Just Say NO to Inexpensive Slide Scanners

8/22/2012

I have a small home business in photo scanning. There is quite a bit of demand for scanning 35mm color slides. I have several devices which can scan slides. I own a Nikon Coolscan 5000ED which is close to the top of the line pro-sumer devices you can use. These are no longer produced, and as a result the price on the used market has skyrocketed to more than four times the original price of a new unit. Currently they go for about $6,000 on eBay. I also own a Epson V500 flat bed scanner that has a very thick top (with a light) which can be converted so you can scan slides on the flatbed using the transmitted light coming from the cover of the unit. You can buy this unit for $140 from Amazon. A very good deal.

Every once in a while, I get lured by enthusiastic descriptions and positive consumer reviews to look at less expensive photo scanners that are sold by lots of places, even B and H Photo. I recently bought one for about $60 that sounded like it might be a middle of the road solution. It was much faster than my Nikon and Epson and examples of scans shown on websites looked pretty good.

So, today, when I received this new low cost unit, I plugged it in and scanned four random slides from the mix I get from my customers -- i.e., slides that are what ordinary people take -- and scanned them with all three scanners.

Ion Slides 2 PC mkIII Slide & Film Scanner