Kia ora tatou:

Not my usual post.

Yesterday this email found its way to me:

Good morning

Can you please advise :

I have about 5000 35mm slides (transparencies), which have been in storage for nearly 6 years

Recently I viewed most of them.  General condition is good, but dust & fungus appears on some, a few have become discoloured (mauve/purple) and with some of the oldest, the emulsion is totally destroyed.

I want to copy to digital format and endeavour to restore where possible, using PhotoShop.

I have looked at several scanners – 2 Nikon Coolscan models are way too expensive, 2 Epson Perfection models (V700 & V500) are pricey, and 2 Canon’s (CS8800F and CS5600F) are affordable.  Would there be any reason not to get one of the Canon scanners? Are there other scanners which I should look at?

Ordinarily I would just deal direct, but this was the second question of its type in a fortnight, and it got me to thinking about the slides I had lying in storage…somewhere, and about all the slides that must be mouldering in cupboards throughout the land. I am sure many of us have good intentions about turning all those memories into digital format… at some point.

I know I did.

However it is probably a good time to put up a post on the subject and invite your comments.

I will be honest. I haven’t used film for a couple of years now, so it necessitated a walk back into the dustier recesses of my mental library (the cleaner doesn’t seem to dust back there these days), and he certainly hasn’t pulled the curtains in quite some time, so I had to scratch around for a bit. But I found the right section..rather easily in fact, to my surprise. It needed a little research to cross-check what was available, and herewith may I offer my findings and my thoughts.

Firstly there is your choice of scanner, and here it will depend on the film format you are scanning. For medium and large format film a flatbed in fine. I have an Epson 4990 which does a superb job (Yes, Garry, I know where my scanner is) on larger formats, but its performance on 35mm is frankly substandard. It will not give optimum resolution, dynamic range or tonalities for 35mm. The latest model Epson, at $NZ 950 is certainly not cheap. There are also issues with focusing on the film plane for flatbed scanners. There are flatbeds that do a great job, but they are in the region of $50k (you might be able to buy one second-hand from a graphic studio which no longer uses it).However, if you only intend to make scans for enlargement to 6 x 4″ or 5 x 7″, then one of these will be fine-ish.

For high-quality  35mm scans,  there is only really one answer- a dedicated film scanner. This will give you a much sharper, more highly-resolved file. As far as I can tell, the range of models on the market has dropped considerably. Looking at them, there are really only two contenders.

The Gold Standard of pro-am scanners available new today is probably the Nikon Coolscan. They come with dust reduction (ICE) and are both powerful and fast. But they are not cheap. More affordable is the Plustek OpticFilm 7200i SE Film scanner at around $600. The downside of this machine, according to the reviews I have read, is that while it does a great job, it is somewhat slow in doing it. You can source one  here.

Alternatively you could hunt down a second-hand one…  A quick check showed a number for sale on Trademe. The Minolta scanners are particularly good. If you find a DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400 II, grab it with both hands! Amazon lists a number for  sale.

Then team it up with Ed Hamrick’s Vuescan, arguably the best piece of scanning software out there for amateurs and pro’s. I used it back in the day, and I swear by it. At $US 89.95, it kicks much more expensive applications over the back fence. Ed continues to support it and write improvements. Highly recommended. Another option is Lasersoft Silverfast. At Euro 104, it isn’t cheap and frankly I would recommend Vuescan instead.

Finally for all those faded slides, you might want to try the KODAK DIGITAL ROC Professional Plug-In, available here. Developed by Applied Science Fiction, later bought out by Kodak, It seems to do a good change of reversing fading, but it does seem to need a reasonably grunty machine to function smoothly.

For more information on the Dark Art of scanning, you might want to try Wayne Fulton’s site.

I hope that has been of help. Good Luck.

Now, while I am wandering around in the archives, is there still a darkroom aficionado out there, with ferri-stained fingers and pallid complexion, whom I can help?