Please help Lydia Leftcoast find a slide scanner.

She has a ton of slides she wants to scan into iPhoto, and the Macintosh group isn't a very active forum. I suggested the Konika/Minolta slide/neg scanner because a friend of mine has it, and that's it's reasonably priced, but do you guys have any other options for her?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=233x2956

BTW: Lydia, if you need pointers on the iPhoto editing controls, let me know. It does a pretty darn good job for color accuracy and contrast, but it's a little touchy, and not as extensive, nor will it fix blemishes and dust as Photoshop does. The terminology is what gets people stuck. What does warm/cool mean? How is exposure different than brightness, etc.

issue of Outdoor Photographer. I believe it was in response to reader letters asking the same question.

Basically, unless you're planning on blowing them up to HUGE size (i.e. if your only plan is to print 8x10's or 9x13s or display them on line), a simple flat bed scanner with a slide accessory will work fine.

Sure you could spend a thousand dollars or more on a dedicated slide scanner, but unless you're doing poster size prints, you won't gain a lot by doing so.

The Konica-Minolta scanners ARE very nice, not too expensive, but they only allow you to scan slides, if you ever want to scan anything else in the future, you're out of luck.

BUT, you can get a scanner that will do what you need from Canon, HP, etc. and give you versatility for other things in the future.

You can scan the slides, get excellent results for moderate printing and on-line display for under $200, or you can get better results for printing purposes, but spend almost double the price.

There are arguments to be made for both, it all comes down to what your end-goal with the images is.

That's a good, saleable wall-mounted and framed size

...which is a flatbed scanner that can handle 35mm and medium-format (both transparencies and negatives), plus, with some playing around, it will also handle archaic formats like the old 126 Instamatic film.

The results, once I got over the initial learning curve, were surprisingly good. For example, here is a scan of a Kodachrome slide taken almost thirty years ago:



Is it as good on 35mm material as a dedicated scanner like the Konica/Minolta 5400 or a Nikon Coolscan? Probably not, but close enough as far as I'm concerned, especially considering the 4490's versatility and $249 price tag versus around $599 for the cheapest of the decent dedicated 35mm scanners.

One thing I would note, though, is that you can't expect to just drop your slides in, hit the scan button, and get perfect results. I consider the incoming scan to be the raw material for a finished image rather than the image itself. Even with Digital ICE, a lot of touching-up is generally necessary, plus color and exposure correction. I would suspect, however, that this would be true for dedicated scanners as well.

can do slides as well. I have never done it, but it can and has an attachment to help with scanning the slides.

....flatbed print scanner with an in lid backlit slide/negative adaptor.About $100 at wallyworld last christmas...works well for me but not certain of software compatability with Macs....

Something they call the ImageZone. It's actually pretty handy.

Just about all printer/scanner makers have mac software included on the same CD.

....warm/cool refers to color shifts-enhancing reds is "warming" (think candlelight/campfire tones) and enhancing blues is "cooling" (think winter skies and ice formations).I'll leave exposure vs. brightness to others here more knowledgable than I (read:most anyone).

It has a slide cartridge and a film cartridge

http://konicaminolta.com/products/consumer/digital_camera/dimage/dimagescan-dual4/

I love it. It has been totally worth the money to scan all of our old film negs that we have lying around.

Oh, and I picked it up for under 200 bucks.. I think 189.00.. somewhere in the 180s.

I'm taking digital photos of old prints. Then with the bare bones iPhoto that came with my Mac, I'm cropping away the excess. So far it's worked fine. In a fit of creative ideas, I've finally excavated all my old travel photos out of boxes in my closet. Some of my older prints have faded to sepia. Not all from the same rolls of film, so it's print specific. Luckily, the negatives are in good condition. I'm trying to weigh the costs of either a scanner. Or just having a photo shop reprint and scan them for me. I was a poor world explorer and hence frugal with my photography, so there aren't large numbers of shots.

I want to put motion to my stills and create a movie, documentary style. Right now, I'm testing demos for Still Life and Photo to Movie.

Handles negatives, slides and transparencies. Also has a control panel that will send scans directly to the printer if desired.

It would actually cost less to digitalize the number of photos I have by buying a scanner. Fifteen dollars for the first twenty, then 75 cent for each addition photo. if you can trust them to scan correctly. They messed up the scans from my Morocco/Spain adventure. Twice.

Epson has received good reviews. Good price. Canon has something called CanScan (?), I'll look into.