[sane-devel] Scanning medium format (60mm) negatives ?

[Gregor Hoffleit]

I browsed the archives and the usual web pages, but I couldn't find any
information regarding this:

I'm trying to find a cheap (i.e. <$200) flatbed scanner that is able to
scan medium format (i.e. 60mm x 90mm) negatives, and which has SANE
support, or where it seems possible that it will be supported by SANE in
the future.


Support form medium format negatives seems to be nothing that's
advertised in the product sheets, neither is it made public on the SANE
pages, therefore I dare to ask here, hoping that some of you have
hand-on access to various models.


There seem to be two fundamental problems I'm facing:

(a) SANE support: Most scanners with film adaptor units that I can see
are either not supported at all with not much hope (Canon D660U, the
Umax ones) or only in very early stages (Epson 1250U Photo).

(b) Film adaptor (quality and size): The very few supported models that
have adaptors (Acer, Agfa) are either no longer available or overpriced
or of a low quality, and/or have only a very small adaptor field, where
60mm x 90mm negatives won't work (Plustek OT24, IIRC). 
The Canon D660U seems to have a big plate, but I don't like to buy Canon
if they don't give any support to SANE developers.


If you know of any model that has a sufficiently big adaptor plate for
60mm x 90mm negatives, please, please let me know. If it's also
reasonably working with SANE, even better.


Many thanks in advance,

    Gregor



PS: Btw, information about scanning negatives and slides isn't very
present in the SANE docs and web pages. For a medium newbie like me,
that's a little bit irritating. Does it really just work out of the box,
so that it's not even worth mentioning, or is it so only rarely used
that nobody cares about it ?