Does anyone know offhand how high the scan resolution has to be to get a crisp scan off a crisp 35mm color slide. I'm going to print an 8 x 10 inch pic off this. I've tried 400 & 600 scans and both seem pathetic. My scanner goes to 3200, but the file size would be HUGE! How high should I go to get 'darkroom' quality?

what size is the slide?

errrmmm...let me guess. The slide size would beeee....no no don't tell me, I can do this. uuummmm...geez this is a hard one....35mm? am I right? :+P I'd say the scan res would have to be as high as possib;e and the magnification as large as possible as well. You could always contact a professional printing firm and ask them...?

well EXCUSE ME for asking a stupid question, obviously we are not all experts on film slide sizes

Attached Link: http://www.abstractconcreteworks.com/essays/scanning/scanning.html

Now Vince, am i correct you want to scan a 35mm slide on an ordinary flatbed scanner? (as opposed to buying the "Transparent Media Adapter" for several hundred dollars...)

You may want to make a "backlighter" to get the detail better. There are a number of cheap ways including a "fluorescent flashlight" and a clear plastic "Tupperware" lid to work as a diffuser.

check out the link for more ideas and limitations...

:)
retrocity

Another great way to "scan" 35 mm slide when you dont have a slide or negative scanner is using a digital camera! take the inside of a toiletroll put it over your lens, set the camera on macro mood, fut the slide in front of it, a strong light behind it and photograve it, you would be surprised of the quality!, this also works with negatives, as long as you invert them! good luck end sucksess

Pacific Images makes a great slide and negative scanner for less than $200.00. It is USB driven. Mine works great! and the resolution is adjustable as well as other settings. You may have to search the website to update the driver. I got mine from Tiger Direct.

As Sean said.. you will want to scan it at the higest resoulution possible for minimal loss in image quality. For my larger printed works I have had files in the range of 250 - 500 meg as uncomprssed .tiff's. Just to give you an idea.. the 500+ meg ones were for prints in the 20x24 size. These are drum scanned 4x5 negatives/positives. I know it might seem tedius to scan at that high.. but it is needed for good print output. Web ouput can be much smaller.

Oh.. and your final image size should be around min 22 meg (8x10 @ 300ppi) minimum for a print that size. Though larger will be better quality.

Thanks everyone for your input. I would have responded sooner, but I've been out of town... and I've been busy building myself a new computer. Fun! I'm going to scan at a very high ppi (at least 1200 ppi) and then I'm going to resize in the scanner. The file will be huge, but I should get the print quality I want.