Mass 35mm scanner suggestions?

[Style Juba]

Here's my situation, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I have been hired by a local physician to scan his massive collection of medical slides he has taken throughout the years of his practice. He once gave me a rough estimate of about 30,000 to 40,000 slides.

I have been working for him for several months scanning on a UMAX Powerlook 1000 flatbed scanner. This scanner is very suitable for my application in terms of resolution and quality, but it is unreasonably slow. It takes more than half an hour to scan 15 slides at 700dpi. I know from experience with other scanners that this is really an unacceptable speed.

So my question is, what type of scanner would be the best for my situation? Due to the high volume of slides I am scanning, speed is much more of an issue than quality. As long as the scanner can scan at atleast 700dpi with moderately good clarity, that would be substantial. The other important factor, is batch scanning. Ideally, I would like a scanner that is capable of scanning large quantities of slides in a single batch capture.

A scanner that has caught my eye as fulfilling all these requirements is the UMAX Powerlook 2100XL. You can view the manufacturer's information here...
http://www.umax.com/scanners/index.j...num=SPKG-14127

However, I have been unable to find much outside information on this model to see if it is really that good or fast.

Also, since I am used to flatbed scanners, I haven't really looked into slide/film specific scanners. I know that they are capable of achieving much better quality results, but as I have already said, that is not so much of an issue for me. Speed and high volume batch captures are the biggest points I am looking for in a scanner. But I am not against the idea of using a slide/film specific scanner as long as it can meet my standards.

As you can see from the price tag on that UMAX scanner, I am looking at staying under about $1,500. But that is somewhat flexible.

Any suggestions for scanners that would fit my situation well would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time.

[opus]

I'm just curious, why do you need to scan at 700 dpi? The standard print quality scan is 300 dpi. 700 dpi seems like overkill, unless you have some special application for it. 700 vs. 300 would really make a speed difference.

Ouside of that, I'm not familiar enough with different scanners to be able to help at all.

[Peter_AUS]

Canon FS4000US Film Scanner.

[Style Juba]

I'm just curious, why do you need to scan at 700 dpi?

Scanning at 300dpi does result in much faster scans. However, scanning a 35mm slide at 300dpi yields an image size of roughly 300x250 pixels. That's not quite big enough for the application.

Canon FS4000US Film Scanner.

I am curious as to why you suggested this model. From the reviews I read here, it sounds like this scanner is pretty slow. But maybe that's just because they were scanning at very high resolution without an SCSI connection. Also, it sounds like it will only scan a handful of slides at one time, unless there is some add-on adapter that I didn't read about.

Maybe you could help clear some of the confusion.

Also, I am still interested in that other UMAX I mentioned before, so if anyone has knowledge about that model, I would certainly appreciate it.

Thanks again.

edit: I forgot to mention this earlier, but the physician who I am working for will be paying for the scanner. With that said, I don't intend to go for a lower end model just to save myself some dollars.

[Peter_AUS]

You asked for suggestions and this is a good scanner, dedicated to film scanning, isn't flatbed. Another to look at would be Nikon Scanners as well.

[Style Juba]

You asked for suggestions and this is a good scanner

I understand this, but you still didn't clarify anything about its speed or batch capturing capabilities. These are the most important factors I am looking for.

[Peter_AUS]

It captures 4 slides at a time, I don't take slides, so can't answer the question about time.

I use vuescan to capture from film and usually at very high resolutions (the highest) takes a few minutes each photo and usually only am doing that 1 photo at a time, as I haven't had reason to do batch scanning, as the photos are usually specific 1 only.

I did notice there really isn't a difference in the speed from USB to SCSI though, although SCSI is supposed to be a whole lot faster.

Sorry can't be anymore help than that. If I get the time, I will do a batch scan of 4 frames of film and time that, at the resolution you are using and post the result here, just a little busy at present with some other things.