[sane-devel] scanning negatives

[Jamie Morken]

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