Light boxes… are very useful, for sorting out slides.
I use an Epson V600 for Negatives, slides and printed Photos. It works very well. It can do medium format and 35mm film.
A few years ago, I digitalized a thousand Dias with a dedicated 35 mm film scanner by Minolta, and I concur with you it is a lot of work (but worth it in my opinion).
It would be probably faster today with a recent camera like my Nikon Z6iii and the suitable adapter.
I have asked friends, looked up the internet, listened to the suggestions on this thread (thanks!) and have a better idea of what I want …
I am thinking of …
Plustek OpticFilm 8300i SE
I have asked the company some questions. Basically it comes with a software package called …
Silverfast
As far as I can tell it removes scratches and dust from scanned negatives. The problem is that it seems to be locked to one computer. I cant put it on my desktop and laptop and use the scanner with whichever one I want to use at the time.
Fair enough.
BUT my computer is wearing out and it is not at all clear that, if I get a new computer, I will be able to keep using the software. (My current computer is Windows-7, my laptop Windows-10).
If I buy the scanner and change my computer in the next year and have not scanned all my negatives what happens?
Annoying …
I actually contacted Silverfast with the question “Can I transfer software?” and they replied …
“yes - we allow 3 active installations per version of SilverFast so multiple installations are not a problem. As long as the operating system is supported, you can use SilverFast on that machine.”
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Pro photog here who used to have a $10K Imacon scanner before it went bust in 2020. I now use a Nikon D850 on a copy stand with a 1:1 macro lens and light table. I use Negative Lab Pro software to do the inversions in Lightroom, though there are other ways. IMO the scans are almost as good as the Imacon, sometimes even better, though it seems I need to do more post processing with the Nikon files (note I’m talking about b&w negs with lots of flash use - slides are much easier). I’ve been making 24X36 museum prints from the Nikon scans using Topaz Gigapixel AI to uprez.
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