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Re: [LUG] Slides to prints

 

On Sun, 18 Aug 2019, Neil wrote:

So, my question is, does anyone on the list have any experience with this? Suggestions, recommendations gratefully accepted,

When digital photography was starting to become realistic (round about the 5mp camera level) I bought a scanner to scan in all my old slides and negatives. Sadly I bought a manual feed scanner. Hindsight and all that. Get an auto feed one that can take a whole magazine at a time.

I also bought a copy of VueScan for Linux. It's better than SANE. Not expensive for what it is.

However, here is the reality - you need a bloody good scanner. Mine is SCSI based (not that that's important, USB is fine), but doesn't have IR dust removal. This is essential on old slides (as well as having the software, like VueScan to support it).

Then there's the time taken. Far too long. I gave up in the end - mostly decided by photographing a wedding for a friend in both film and digital (5MP camera - Nikon CoolPix 5000) then scanning the film and making prints from both. The Nikon was perfectly capable of producing A4 size prints, so their album was mostly from that camera with a few larger ones from the film camera scanned (with a few traditional wet prints made)

So if you are going to do that I'd suggest getting an automatic feed scanner - Nikon do a good one that has IR dust removal. VueScan has a "workflow" setting that will process 1000 at a time from a feeder and can store images in raw format for processing in 20 years time when processing technology has improved.

But it will take time. I still have 3 large boxes of slides and negatives that I'll probably never scan, nor see again.

Good luck.

Gordon

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