I use an Epson Perfection 3200 photo scanner.
It has a transparency lighted top for scanning.
I find that the software you drive it with makes a big difference.
Using SilverFast 8 for CS5 Photoshop and three pass scanning creates a very acceptable file.
John

I have no idea whether anyone is still monitoring this thread (or not). I’ve been working my way through reviews (such as they are) of currently available film scanners. It appears that the best dedicated film scanners are out of production (Nikon and Minolta), so their prices are inflated. Current production includes units from Plustek and Pacific Image. Some of the flatbed scanners have their fans too.

I’m finding that getting reliable information about measured resolution and dynamic range is challenging, to say the least. I’ll continue looking through this website. Ultimately I might have to write up my findings and post them on my personal website.

Good hunting!

I have a large collection of old slides and negatives, and did quite a bit of research on this as well. As David stated, the era of quality film scanners is in the past, and currently only very expensive or very cheap ones are being produced. I ended up purchasing a used Nikon Super Coolscan 8000 from keh.com and have been very happy with the results.

I also have a large collection of slides and prints, some from my parents and many of my children. I had an older Epson Flatbed Scanner but recently replaced it with a new Epson V600 Flatbed Scanner. While not a high end scanner (retail about $230.00) Epson sells another one for about $800.00 but I couldn’t justify spending that much. The V600 allows scanning of negatives, Slides, and prints. I am very pleased with the results considering the age of some of these originals. I scanned some prints a few nights ago that were 75 years old. The colour restoration on slides is quite amazing. Some of these slides from the late 50s are quite washed out and the software restores them to a reasonable level. I am quite enjoying this scanning when I get time. It is interesting waiting for the scan to complete, then taking them into Aperture and making some adjustments. It really seems to bring some of these old images back to life when I see them on the big screen. They also look great on an iPad.

I’m considering buying one of the many Nikon Coolscan 5000’s available on eBay. A lot of money for a scanning project that will be done once, but there seems to be a very active secondary market for these scanners. My question: is 100MB TIFF the only output format? This seems like overkill for scans of old slides and really eats up drive space at a rapid clip. Does Aperture (or someone else) offer simple TIFF-to-JPEG conversion such as the RAW-to-JPEG conversion offered by the neat Applescript available through ApertureExpert.com? I have no experience with TIFF files and know nothing about their editability.

Film scanners offer user selectable resolution when scanning. I think 4,000 ppi is the native maximum for scanner mentioned. You can select what ppi works best for you and your needs.

Regardless what resolution you use, you can export the resulting TIFF files to jpeg from Aperture.

I too think that for many uses, a 100MB TIFF could be overkill, especially if you find you won’t likely ever need that much resolution.

I ended up buying a Coolscan 5000 on eBay for about $2,300 including the SF-210 batch slide feeder, plus Vuescan Pro. There’s an active-enough secondary market that I’m sure I can resell it easily once I’ve scanned all my slides and negatives. Other than a few minor idiosyncrasies and jams in the feeder from time to time, I’ve been very happy with the results. I’m creating 10-12MB jpeg images, which should be fine for my purposes, which are primarily archiving (the slides are fading) and infrequent family viewings.

I’m curious, though, about the Coolscan’s ability to produce RAW files, which I might want to create for the odd “art” shot that’s worthy of further editing. Are they readable/convertible/usable by Aperture? Or only by an editor like PS? If I can’t gain the greater flexibility for editing that RAW provides using RAW images from the Coolscan, should I create TIFF files instead? Are they as malleable in Aperture as RAW files? Thanks for any advice readers can provide.