Brian Pears said:
Can anyone please tell me if any of the popular (ie cheap) scanners
will handle 2.5 X 3.5 inch negatives without the need for a
separately purchased adapter?
If not, what is the cheapest way of tackling these - I have a few
hundred, so having these scanned professionally is not an option.
What do you mean by "cheap"<g>?
The Epson flatbed scanners such as the 4870 that also do film will do a
fairly decent job. The general rule of thumb for scanning film on flatbed
scanners is that if you expect the rated resolution, you'll be disappointed,
but if you expect one half the rated resolution, you'll probably be
satisfied with the results. If you just need images for the web, look for
the cheapest Epson or Canon flatbed that'll do medium format. Even 1200 dpi
(half of 2400 dpi) is a lot of pixels from 2.5 x 3.5 film.
You can also try shooting the negs with a digital camera and inverting in
Photoshop. You'll need to figure out how to backlight them evenly, though,
and a lot of digital cameras have horrendous barrel distortion in macro
mode. Also, good 2.5 x 3.5 inch negatives have a lot more information than a
5, or even 8, MP digital cameras can capture.
Are your negs really 2.5 x 3.5 inches and not 56 mm x 82mm on a 60mm wide
strip? If the latter, the film holders that come with the Epson will work.
If they're really a larger size, you'll have to jury-rig your own holders.
(Not hard, but you have to copy the _outline_ of the Epson holders closely
since there's a notch through which the scanner reads the baseline exposure
or checks the lamp or something. Then any holes you cut out inside that area
and within the scanner's scanning area will be fine.)
David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan
