Colour railway slide scanner recommendations

[Western 52]

I have about 35k colour slides of railway subjects, mostly mounted 35mm. Mostly Kodachrome 25 or 64. I've digitised all of them using my Canon EOS80D camera, and the results are reasonable, but not perfect. Can anyone recommend a slide scanner which can do a good job, budget up to about £1000?

 

[etr221]

For that number of slides, I would suggest looking at a Braun Multimag SlideScan or Reflecta DigitDia - quite what the relationship between them is, as they look very similar. There is also a similar Pacific Imaging offer, may not be available in UK. No idea on current model or price...
They look rather like a slide projector, but with a scan sensor in place of lens - they take a slide magazine, you set them going, and get on with something else.
An American outfit had an offer - essentially a Kodak Carousel projector, rigging a digital SLR to point down the throat where the lens wasn't - I forget who, or any details - Google will probably find it.
I have read that Nikon Coolscan is highly regarded, but out of production...

For scanning software, I use and would recomend Vuescan from Hamrick - it will drive most scanners. And in the end, if you really want perfection, you'll end up having to use your favorite image enhancing software (Photoshop or...)

But I would say you are asking in the wrong place: it's a photography, slide scanning project that you're proposing, the fact that it's railway subjects is detail - look for advice in that sort of forum, or on that sort of web site.

 

[8A Rail]

I would suggest an Epson V600 scanner for around £300. Scans 4 slides at a time and should provide very good results (also scans medium format too). Alternative, you could go for V850 but that is around £800 / £900.

V600 - see: https://www.epson.co.uk/en_GB/products/scanners/consumer/perfection-v600-photo/p/3597

V850 - see: https://www.epson.co.uk/en_GB/products/scanners/consumer/perfection-v850-pro/p/13568

There was the V750 which the V850 is the upgrade but I think you may find a new one around but mostly on the second hand market these days.

Regardless with 35k slides to scan, it going take you some time for sure.

 

[Western 52]

Thank you both for your really helpful replies! A few things there for me to investigate. I've heard of the Epson scanners, but not the others. Years ago I had an HP model, which was reasonable for film but poor for mounted slides. It was a SCSI interface to the PC, so was retired when I bought a new PC which was incompatible.

 

[46223]

I have an Epson Perfection V600 scanner and have scanned my collection of about 2500 colour slides with it.
The results are very good. Scan them as TIFF files though, not JPEG. They will be bigger files but you will have a bit more dynamic range
to play with if you process them in Photoshop or similar software.

 

[Islineclear3_1]

I have an Epson scanner (can't remember model) which will be in full use once I retire....

Always scan at the highest resolution you can get away with. With ever increasing amount of storage space nowadays, file size doesn't really matter

 

[John Luxton]

Have a look at the Plustek Range - I use a Plustek Optic film 8200i.

As well as a scanner you should look at the scanning software you use. I have not used the bundled software that came with the Plustek. I use VuScan which is a very good piece of software which is regularly updated and works well with both slide and film scanners as well as flatbeds. It is available from Hamrick Software on line and is a try before you buy product.