I wondered if anyone had a good solution for scanning transparencies. A mate has quite a few hundred of them. He also has been given a Scanwit slide scanner. That seems to be a good solution except it was supposed to come with a SCSI card but that isn't with it. It's a 25 pin SCSI card and I had one amongst the old cards that I threw out about a month back.
I can find *a* SCSI card on eBay but I suppose I'm not confident that I will find Windows 7 drivers for the device as it seems pretty old, so I don't want to suggest he buys one.
Someone on t'internet reports that it worked for them in the serial port. He has an old machine in the loft which might have one of those, but I don't see that happening.
I see the Scanwit has come up before here, (Spamcan) - is it good for bulk copying? (He realises it is going to take some time...)
Or has anyone found a better way?
This is a once-off piece of work and he wants to keep it low cost.
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As it's a one-off, get someone else to do it? Prices vary but seem to be about 20-30p per slide I think eg.
www.mr-scan.co.uk
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As it 'appens I dusted off my Scanwit to scan a few slides the other week. I decided trying to get it to work with Win7 was probably going to be a faff, and now have SWMBO's old XP machine dedicated to the scanner having migrated her to a Win7 machine.
Probably worth asking/searching about Win7 and the SCSI card on the relevant Yahoo group, I recall they've been discussed there and the group is still just about alive.
groups.yahoo.com/neo/search?query=2720%20scanwit
In terms of batch scanning, well it ain't going to be that quick, there's no equivalent of the fancy/expensive Nikon Coolscan bulk slide magazines. Having a second slide holder pre-loaded would speed it up, but they tended to break so are rare second hand. It used to take me about an hour and a half to do raw scans of a 36 exposure film, once I knew what I was doing.
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>>I wondered if anyone had a good solution for scanning transparencies
You can use your phone;
Build a [Heath Robinson] frame so that the phone will be held reasonably steady and consistently, place the slides in front of the lens, take picture. Even easier if the phone camera has voice control.
I used a fruit box, one of those flimsy wooden things, and kept sliding the documents I wished to capture underneath it. Doing the first one and getting it right was a pain, doing the next 129 was actually quite fast.
And if he hasn't got a suitable phone, surely he can borrow one?
Also, of course, free.
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Hmmm there's a thought. Must need some back-lighting though, a torch would do it I guess.
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I used a lamp, but it was one of those cheapies from Halfords intended to be used in tents, I think, as a general light rather than anything directional like a torch.
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Some years ago I bought a CanoScan 8800f Scanner just for this very purpose. It wasn't a cheap bit of kit but it did, and occasionally now still does, a brilliant job.
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I did the same - had a load to do, did the sums on getting them done by someone else, found the cost of a Canon scanner (about £100 I think) was a quarter of that and I was prepared to put in the time.
The holder does four at once, and it takes about three minutes to do those on my chosen settings.
Three minutes is about as long as it takes me to check and tart about in a minor fashion with those four, name them and file them nicely, so then the next four are ready. Throughput is therefore pretty reasonable once you're on a roll.
Quality is excellent.
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I recently bought a slide scanner from Lidl - £29.99
I have yet to try it.
I have hundreds/ thousands of slides to convert .
Perhaps this winter ?
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Scanning slides - Focusless
