I am thinking of buying an additional film holder for the scanner. My thinking is that when doing batch scanning, I can load and unload the next holder already while one is in the scanner. This should speed up the scanning process hopefully. While the time saving may not be that great, the cost for those things is very low (around 3000 yen for a pair), and with Konica-Minolta disappearing, you never know if there will be an opportunity to buy those later – for example the current one may break or similar.
Anyone care to comment on whether this is a worthwhile idea?
Konica Minolta’s pullout from photo is a good reason in itself to buy a couple of spares. I have Nikon 5000 with both strip and slide batch feeders. You pay a high premium, but it is worth it.
Well not sure if you will save a lot of time depends how quality you do scanning. What I do is doing whole roll on 650dpi which gave me about 900px picture (good for screen preview). This go very fast. You can have whole role in 10 min.
Than put them in IMatch and only those who I consider good I scan on 5400. And that is only one or two per roll mostly. With multiple scan pass to get max out of it.
On other hand second holder is good to have as backup when first get broken. I was looking for one for long time, but wasn’t able. So if you can sell me one or two I will buy it.
I think the fact that KM is going out of the film biz (scanner biz too?) is reason enough, and the more compelling reason (and thanks for the tip, since I too own a KM scanner). With respect to your idea, i guess my worry would be dust getting on the next set of negs (nice gloves there, Mickey Mouse 😉 )…but your scanner comes with that “de-dust” feature so maybe that compensates, but only for color right? perhaps the other question i have is why are you batch scanning in the first place? Is this your new way to make contacts or has your winners to losers ratio gone way up? if you’re interested in saving time (honestly, how much time would you save not having to take the neg strip out, re-sleeve, and put the new one in?), wouldn’t just making a contact the old fashioned way (eg. on the Epson flatbed), or even the REAL old-fashioned way, in the darkroom, and then film-scanning the “winners” save time in the long run? just thinking out loud here….
Thanks for the answers so far. I would imagine exiting photo business includes scanner business, a real shame of course.
Yeah, I don’t think the time saving is that great, perhaps 30s seconds per strip, a bit silly, but it makes for a nice fluent workflow perhaps. I am still doing contacts on the flatbed, that works best.
I am batch scanning because there may be 2-3 pics in a strip I want to scan. That is not an excessive ratio… or is it? Anyway, with VueScan you could just insert the holder, start the batch (as a list, e.g. 1,3-4) and prepare next holder and so on. The dust thing is an issue, you’re right, but I always blow them just before inserting the holder.
I took the pic with the gloves from somewhere, although I am wearing one glove when doing it actually. 🙂
Well, the holders are already on special order and Yodobashi tells me that in March all KM will disappear from their shelves.
Dear Sir,
I want to buy 2 (two) new Minolta FH-M10 film holder for Minolta Elite 5400 Scaner. Do you have it on stock ? Or who have it ?
Hi there, that’s going to be difficult. The film holders are no longer available I’m afraid. You’ll have to hunt ebay and the used market, perhaps for defective scanners just to get the holder. Good luck!