Slide Scanner – Four Pros And Cons That No One Tells You About

A Slide Scanner is used to create new copies from your outdated negative photos.An average slide scanner in the market is able to produce high definition 5 megapixel images from 35mm films.

Advantages of a slide scanner

• By having a slide scanner at home,we can store digital copies of our 35mm negative films,we can preserve our family memories.If you are like me and have a ton of negatives from all great occations in your life,owning a slide scanner gives you the ability to make a digital copy of your 35mm images from the comfort of your home andstore them in the hard drive of your Computer.I would also advise you create an additional backup of your images to a pen drive as the chances of getting your data corrupted in your hard disks are high.

•  When you have a slide scanner at your home,you can keep taking pictures with your film based camera and later scan and transfer your best shots to digital images.As we all know some pictures are best taken by film based cameras rather than digital ones as film based cameras are more compactable with various lighting than digital cameras.If you sent the films you have taken for processing the store would create images for every image in the negative.Having a slide scanner allows you to choose which images you want to keep.

•  Most slide scanners can edit and crop your 35mm negative films before converting them into digital images .You can retouch or modify your digital images from your computer with any image editing software like photoshop.

Features of a Good slide scanner.

• The enviroment slide scanner is used:Flatbed scanners are designed for use with  photographic prints,page document etc.Flatbed scanners is commonly used for both text and film scanning

• Film scanners are specially designed to scan film and negatives.They offer better resolution for film and negatives than flatbed scanners.So film scanners are more commonly used for high  volume scanning works.You can also adjust film scanner to scan each frame seperately,adjusting resolution per frame.

• Image quality of slide scanner: The Image quality of the slide scanner is determined by color depth/bit and resolution.A 36 to 48 bit suits most users.Resolution is measured in dpi.You should look out for atleast 2400dpi to get a desent scan of films and negatives.You should also pay strict attention to Dynamic range ,it is used to determine the brilliant to dark range that the scanner picks up.A dynamic range of 3.2 would be the minimum to acheive a good scan.

• Slide Scanners Scan Speed Scan speed is an important issue if you are considering to use your slide scanner for high volume scanning.10-20 seconds to scan an average 8*10 image is better than average speed.

• Slide Scanners compactibility:Check if the slide scanner is compactable with your existing computer hardware and Operating System before purchase.Ask the vender about the customer support and so before leaving the shop.

• Slide Scanner’s are Expensive.

One of the con’s of a slide scanner is its price.A good slide scanner i would recommend is the Epson Perfection v500 photo scanner.It’s the least expensive film and negative scanner that includes ICE to reduce scraches and dust at under $200 USD.