I notice a lot of mentioning about color slides being better than prints when I surf the web for film astrophotography guides. I was wondering how you share your photographs in this media; say like if you wanted to post your picture here or on a web site.

In answer to my question I've been reading about using a flat-bed scanner to scan negatives and slides for digitizing them. What I have read is, in theory, you can take your film to a 1-hour mart and tell them not to cut your film and then take the negatives or slides, run them through a scanner and come up with some good digital photos. Has anybody here tried this method and what are your opinions about it?

None of the flatbed scanners that use an adapter to scan slides are worth a hill of beans. There are now quite a few fairly inexpensive dedicated slide scanners on the market, some of the smaller ones to do one slide at a time. There are also quite a few places that will digitalize your slides onto CDs for a nominal fee.

With film labs fast disappearing, there are few that use anything but automated processors.You would probably be better off processing the slide film yourself.

I agree with John. However, I abandoned film several years ago and went digital -- except for meteor photography, which I still do with print film.

I did use slide film a lot however, particularly for wide-angle and night-landscape / startrail shots that I used in presentations. However, the new DSLRs are so good for these purposes, and presentations are now almost exclusively all-digital, that I see no reason to continue using slide film.

I have successfully used flatbed scanners with adapters for slides, but as John says they're not optimal for that purpose. Their resolution is low and/or digitally enhanced (meaning interpolated). I later started having my film scanned at a color lab and they did a wonderful job.

When I use print film for meteor photography I got through dozens of rolls per night, so the scanning gets pretty expensive. I use a custom lab to ensure the film is not cut and then I use a loupe to find the frames with meteor tracks and have those scanned to CD.

The main problem I've found with having labs scan negatives or slides (even custom labs) is that they don't always use clean scanners, or clean the film before scanning. That leaves spots and debris in the images ...

johnm wrote:

You would probably be better off processing the slide film yourself

I did look into processing my own film but unfortunately I live in a small box and don't have room to make a darkroom.

chipdatajeffB wrote:

I have successfully used flatbed scanners with adapters for slides

Which scanners did you use? I am looking at the CanoScan 4400F or CS8600F Color Image Scanner. Wonder if anybody here has ever used this scanner?

I did look into processing my own film but unfortunately I live in a small box and don't have room to make a darkroom.

You don't need a darkroom to process film. A changing bag is all you need to get the film from the 35mm cassette to the developing tank. Once the film's in the tank and the tank's sealed, everything else is done in daylight. It's boring, but cheaper than sending it out.

Which scanners did you use? I am looking at the CanoScan 4400F or CS8600F Color Image Scanner.

The 4400F is a flatbed scanner. The least expensive decent film scanner is probably the Pacific Image Prime-Film 3600u, which should run around 210.00 or thereabouts.