Slide/negative scanners

So my dad has decided he wants to digitise his old photo collection.

There's far too many for it to be practical to employ the services of one of these companies that you send them to and they'll scan them for you, so the only other option seems to be purchasing a scanner and doing it ourselves.

Obviously I'm doing the rounds, reading up bit, looking at reviews and Googling 'best film scanner' but I was hoping that any NBR members familiar with such matters might be able to offer up their opinions and/or experiences.

 

How much do you want to spend?

Options:
Epson, Canon, and Nikon. I'm sure about any other brands. I normally use Epson or Nikon scanners.

 

That's not quite decided-upon yet, it's my dad's birthday next week so it's going to be a joint present between myself and my two sisters but neither of them have much to spend just now.

We'll say somewhere in the £100-150 range to begin with but I think it really comes down to the law of diminishing returns, if spending a wee bit extra will get us a much better unit, then it's something we'll seriously consider but if we can get something nearly as good for half the price, then I see no point in spending more than we need to.

 

For that price range look at the Epson V500, 600. Also the Canon 8000F and 9000F. I own the V600.

The Epson Perfection V700 or V750-M Pro, and Nikon Coolscan series scanners are the higher end scanners. These are great, but are more expensive. You can try and find deals on the V700, but I'm not sure what is available in your area

 

I have an HP Scanjet G4050, and my dad has the Canon CanoScan 8800F. Both do a great job with slides and negatives. Both have an MSRP of $199, but often sell for less. The G4050 can hold more slides/negatives at once, but the Canon is somewhat faster. The HP has 6-color scanning, which improves the quality, but makes the scan times over twice as long. The Canon has very minimal warmup times, since it's an LED scanner (the HP has 15-30 second warmup times).

I can't really tell you the quality of the 8800F, but the G4050's scan come out pretty good, as long as you keep the scanner glass and the slides/negatives clean, and you set the resolution to at least 1200dpi.

Also, HP makes the Scanjet G4010, which is essentially a G4050 with a cheaper lid/TMA. It retails for $149, but you can only hold 5 slides at once (as oppose to 16), or one 6-frame negative strip (as opposed to five 6-frame strips). It also uses plastic hinges instead of metal.

I have also used a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000ED (since replaced with the 5000ED), which is a dedicated slide/negative only scanner. It's much more expensive than the HP or the Canon ($1000-$2500), but the quality is far better, especially regarding dust/scratch removal.