Which scanner to use for scanning photo archive of thousands of photo negatives?

[Sunshine7]

Hi all,

Am looking for ideas for what scanner to use to scan many thousands of photo negatives for a non-profit organization. As the 'archivist' I've been scanning everything for them for years on a Canon canoscan 9500F and it's taking too long and the quality is not always good enough (since scanning at high resolution takes a long time on this scanner previous volunteers scanned at lower resolution and I may have to redo these as well). The negatives and photos and slides are from 1975 onwards and have faded and sometimes are scratched etc.

I am planning to fundraise in order to raise the money to buy a used second hand scanner that can batch scan photo negatives, and possibly slides as well. It would be useful if it could batch scan photo's but I could do this on a semi local cruse scanner  which has a vacuum plate even though this will be pricey, or maybe I would need to buy another scanner for that as well. Because the archives are not kept in a temperature controlled space I would like to get everything done in the next 5 months or so working on this full time since everything is deteriorating.

Scans will be mainly used for page large color photo's in books (these are different size books and the book size depends on the size the author wants). Some, maybe 25 or so, will be used to print out and will be for sale and will need to be enlarged. I eventually also would like to hand print a sepia colored photo book on my Epson 9900 using around 200 of the photo's scanned.

What do you think, any ideas? I could possibly rent a Hasselblad X5 but not sure yet for how much, and it may be more economical to buy a used scanner instead. I have also been offered the use of a Lanovia 550C if I pay for the upgrade of the board which comes to around $1500 and then I need to transport the Lanovia and it is very heavy and we are two hours away from where the lanovia is (which is stored in a container). I also could not find any info about scanning photo negatives on there and if there are holders for the negatives for the Lanovia, and Fuji does not offer support any longer.

I think I should be able to raise at least several thousand USD and perhaps more, up to USD7000 for the scanner, basically I need to make this project happen and scan things once the best way possible for what we use this for and without needing to redo them. I do not mind about disk space, compared to the time it takes to scan all this a couple of 4TB hard drives are the least of my concern.

Thanks for suggestions!

[Mark D Segal]

You have options:

(1) If this is a one-time scanning job, your best bet may be to send all the material to ScanCafe http://www.scancafe.com/and let them do it for you. They've processed over 100 million scans, their prices are low, the quality good, and as far as I can determine from conversation over the Internet, reliable. Have a look at their website and determine what the bill would be for what you need done.

(2) If however you will have an on-going need for a versatile, high quality scanner apart from this job, or wish to keep this job "in-house", you could buy an Epson V850 scanner with the optional fluid mount accessory (all told less than $1000 in the USA), and for a small incremental price upgrade the bundled version of SilverFast SE+ to SilverFast Ai 8 Studio (see the SilverFast website for details http://www.silverfast.com/show/upgrade-v800-v850/en.html). The batch scanning you are looking to do depends very much on the efficiency of the scanning software and there is nothing better or more efficient on the market for batch scanning than SilverFast 8 combined with this relatively high quality flatbed scanner; I've tested this and it's good. Disclaimer: I'm not biased because I wrote a book on this software, but I wrote the book because I've been using this software for years and find it best of class. I have also written a comprehensive review of the Epson V850 scanner, which also looks at numerous other scanning options, published on this website (https://luminous-landscape.com/epson-v850-pro-scanner-context/

(3) "Scan" it all with a camera and process the raw files in an image editing application. This can work well, and it's fast when properly set-up, but be warned: to beat a good scanner it needs high quality equipment, and for the negatives some additional software; and the incremental cost depends on what you already own.  A very sharp, well-corrected macro lens is a must and they don't come all that cheap. You also need a mounting system and remote exposure trigger to ensure the camera will remain rock-steady during exposure. I have also written an article for this website on that option: https://luminous-landscape.com/scannerless-digital-capture-and-processing-of-negative-film-photographs/ - it deals with negatives, but the principles apply to other media as well.

I would recommend a very cautious approach to the purchase of exotic discontinued equipment, especially if used. There is a risk of non-repairable breakdown due to dwindling service and spare parts.

[SecondFocus]

If you use a service, I would be cautious as many of them send their work to India. Personally I would not trust my only existing negatives to be sent to India and I do not care how many people have done it successfully or how cheap it might be. One USA based service i have heard good about is http://www.scandigital.com

[Mark D Segal]

I have no connection to Scancafe, but I have seen their output, hence my suggestion as an option. As for safety, they can scan them in either India or the USA, but I believe for the USA at a higher price. Check their website. My reading of other peoples' experience on the Internet suggests that altogether the probability of loss is extremely low and can occur domestically as well as internationally. Scancafe offers sizable guarantees on shipping loss, but of course money does not replace the photos. You should of course satisfy yourself about shipping risk by doing your own research to find evidence of experience before opting for either international or domestic service of this kind.

[Sunshine7]

Thanks for the advise! I looked at the ScanCafe website and from what you said believe they do very good scans, but we would like  to keep this in house and would simply never send these out. I would have to travel to India myself to deliver them and pick them up, which in fact I would not mind doing! But very good to know about them. I've been to India many times.

We have around 70 very thick photobooks left to scan filled with photo's negatives and slides, all mixed up. THe Epson v850 looks very good and I wished I had used this for the scans I've done previously, but I wonder if there is something I can use in which I can put many photo negatives, 40 to 60 or so, and then scan these as a batch. It seems the Epson v850 would not be able to scan these many at the time?

I find what takes a lot of time is putting in the negatives, slides, photo's on a small holder, scanning them, taking them out putting them back etc etc. and I would like to see if I can do a larger amount of negatives/slides at the time. The rate we were going is to have one person full time scan things, and it would take a full month to do one photobook. I now am looking to get everything left scanned in 4 to 5 months working on it full time myself.

I did test the silverfast software a couple of weeks ago, but it leaves large watermarks all over the image. I could not properly evaluate the software because of this, because some of the details against I was checking were not visible because of the watermark right over those areas. I found it looked very different than just using the scanner software that came with the scanner, however I loved the batch scanning function, and guess once I have figured out which scanner to use I will revisit the Silverfast software and use your book as well to make the best scans I can with this.

I had no idea that i could use a camera for this as well, I will read the pdf file to see how this could work. I do have access to a Cruse Syncron museum scanner but so far have not heard about scanning photo negatives on there, just the photo's themselves which worked great in a test I did.

Any other scanner options that can scan larger amounts of photo negatives at the time or that have a feeder?

[Petrus]

I scanned a couple of thousand glass mounted slides simply by building a lightbox with standard hotshoe flash. Camera was a Nikon D800 with 60mm macro lens. It took about 30 seconds each to shoot, another 30 seconds each to do the RAW conversion, adjustment and cropping in LightRoom. Results were good enough for my purposes, and actually more detail was found in many pictures than what we had seen when projecting images the old school way.

With the Nikon scanner I have it would have taken at least 5 minutes per picture.

[Mark D Segal]

We have around 70 very thick photobooks left to scan filled with photo's negatives and slides, all mixed up. THe Epson v850 looks very good and I wished I had used this for the scans I've done previously, but I wonder if there is something I can use in which I can put many photo negatives, 40 to 60 or so, and then scan these as a batch. It seems the Epson v850 would not be able to scan these many at the time?

I find what takes a lot of time is putting in the negatives, slides, photo's on a small holder, scanning them, taking them out putting them back etc etc. and I would like to see if I can do a larger amount of negatives/slides at the time.

Any other scanner options that can scan larger amounts of photo negatives at the time or that have a feeder?

The maximum number of images you can scan at one pass in the V850 is 12 mounted 35mm slides or 18 negatives in strips of 3x6 if you use the Epson holders.

The reason why I suggested you get the Fluid Mount Assembly (it's a glass tray at the right height) if you obtain this scanner is that you can use this instead of the holders. The technique I find works best is not to use fluid, but to buy a piece of Museum Glass (it is a trademark), put the film on the FMA, put the Museum Glass on top of film, close the lid and scan.

I don't know of any other high quality, affordable scanners in current production that can handle batch scanning in larger volumes than the V850, but I don't know everything on the market, so this doesn't mean to say they don't exist. I suggest you do a search.

[Sunshine7]

ok, thanks!!