Slide scanning recommendations

Hi all,

I have several hundred slides I would like to scan. I figure I have a
couple of options:
1) Pay a professional to scan them
2) Buy a slide scanner (prefer with automatic loading tray).

I'd like to be able to comfortably blow the images up to 11" x 14" for
printing after scanned.

What is the most cost effective way to do this? Professional scanning or
perhaps buying a used slide scanner (eBay or locally)? If I buy a used
scanner, any recommendations for a slide scanner under $200 or maybe even
under $150? Any rec's for a slide scanning service?

Thanks,

BN

"BRN" <brn3a.DeleteThis@removethistoemail.virginia.edu> wrote in message
news:drlsr8$bi4$1@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU...
> Hi all,
>
> I have several hundred slides I would like to scan. I figure I have
> a couple of options:
> 1) Pay a professional to scan them
> 2) Buy a slide scanner (prefer with automatic loading tray).
>
> I'd like to be able to comfortably blow the images up to 11" x 14"
> for printing after scanned.
>
> What is the most cost effective way to do this? Professional
> scanning or perhaps buying a used slide scanner (eBay or locally)?
> If I buy a used scanner, any recommendations for a slide scanner
> under $200 or maybe even under $150? Any rec's for a slide scanning
> service?
>

There are several threads in this and other rec.photo.* groups about
slide scanning. Most of what they contain is good fact- and
experience-based advice. The bottom line is always: you are going to
pay, either through money, or money and time.

Good slide digitizing costs money, and unless you walk the subject
matter into a shop where it is done on the premises, there is a chance
the slides will be lost and gone forever.

Good slide digitizers cost money. The higher-end ones keep their value
pretty well, so you can do what you have to do and get out by
reselling. More likely, you'll become attached to the machine and its
skills, and keep it around.

On the subject of skills, slide digitizing requires some. Few if you
aren't too critical, with auto-modes reasonably well-tuned by now;
much more if you have subject slides that are of real worth, and you
want the best from them. Even basic life-to-life scanning takes
learning time.

Some of the grunt labor is removed from the equation by Digital ICE
and its associates, without which scanning-at-home is wasteful and may
be of a nature to extinguish itself due to the excessive time and
attention required to eliminate spots and scratches.

There does remain some grunt labor: you do have to read the manual,
learn which of myriad options suit your project, and feed the monster
(scanner). Good scanning programs allow for modifications to be
applied across batches, and the (expensive) batch-feeders will help.
The one I know about will do fifty without attention. I have no
experience with the length of time it takes to do such a batch, but
I'd reckon it depends on the detail in the photo and the number of
optional features called into play: multiple scans to draw out detail,
ICE, etc., are boons, but they cost, too.

Then, of course, there is storage of the images. BIG files. Scanned at
4000ppi, an ordinary 35mm scan will take up about 60 MB of your space.
Way too few of those fit on a CD-ROM, so get your DVD burner ready.
That stuff is relatively inexpensive in dollars, but it takes time to
write and verify.

You can see the underlying point: Unless you intend adopting Scanner
Operator as a lifestyle, at least temporarily, you may be better off
researching the pay-for-it providers in your area and becoming a Good
Customer, paying in dollar installments rather than
slice-out-of-your-life payments.

You pays you money/time and you makes you choice.

Now in a perfect world I'd be in a position to select, teach, and
supervise an intelligent, intense intern who would do the work and
take the blame for booboos, while I contemplate the philosophy of
capturing an preserving moments of time for all time. (What's it good
for, anyway? Some day it will all be dust.)

Me, I'm working on my fifth or sixth scanner. Of course I'm one of
those who enjoys the process as much as the product. Usually.

--
Frank ess