I want to scan a large archive of family film negatives, and am pondering between buying a flatbed versus dedicated film scanner. While quality is still important, we are not aiming at too high quality (in fact a size of 5MB per picture would be good), yet speed and ease of use are important factors.
Is it correct to say that flatbed scanner will be faster than film scanners, unless one goes for a film scanner with a batch mode? For now I see three main options:
- Standard flatbed scanner: will allow to have multiples negatives at once, could buy a second negative tray and would almost work continuously (i.e. time of loading one tray might be time required to scan other trail?)
- Mid range film scanner such as Plustek OpticFilm 8100, higher quality, yet much slower, only one series of negatives at a time (not sure if has motor to move the tray through)
- High range film scanner with batch mode such as Pacific Image PowerFilm: faster as requires less manual work (no need to insert films on a tray + multiple films inserted at the same time), yet still takes 24 seconds per negative. So probably still slower than a flatbed but less manual work?
Am I missing some other options or aspects when comparing these alternatives? What would be final recommended option for scanning a large number of negatives?
Thanks!