Ken-
To add to the business analysis from Moose:
1. The Nikon 4000ED also accepts the slide feeder and would be somewhat less
expensive, being an
older model. It would also have less resolution.
2. Besides bulk scanning your slides, you could also bulk scan other people's
slides, which could
help amortize your costs quicker.
3. The only other "high throughput" scanner endorsed by this list seems to be
the Canon 9950F
flatbed scanner. Much less cost, but much more labor intensive.
Thanks, Steve Goss, Dallas Tx usa
Moose wrote:
> AG Schnozz wrote:
>
>
>>So, should I just get the Nikon V-ED and call it a day? Or
>>should I risk it and get the Minolta 5400E?
>>
>>
>
> The 5400E is obviously a good scanner. With your experience with
> scanning a and VueScan expertise, I can't imagine you wouldn't get
> exceptional scans with either it or the Nikon.
>
> However, it's a business decision, isn't it? So I'll take off the
> amateur hat of my last post and put on the analyst hat I used for so
> many years in business.
>
> After some time making your own prints for commercial jobs, you found
> that it was better business to have the printing done by specialists. In
> theory, you should investigate price and quality of outside scanning
> services. Emotionally, though, I suspect that the risk of loss or damage
> to your original film would make this a non-starter, even if price and
> quality make business sense.
>
> Depending on the potential income streams from the scanned images and
> the alternative income producing uses of your time, a more expensive
> initial capital outlay may be the cheaper overall solution.
>
> In one important sense, I'm not sure either of the scanners you mention
> is the best answer. The Nikon 5000 ED and slide feeder cost about
> $1,500 new and can batch feed 50 slides at once unattended. If you have
> something in the low thousands of slides you want to scan, it sounds
> pretty likely that you would be way ahead to buy Nikon with slide
> feeder, scan everything in unattended batches, and then sell the feeder.
> By then, you would have a very good idea of what's involved in scanning
> all the neg strips and how well the scanner meets your B&W needs. Then
> you either keep it to do the rest of the scanning or find another
> solution and sell it too.
>
> Assuming 2,000 slides and a net loss on purchase and resale of scanner
> and loader of $700, you have an out of pocket cost of 35 cents per
> slide, right around the low end of commercial services. More slides,
> lower per image cost. Of course, you will have time costs in setting up,
> testing and getting the setup right to get good scans, amortizes over
> lots of slides, but very little in actually doing the scans.
>
> Either way, the combo should have more than paid for itself in time
> saved for other productive work compared to putting slides in and
> scanning them 4 at a time on the V-ED or 5400E. You could get some spare
> slide holders to pre load, but it would still be very labor intensive in
> comparison.
>
> You could set up 50 slide stacks ahead of time and just drop by from
> time to time to feed them in, or even have others in the family who are
> home feed them to the scanner when you are out doing other things.
> Another thing to remember is that ICE means never having to go through
> and clean the slides before scanning or spot afterwards (well, ok, very,
> very seldom). The whole slide part of the project could be fininshed and
> out of the way very quickly.
>
> Moose
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