Anyone have an Epson V600 scanner?

[OogieM]

and willing to do some timings of scanning several types of items at several different resolutions for me?

Other than eternal gratitude all I can offer is some yarn, or a beer if you come to Paonia Colorado ;-)

What I'd like is the time to scan into separate files color slides at 1200, 2400 and 4800 resolution. Need number of slides scanned and the total time.

Similarly scan color 35mm film negatives at same resolutions. Also need to know how many images scanned and total time.

Lastly if possible scanning of 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 film, I have slides, color negatives and B&W negatives in this size. Same set of resolutions if possible.

And if anyone has an idea where to find/buy a film carrier for negatives that are either 1 or 2 images per negative where the images are 2.5 x 1.6 inches I'd love ideas. I have several hundred of these to scan.

I also have a handful of other really odd film sizes, I am cataloging the number and types but it looks like less than 200 total images of all the rest of the film types combined.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

I did, but I sold it, sorry!

If you have a decent camera, you might like a look at Peter Krogh's Digitizing Your Photos book Digitize Your Photos with Your Camera and Lightroom If you have lots to do, it's faster than scanning, and the reason I sold my scanner.

Film carriers, try eBay. Search for things like negative masks. Basically you get parts from old film enlargers that you can tape together to make a useful film holder. Or there's always the DIY option of a couple of bits of mount board sandwiched together with carefully cut holes.

 

[OogieM]

If you have a decent camera, you might like a look at Peter Krogh's Digitizing Your Photos book Digitize Your Photos with Your Camera and Lightroom If you have lots to do, it's faster than scanning, and the reason I sold my scanner.

Film carriers, try eBay. Search for things like negative masks. Basically you get parts from old film enlargers that you can tape together to make a useful film holder. Or there's always the DIY option of a couple of bits of mount board sandwiched together with carefully cut holes.

I have the book and that is an option but using his ideas I need to buy a copy stand, lights, better LCD light table and the biggie a digital SLR camera. Total cost for the entire package as suggested by him would run me many thousands of dollars. The only piece of equipment I have of what he describes in his system is my old Nikon Micro Nikkor lens which is still a good lens and should be good for that purpose. I'd need everything else. I've also considered renting one of his rail systems but still stymied on the lack of a suitable digital camera. Plus even his book suggests there are issues with doing color negatives and that is a fairly large number of the items to scan.

I had to build my own holder for the glass plate negatives from mounting board so I'll look at doing that for the odd size negatives. Thanks for reminding me that Ic an do it that way.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Ah, yes, if you don't already have a decent camera, that bit is an issue. Most Lightroom users already have that bit! A basic tripod works pretty well instead of a rail system, and daylight on a cloudy day isn't bad for photographing prints. You can make a DIY lightbox if they don't need to be perfect.

But all that said, knowing your background, a scanner is probably a good bet. FWIW, I recently sold my Epson V750 scanner for almost as much as I paid for it 5 years ago. If I remember rightly, it was faster than the V600 scanner that preceded it, and had a much larger transparency area so you could do more scans at once (set them running and wander off for 20 minutes). Depending on what kit you already have, that could be cost-effective.

 

[OogieM]

Ah, yes, if you don't already have a decent camera, that bit is an issue. Most Lightroom users already have that bit! A basic tripod works pretty well instead of a rail system, and daylight on a cloudy day isn't bad for photographing prints. You can make a DIY lightbox if they don't need to be perfect.

My own photography went downhill once I went digital. Now it's all snaps on my phone <g> There are actually very few prints and those I've got covered with my existing Epson 4870 scanner. The biggest collection is the color 35mm slides currently estimated at about 20K slides between me, my husband, my stepdad and the inherited collections from my parents and from my stepdad's parents. Big question and I get different answers every time I ask, do I curate and sort now or scan everything and do the sort/curate within Lightroom? Hence the desire to get timing data on various scanning options. Next biggest set is the color 35mm negatives and those look like scanning all is going to be fastest considering the issues trying to determine quality from a negative just by looking at it. Then I have the other stuff mostly from parents & grandparents. This is my count of items. My stepdad is also counting and it looks like he has quite a variety of formats and film types as well.
B&W Negatives
215 127 film 2.5 x 1.6 inches
14 3 1/4 x 2 1/4 Asco Super Pan film of my mother and father wedding
7 1 5/8 x 1 5/8 of a playground
450 2 1/4 x 2 1/4
Color Negatives
138 All 2 1/4 x 2 1/4
Color Slides
167 All 2 1/4 x 2 1/4
Color positive image is 1 5/8 x 1 3/8
8 getting ready to go diving very red shifted
2 diving very red shifted

I'm also exploring different scanning software and operating systems that can talk to my existing scanner to see if I can get a faster scan time from existing hardware. My testing using Mac OS on my old Intel Duo iMac had a scan of only 8 color slides taking over an hour! My husband just tested a Linux machine but it didn't separate out the individual slides into separate files so while scanning was fast there is a huge amount of time to separate out images that way. I'm going to go test using VueScan software that might provide some of the same automating options as Epson Scan SW in terms of separate images etc. My old mac can't run the latest version of Epson Scan and that latest version won't support that scanner anyway.

 

[Conrad Chavez]

My testing using Mac OS on my old Intel Duo iMac had a scan of only 8 color slides taking over an hour!...I'm going to go test using VueScan...My old mac can't run the latest version of Epson Scan and that latest version won't support that scanner anyway.

The scan time should be less about the computer you're running it with, and more about the scanner and its settings. I run a film scanner off a very old Mac, and I can do an entire roll of color negative film in about an hour at high quality settings. If it's taking an hour to do 8 slides, you may want to review settings. For example, turning on maximum resolution, a higher preview resolution, multiple-pass scanning, multi-sample scanning, multiple-exposure scanning (all different features) and so on each add more time to the scan. If you don't need all of them, you could save some time.

VueScan is a great solution because it allows using very old scanners on the latest macOS, even if the manufacturer's own software no longer works. The VueScan user interface is a little nerdy, so it takes some patience and study, but if you can figure out what all the options do, it is a great tool. And it should have more options than the Epson software did. If you do commit to VueScan, bookmark their Buttons, Menus and Options Reference — I refer to it frequently.

I have VueScan dump all its scans into a folder, and in Lightroom I set the Auto Import command to watch the same folder so that as each scan is saved, it pops up in Lightroom automatically, ready to be catalogued and edited.

 

[PhilBurton]

I have the book and that is an option but using his ideas I need to buy a copy stand, lights, better LCD light table and the biggie a digital SLR camera. Total cost for the entire package as suggested by him would run me many thousands of dollars. The only piece of equipment I have of what he describes in his system is my old Nikon Micro Nikkor lens which is still a good lens and should be good for that purpose. I'd need everything else. I've also considered renting one of his rail systems but still stymied on the lack of a suitable digital camera. Plus even his book suggests there are issues with doing color negatives and that is a fairly large number of the items to scan.

I had to build my own holder for the glass plate negatives from mounting board so I'll look at doing that for the odd size negatives. Thanks for reminding me that Ic an do it that way.

I also have that old 55 mm MicroNikkor and it is a great lens.

 

[OogieM]

The VueScan user interface is a little nerdy, so it takes some patience and study, but if you can figure out what all the options do, it is a great tool. And it should have more options than the Epson software did. If you do commit to VueScan, bookmark their Buttons, Menus and Options Reference — I refer to it frequently.

I have VueScan dump all its scans into a folder, and in Lightroom I set the Auto Import command to watch the same folder so that as each scan is saved, it pops up in Lightroom automatically, ready to be catalogued and edited.

Thanks for the suggestions. VueScan is powerful and nerdy is an understatement I did testing using VueScan and my MacBook Air Laptop since I could carry it over to the guest house easily. Timings for this test:
8 Slides using Standard Options
Preview at 150
Correct colors but nothing else
1200 DPI 11 minutes Test 2 files in my test folder
2400 dpi 14 minutes Test 3 files in my folder
Color negatives - wanted to scan 24 frames so had extra's that are blank
1200 dpi 17 minutes
I spent a long time playing with various options in VueScan and never got to the testing of the 2 1/4 inch material. Had to go do evening chores, but I'll try to get scan times today.

Looking like perhaps if I move the scanner over to the main house I can get set up to do scanning during lambing using my laptop and VueScan.

Thanks for the info on the automatic import into LightRoom. I was expecting to do file renaming outside LightRoom first then import in since renaming files within LightRoom is such a PITA. For some things I can probably get the automatic file naming features to do what I want but for any of the color negatives I'll have to do the renaming by hand before import.
VueScan insists on scanning 24 frames because there are 24 potential spaces for negative but most of my color negative film is cut into 4 frame strips so only 16 will fit in the carrier at a time.

 

[OogieM]

VueScan is a great solution because it allows using very old scanners on the latest macOS, even if the manufacturer's own software no longer works. The VueScan user interface is a little nerdy, so it takes some patience and study, but if you can figure out what all the options do, it is a great tool.

I've bene extremely frustrated trying to do what I thought was a simple task. The tech support is terrible. I'll post on another thread in case you have some hints.