Hi, I am going to be scanning several hundred old 70mm film rolls (about 100 images per roll), and was wondering about which SANE compatible scanner would be good to use for this that is not too expensive and can do the recommended 2700dpi+ negative scanning? Is the HP Scanjet 3970 a good one? I think it would be good to have the extra infra-red channel, like digital-ICE or similar dust removal etc.
Also would a homemade transparency light box above the scanner work well for negative scanning? I would like to make a film spool feeder to automatically advance the frames as they are scanned and then interface this to SANE to synchronize it all. (maybe receive a signal from the SANE frontend to trigger the spooler each time the scan is complete?) Is there software that can automatically crop multiple scanned images? ie. If I use a black cardboard sheet on the scanner glass with cutouts for exposing 9 negatives at once (3 film rolls spooling at once) then automatically crop and write these 9 negatives to files? I've been trying to figure out the best light source to use for scanning negatives, I've tried flourescent, incandescent, a flashlight, a white lightbox etc but all of the scans look horrible so far, with only green colour once I invert them. cheers, Jamie
