I own a Wolverine F2D300 35mm to Digital Converter that I picked up for around $80 USD but they are no longer available. It looks like this one from the link you provided may have replaced it:

Wolverine F2D14 14 MP 35mm Slides and Negatives to Digital Image Converter for $89 USD

I would take it to the client and scan the negatives right there in front of them so that I never had to remove their negatives from their possession. Very easy to use. Scans directly to an SDHC card. No computer needed.

~jr

The Wolverine F2D Super 20MP 4-In-1 Film to Digital Converter is a little more expensive but it has much better resolution and contrast then the 14MP versions. However, it costs about $130 retail. If I remember correctly, the 20MP version is yellow and the 14MP versions come in either green or orange, depending on the uses.

If you do slides, the new 35mm adapter that allows you to push one slide after another rather than loading four slides into a tray, saves a great amount of time and effort.

In my experience, the scanned slides never look as good as the original slide unless you use a thousand(s) dollar scanner, but the 20MP converters do a great job for the price.

I picked up an Epson Perfection V550 scanner this summer and am very impressed with the quality. It does optical 9600dpi transparency scans which can result in about 4250x6400 pixel images from a 35mm slide. That's a 27MP image. It also does reflective scanning far better than my old HP scanjet, and quite a bit faster. If i recall correctly, i think it was about $270.

I own the predecessor of the v500 and it does everything I need with old negatives.
Minne is a Perfection 4990, and i see them occasionally at thrift stores. One important feature is having enough light to punch through dense negatives, something lacking in consumer-ish flatbeds.

Depends where you live mate, but here in good old Blighty we have a cheapo supermarket called Aldi who often have weird and wonderful specials. Guess what?

https://www.aldi.co.uk/en/specialbuys/hurry-while-stocks-last/hurry-while-stocks-last-product-detail-page/ps/p/maginon-fs-500-film-scanner/

+1 Kelly, I have the V550 and it produces excellent quality scans from every type of film I have tried it on.

I have an old Epson Perfection 3200 PHOTO scanner, which can take film negatives or slide positives. It came with Silverfast software to tweak the best colour balance from the various film manufacturers. It worked well, but getting rid of fluff or dust on the film or scanner platform is the biggest problem.

Quite agreed. I'm about to launch into the process of scanning all the slides my dad took, some 15,000+ of them. Dust is a big problem, and some of them have grown some mold too. I'm toying with the heart-wrenching idea of removing them from the cardboard mounts and washing them and then rinsing with Kodak Photoflo to get them pristine and clean again. Of course, this would be a one-shot deal as i doubt i'd ever mount them again, and i'd be losing everything my dad wrote on the mounts (after i copy it, of course). But, i'm thinking it would be worth it to get the best images possible.

Once they're digitized and copies distributed to all the family and on the family website, i can't think anyone would ever want to go to the effort of looking at the physical slides again. On the other hand, if i at least keep the film itself it'll only take about 1/1000th as much space that all the slide trays now occupy.

As well as a (not inexpensive) Nikon Coolscan 5000EX with 250-slide magzine and strip-feeder (!), I have a cheaper Prime Film 3650U unit which works fine. www.scanace.com . My model obsolete.

geoff

Unfortunately I bought the V550 to scan my wife's collection of Kodachrome slides, and when I went to do so, I found the emulsion on every one of them had rolled up into little crinkles and was falling off the base. She had stored them in our walk-in robe room and had always left the door open. The problem was, we had an evaporative air cooler that filled the air with moisture, and it ruined every slide. Not to mention causing mildew among many of our clothes.

So sad. I have aboout 6000 travel slides to scan, but all fortunately in good nick !

geoff

Restoring the contrast and color is easy. However the mold and scratches and stuff will take you about 15 to 30 minutes per slide with the view expanded to 200 or 300 times with at least Adobe Photoshop Elements software using the smudge and blend stuff. If your old you might not have enough time left to do all those slides.
JJK

A huge thanks to everyone who replied. It looks like she'll be going the Wolverine route so a special thanks to JR and Jillian for their recommendations.

Mike

If you belong to Costco, they have an internet special on the Wolverine F2D - Super Plus 4 - in- 1 Digital Converter for $79.99 until Christmas. The ad says "while supplies last."

http://www.costco.com/Wolverine-F2D-Super-Plus-4-in-1-Film-to-Digital-Converter.product.100135167.html

Just remember that what these converters do is take a Digital photo of your slide. It is not scanned, as such. Any dust, scratches, etc. are captured with the photo. So, clean, clean, clean. Also, I then run the resulting photos through an editor for final color shifting, spot removal, etc.

Good luck!

Thanks Jillian!! My friend is a Costco member so this is very helpful.

I know about blowing the dust off the negatives with a photo blower brush but what do you recommend for cleaning things like fingerprints?

Mike

I started in QC at a Technicolor film lab in 1970. Ended with Eastman Kodak in the 90's.

-- Don't blow on negatives with your mouth. It blows spittle which causes permanent emulsion rings.

-- You can use isopropyl alcohol on plain cotton cloth to clean negs and transparencies. [EDITED] Stronger cleaners (trichlorethylene) should only be used with ventilation and skin protection.

-- Wear cotton gloves at all times.

When scanning, don't use "auto" which clips whites and blacks. Use a full range 16 bit (per channel) scan, then adjust your levels, range, and curves in Photoshop. Finally, save in 8 bit. With scans, it's important not to lock image pixels at 0 or 255, but work in 1-254 space in most situations. You'll have to test to see if your scanner software's dust and scratch removal is a help or hindrance. Don't sharpen during the scan. A little unsharp mask or median is alright.

-- Fingerprints are usually permanent because they impress the emulsion. Soaking in lukewarm distilled water with a drop of PhotoFlo is a last resort and must be undertaken very carefully. Hang dry with a little binder clip. I occasionally buy unopened bottles of PhotoFlo at estate sales and store in the fridge.

Here's a scan of my great-grandfather from a thinnish 1950's negative that presented some challenges, particularly pulling out shadow detail.
In order to get some detail in the eyes, I had to let patches of sky go at 255.

Thanks musicvid10! All great advice. :)

Just to add to musicvid's usual great advice:

I think the correct alcohol is isopropyl alcohol. Denatured alcohol is a mixture of isopropyl and ethanol, with additional additives to make is unpalatable (it is poisonous). Make sure to get a 100% solution of isopropyl. You can get this at both photo stores, and also high-end electronics supply houses (it is used to clean electronic equipment). The stuff you get at the pharmacy is mixed with water, which makes it take longer to dry, may leave a residue, and doesn't do as good a job removing the gunk.

Another good cleaner is Edwall film cleaner, which is what I use. With the rapid decline of traditional film-based photography, this is getting tougher to find. There are other film cleaners as well, but they are even more hazardous (you want to use all of these with the window open).

Cheap scanners do not include dirt and scratch removal. You might want to consider getting a really good Nikon scanner, used, on eBay. Sell it back when you are finished. They are actually increasing in value as they become more scarce, so it will probably cost you nothing, once you sell it back.

Retouching takes forever, and anything you can do to avoid spending that time is worth it, therefore a scanner with dirt removal is a requirement, IMHO. I've retouched over a quarter million photos over the past decade, and it is a laborious process. I have to do this, even with a good scanner, because I often scan prints and also Kodachromes, neither of which can be scanned using the dirt removal features offered on the better scanners.

This photo had to be re-touched by hand. It was the only photo an older gentleman had of his son when he was younger. The son, now in his 40's, was dying of brain cancer, and he desperately wanted a good picture. I spent almost a day of my life retouching this one photo. The blotches on top of the pin-stripe shirt were an amazingly difficult challenge.



[Oops, I accidentally cropped the right side of the "after" portion of the photo when I uploaded it. No time to fix that now ...]

Yes, I misspoke on the alcohol for general use. Isopropyl is best.
Denatured alcohol is not a home product, and it's nasty.
It's also cheap, and that's why commercial places use it.

*Nice job on the scan above.

I was all set to buy the Costco scanner, based on numerous positive reviews on B&H and Amazon websites. But one of the commenters said she got excellent results just projecting her slides onto matte white posterboard and then photographing them with a decent digital camera in manual mode.

Anyone try this? I have a ton of Kodachrome slides.

I'd suggest a good slide scanner rather than projecting.
Get one with plenty of stops of light if you're doing b/w or Kodachrome.