Specialist Film Scanners

For the digital photographer, a specialist film scanner represents the best balance of features and quality. Modern film scanners can provide excellent-quality results at a very reasonable cost, producing reproduction-ready scans for a fraction of the cost of an SLR camera and less even than a middle-of-the-range digital camera.

The principal manufacturers, such as Nikon, Minolta, Kodak, Canon, Polaroid, and Microtek, all offer film scanners producing results, which, with a little work, are suitable for professional use. For 35 mm film originals, it is hard to beat the Nikon Coolscan range: the 4,000 ppi performance gives results that are more than adequate for the production requirements of virtually all publications. Minolta, Polaroid, and Nikon also make good-quality machines for larger film formats.

Most scanners accepted 35 mm both as cut film strips and mounted transparencies, using film carriers or slide holders that are inserted into a slot on the front of the machine. For the medium-format, all scanners accept cut film strips but some also accept mounted transparencies. Some scanners are available with an adaptor suitable for APS (Advanced Photo System) film cartridges.

Other useful features
If you have occasion to make many scans at a time, it is useful to be able to present a stack of transparencies to the scanner and leave it to work on them automatically - this is known as batch scanning. The Nikon scanners for 35 mm slides are very well designed in this respect.

Another useful feature is automatic dust removal, available on scanners from Polaroid, Nikon, and Minolta among others. When implemented well, this can save much post-scanning work eliminating the hairs and dust always found on film. Note, however, that scratches or other defects in the film may not be removed.



Steve J. Wilson is living in the United States and is a freelance writer since 2006, in digital photography related topics. If you are interested in some useful Digital Photography Classes, than you are in the right place.

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