2070/11314537 ... eviews.htm). And it does bother us that VueScan doesn't support any Wolverine scanner (http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/vuescan.htm#supported). That would at least overcome whatever shortcomings the scanner software had. -- Editor)"


So if you are serious about scanning, you want
1 a good scanner
2 good software
3 being able to edit your scans for dustspots etc.

If you do not care for the above and only wants JPEG's from our scan than you have found your thing.
Give the fact that you took slides with K64, you do not want this. Buy a decent scanner, at least one that is supported with good software like Vuescan. Also use an editor for removing the dustspots and fixing the Histogram.

Good luck,
Marc.

[planefixer]

Hi all,

Does anyone has experience with below mentioned slide digitalizer?

http://www.amazon.com/Wolverine-F2D14-N ... B005P99KT8

The Wolverine F2D14 is a digital image converter "slidedigitalizer" and actually it looks like it is a small digital camera with a 14 Mpeg sensor where your slides or negatives fit in.

It looks like a good and especially fast way to digitalize all the slides, where no tripod or alternative lightsource is needed.

I write this is english because so far I can see this system is only available in the US.

But I'm very curious what the quality of the lightsource is.

It only generates Jpeg but for my slides K64 or even 100 that should be OK.

I hope someone has already experience with this solution.

Ronald

Hello Ronald, as the previous person has stated, just like with your camera equipment you tend to get what you pay for. I have tried out a few different scanners over the years as I have many slides dating back to the late 1970s [and I only went over to digital about 5 years ago!]. At the cheaper end of the market the result were very mixed and often involved a number of scans to get the image to some kind of decent standard. Don't get too hung up on the "14Mp" part of the marketing for this scanner. After all would you think a 14Mp pocket camera would take a better photo than even a 6Mp DSLR??, no I didn't think so.

With the higher end dedicated slide scanners [Nikon/Minolta etc.] scans were very good but these machines are very expensive, and I think they have even left the market now [as it is a diminishing market] and I think you can only buy these now secondhand. One of the few specialized Slide/film scanners firms out there now is Plustek. I haven't used any of their scanners but have seen results from them that seem pretty good. The only down side like all of the good quality scanners is the time taken for the scans. This has really put me off digitising many of my slides to some extent as I really want to be out there looking at/photographing aircraft rather than spending many, many hours scanning old slides! One thing that I have tried in the past is a slide copier that fits on the lens of my DSLR [I'm assuming here you have a digital SLR]. These are like the slide copiers of old that were for 35mm cameras and they screw on the filter thread of your lens and you just photograph your slide. As you are using your digital SLR and lens you get a pretty good result, depending on how good your original slide was of course! [better than any of the cheap scanners I have tried in the past] and you can take many images in an hour..

Make sure that if you do go down this route that the slide copier is one designed for DSLR cameras as they take into account the cropping effect of most DSLRs [unless of course you have a full frame sensor DSLR!]...One of the firms supplying these is here: http://www.srb-griturn.com/srb-slide-copiers-767-c.asp [although there are many out there] and you get one the correct size for your filter thread size on your camera..

And on top of the copier you would have to buy something like Photoshop Elements etc for cleaning up images [if you do not already have such a thing].

As I said it's a personal thing, but I didn't have many good results with cheap scanners and you often find when computer software is updated [i.e new version of Windows] that the cheap scanners do not provide any updated drivers so you are left with something you can't use or you have to run an old version of Windows just to support your scanner..

Just a personal opinion

Regards
Tony

[Ronaldsnl]

Thanks all for the comments and reviews, it has saved me some further searching. I will not go for that kind of stuff.

Exactly what Tony is saying, there are good scanners but time for me is also a constraining factor. I am now looking to a kind of ES-1 solution from Nikon although I also read mixed comments about this.

So the perfect way to digitalize all my Phantom FGR-2's, F104G's and Buccaneers slides has not been found yet I'm afraid

Ronald

[SquAdmin]

If time is your constraint, why wouldn't you have someone do it for you? There are enough companies that offer slidescan services.

[Ronaldsnl]

If time is your constraint, why wouldn't you have someone do it for you? There are enough companies that offer slidescan services.

Yep, 20 cent per piece, 15000 slides....

Cheers

Ronald

[Iwan Bogels]

Ronald, if you buy a Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED with batch feeder you will have one of the best scanners available. The batch feeder will allow you to have it scan 50 slides with one push of a button. If you let it start working when you go to bed or when you go to work, you can scan your 15.000 slides in half a year.

The price for a second hand Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED may be high, but these scanners sell like hotckakes. If you find one for 1500 euro, you can always sell it for 1300+. That way you get high quality scans for the price of a cheap scanner, and it may not even cost you more time.

I know that several people have chosen this option, and I am thinking about it too.

Succes,
Iwan

[RogerS]

I was lucky to buy a Minolta 5400 a few weeks ago for 400 on Marktplaats. Haven't started scanning yet however.

[frankdc8]

Hi all

I'm using the Nikon Coolscan IV great Scanner.....
Scanning in RAW allways good.
See my website www.douglasdc8.com

Frank

[warthog64]

I use my Canon 7-D, 90mm macro, tripod, shutterrelease...

[DennisV]

If time is your constraint, why wouldn't you have someone do it for you? There are enough companies that offer slidescan services.

Yep, 20 cent per piece, 15000 slides....

Cheers

Ronald

Hi Ronald,

This is actually not too bad as you consider that buying a set up like the person will use for you is about 1500 euro, see Iwan's mail, and he will do the most tedious work for you, the scanning itself. I use a Nikon 5000ED scanner with slide feeder but that doesn't always work. The feeder is not that sturdy and will regularly push 2 slides in the scanner at one time and best thing to do is first make piles of slides with the same mount thickness. Also cardboard mounts work best by putting them in the scanner one slide at a time.
Another problem is that the auto focus of the scanner is right about 90% of the time but sometimes needs a bit of tweeking for a specific slide so that needs a re-scan.
I have also used a Minolta d'image scan speed and a Nikon 4000ED and this 90% rule is also the case in those scanners, but the 5000ED has a special Kodachrome setting which helps a lot as it let's you get better result with the dust filter on.

In your calculation the cost would be 3000,- euro. If you could buy and sell a scanner without any loss that would be great but taking into account that you need at least an average of 1 minute per slide to scan and not all slides will be able to go through the feeder, one would have the scanner running for 2 hours a day for 3 Moths continuously to scan the 15.000 slides, if all goes in one try.

Of course 3000 euro is a lot of money, but I guess it is a question of money vs time and what you have more of If have chosen to scan myself as I am also still making slides next to digital, also wanted to scan all my negatives in high quality as many negatives have faded a bit and a few more reasons, so I'll be using the scanner until it falls apart and hope it never will.

Hope this helps.

Ronald, if you buy a Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED with batch feeder you will have one of the best scanners available. The batch feeder will allow you to have it scan 50 slides with one push of a button. If you let it start working when you go to bed or when you go to work, you can scan your 15.000 slides in half a year.

The price for a second hand Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED may be high, but these scanners sell like hotckakes. If you find one for 1500 euro, you can always sell it for 1300+. That way you get high quality scans for the price of a cheap scanner, and it may not even cost you more time.

I know that several people have chosen this option, and I am thinking about it too.

Succes,
Iwan

Hi Iwan,

If you want to try things before you buy just let me know, Rens has been using our 4000ED for many many years now and I am using our 5000ED for about 2 years now. Just let me know.

Dennis

[SquAdmin]

@Ronald,

15000 slides is a lot! If the images are scanned at full resolution and stored as TIFF you will have to invest heavily in storage as well. Are you sure you want to scan every slide, or would you consider making a selection?

[SquAdmin]

Btw, has anyone ever tried Scanit? I received a gift cheque that I can use to have 175 slides scanned by them, but would like to know a little bit more about them before I lend them my slides.

[Ronaldsnl]

First thanks to all of you for the tips.

The Nikon 5000 scanner is the best scanner at the moment, I think that is clear. But I am a little hesitant in investing in this machine 2nd, 3rd or 4th hand while Nikon has stopped production already for some years. Probably soon no spare parts are available anymore? Also with thick slidemounts the Nikon can max handle 20-22 slides a time.

Another option is to buy or rent the Reflecta Digitdia 6000. This one fits my universal slide magazines to scan all my slides. Especially the older slides in ISO 100, I didn't have the financial capacity for a 2.8 lens yet, it might be sufficient.

Later for the better pictures I can redo with a rental of the Nikon scanner.

Ronald

[Redskin301]

SquAdmin,

I am a customer of Scanit, its a very professional company and the results of the scans is really perfect.
they use the Nikon stuff to scan all the slides. I have already 10,000 negatives which are scanned by these
guys. You just bring your slides to them and within one or two weeks you receive them back, it saves al
lot of time which I don't have. Check my website for some results, the years 2004, 2004 and a big part of
2006 are scanned negatives!