[sane-devel] Affordable film scanner supported by SANE

[Jonathan Buzzard]

petter.sundlof@findus.dhs.org said:
>  I am thinking of buying a film scanner. I really really want one.

Fair enough

> However, there seems to be few in the affordable range (around and
> below) ~<400$ that are supported by SANE. Without knowing about
> support,  I had considered the Minolta Dual Scan III. It seems to not
> be working  very well, if at all. Epson doesn't seem to work very well
> either. Anyhow, they seem to  abandon their products (no matter if
> they provide specifications, right?). 

At the end of the day the problem with SANE and film scanning is that
there is no SANE front end with decent orange mask removal, dust removal,
multi pass scanning, faded negative correction etc. etc. The end result
is that it is somewhat sucks when compared to VueScan.

Note that in the UK at least you can get your hands on the old Minolta
models like the Dual Scan II, Scan Elite etc. quite cheaply.

> Does anyone have any recommendations/experiences to share? I am most
> interested in a solution that currently _works_. 

Get something with an IR channel. I didn't and regret it totally, to the
point that I intend to replace my Scan Dual II as soon as funds allow
with something that does have an IR channel.

> Please forgive me if it is inappropriate to post this here, but I was
> unable to gather enough information from Google, IRC or the mailing
> list  archives. 

There is a mailing list dedicated to film scanners. It is not specific
to any OS, but would be relevant if you have no idea what you are doing.
Try Googling a bit harder.

JAB.

-- 
Jonathan A. Buzzard                 Email: jonathan@buzzard.me.uk
Northumberland, United Kingdom.       Tel: +44(0)1661-832195