my brother has loaned me a load of negatives and slides Can anyone lend me or possibly sell me a negative scanner Or can anyone advise on a cheapish good one
You can actually get quite good copies of slides by projecting them and then photographing the projected image. A proper slide scanner with enough resolution to do a proper job will cost an arm & leg. Once you have a digital pic of the screen you can manipulate colour balance/ saturation etc
I did this and the final copies were better quality than the copies I made using a neg scanner attachment on a scanner.
I guess the same applies for negatives - but will confess I have never done the job with negatives.
Snod
5 Precepts of Buddhism seem appropriate. Refrain from taking life. Refrain from taking that which is not given. Refrain from misconduct. Refrain from lying. Refrain from intoxicants which lead to loss of mindfulness
It doesn't need a very expensive scanner to copy slides or negatives. The picture below is a raw scan using an HP Scanjet G3010 (note the red and green lines are on the original slide). The important thing is that the slide is clean and is scanned at a high enough resolution (this was scanned at 1482 dpi, which gives an image width of 2000 pixels).
Most of the negatives I scan are half plate or large format, these can be scanned directly on the glass with a white background behind them.
The Epson Perfection 2480 is a good scanner for that job. There is a section in the lid which back-lghts the slides and there is a slide holder to slot your slides into.
You need to set your scanner at full resolution to get decent quality.