Best Slide Scanners in the UK

Slides are not negatives

When you read the “in the box” part of your future digital slide scanner, you’ll most likely see that there are different trays for mounted slides and for negatives. Some of us presume, at first, that they only differ because slides are of different size due to the casing. In reality, it is not true: whereas negative film does offer you an image with its colours inverted, the film inside a slide is actually a positive, that is, with the colours the way they will be when you scan the slide.

Film is better for scanning than printed photos

A film, both positive and negative, contains more information about the image than any printed photo can. At least, with the level of printing technology we have today, let alone the technology we used to have before the digital age. Scanning a film, especially with a dedicated slide scanner, will result in an image of richer and deeper colours, with more contrast and luminance and, as a consequence, with more details. Film also allows for better resolution for scanning, which, in its turn, offers bigger images without any quality losses.

Just about anything can damage a negative

One might think that storing a film suspended in the air in a closed dark room where neither kids nor pets ever come is safe. Unfortunately, this is not true. A film is a very fragile material, and it can be damaged not only by accidental nail or paper touch but by a thing as unavoidable as air movement. Yes, it is true, no, we’re not joking here. The problem is, there is no such thing as clean air, not really. Invisible to the naked eye, there is always some dust or tiny debris moved by even the slightest blow of wind. As tender as the film is, it won’t take much time for a scratch or two to appear. And you most probably won’t even see it on the film. Where you will see it is on the scans and prints done years later. That’s why it is recommended to use a scanner for slides and negatives as early as possible to preserve the memories. After that, you can give the film to a professional for cleaning and then store it in an air-tight container.

There is a trend in photography where they damage the negatives on purpose

Lately, it has been a trend in not only photography but in other industries as well. Torn and damaged jeans, muddy prints on t-shirts, even old-looking music videos (have you seen Coldplay’s Up&Up?). This trend hasn’t passed photo industry by: the photos are bleached, burnt, distressed, and scratched on purpose, then put into film and slide scanner. Glen Luchford, a talented photographer, even has published a book called Damaged Negatives in 2012, though hers weren’t destroyed intentionally but rather had fallen victims to an unfortunate accident. So why is this so popular? People just love broken things, don't they?

Your photos are actually cropped to some extent

You can compare your scanned film with the photos printed in the special stores—to fit into a specific mould the size of the photo you have ordered, the image on the negative is usually cropped at the sides a bit. Sometimes, this "bit" can reach up to 10–15% of the picture and be different on each side. It does not always matter much since we always try to leave space around people on the photos so they don't look crowded but there are cases when the details at the edges might be important, and scanning a slide always leaves it up to you to decide what you want to crop.

Q: What format is the best for scanning slides?
A: The format home slide scanners use most often is probably JPEG since it offers output images that do not take much storage space, so you can save more photos on your memory card or gadget. However, it is not the best option if you plan to edit photos further—JPEG is quite lossy when it comes to quality. Some models make images in BMP, PNG, or TIFF. The latter takes up the most space since it saves all the image data during the scanning; it is the format generally used for professional and commercial scanning. PNG format is good if you plan to create collages from certain objects on your photo scans—it allows for transparent background without noise at the edges as GIF does, for example, and it does not take as much space as TIFF. If you need scans for a variety of purposes, some manufacturers have multi-format film scanners to offer.

Q: What resolution do I need?
A: This depends on what you plan to do with your photos. More often than not, for printing standard photos for your photo album, you don’t really need more than 300 or 600 dpi of your slide scanner resolution. The bigger the photo you need to print (for example, an A1 poster with your pet’s mug on it to adorn your living room wall), the bigger resolution it is recommended to set when scanning. The lower resolution offers fewer details but for a small photo, it’s not that crucial, whereas trying to make a large print from a small-resolution photo will result in image blurriness. The same goes for editing photos in a special software—if you plan no such thing lower resolution is okay but photo correction is easier when the image is bigger and more detailed.

Q: What’s the difference between 24-bit and 48-bit?
A: That’s the colour depth you’re talking about, as in, how many bits are dedicated to each of the three main colours (Red, Green, Blue). 24-bit colour depth means 8 bits per colour, and 48-bit is, consequently, 16 bits per colour. What does it mean for your photos? Simply speaking, the more bits are dedicated to the colour, the more shades of the colours the resulting image will have. However, to the naked eye, the 24-bit depth is usually enough, that’s why the manufacturers haven’t stopped making 24-bit slide scanners (and scanners in general). You will be better off with the 48-bit device, though, if you plan extensive editing of your photos or large-scale printing.

Q: There are fewer trays in my slide scanner than there are film formats it claims to support.
A: Please don’t worry, most often, a single mount can support several film types. For example, you can put 35mm, 110, 126 film all in the same 2" x 2" tray. In some cases, there simply two trays—one for negatives and another for slides, both good for any size of respective films. The main thing is what film your scanner supports but you can also check how many mounts the package is supposed to include, this information should be stated on the official seller page and in the manual.

Q: My slides stink, did they go bad?
A: Unfortunately, it is possible. If your film is old and was not stored properly, chances are it has accumulated some level of moisture and possibly there are fungi, which do smell rather peculiarly. They can also damage the image on the slides, blurring it, creating spots, etc. At some level, it is possible to restore the image but it will take time and money to do. That is why scanning your film is important.