How to Scan 35mm Slides – Part 2: Scanning Slides

Part 2: Scanning Slides

Back to Part 1: Cleaning Slides

The next step is to scan the slides in. For many years the “gold standard” scanner was the Nikon Super CoolScan 5000. This is the exact unit that many of the professional companies use. Unfortunately it has been out of production for many years and has a somewhat prohibitive price tag even for used units.

Luckily, Epson has stepped in with a multi-use Scanner that does just as good, possibly even better then the Nikon unit for a fraction of the price. The Epson Perfection V700 Photo Scanner is a good choice not only because it can do 12 slides at once, but because it can also do other formats. In addition the Epson software does pretty good job at rescuing damaged photographs and spot removal if cleaning didn’t work.

Fortunately, the older versions of this same scanner have dropped significantly in price. The previous mode, the V600 Photo Scanner can be had for under $200 now. There is little practical difference between these scanners for most people, especially if pictures are just going to be shown on the web. In fact I still use the Epson V300 Photo Scanner for most of my own preservation work.

You may be tempted to save money by going with one of the ION 35mm film scanners. While these do an OK job most of the time, they do have a tendency to create very large file sizes and they can badly blow out colors. In addition I found that it tended to be very dirty and actually added dust to my scanned film. The little bit of money saved buying one of these is not worth the additional time it’ll take to correct the pictures.

Here is an example of a picture scanned in from the ION Film Scanner. This is the Grand Canyon, on a sunny day. Note that I had to manipulate this photo just to reduce the file size from 12mb to 270kb. This included reducing the dimensions of the photo and saving it from TIFF to JPG.

Grand Canyon Scanned with ION Film Scanner

Part 3: Espon Scan Software