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[Don's Issue 26 Editorial] There is a soft burr-ing noise in the background as I write this. It sounds like a pixie with a pixie-sized jack hammer is chewing through soft coal a metre or so beneath my office floor. But in fact the sotto voce murmer is being produced by Nikon's hefty Coolscan 9000 ED negative and transparency scanner as it digitises a few slides and negatives from my collection. And the reason it's in my office? Well, I had in mind doing an informal review of it from the perspective of a photographer who has a huge backlog of slides. Like everybody else who's been taking pictures in a serious way for several decades, I face the digitalisation dilemma. I have hundreds, if not thousands of images on slide and negative film that I'd like to have in digital form, but a scanner that is going to give me the professional results I want could easily cost the better part of $5000. On the other hand, if I opt to have a scanning service process my work, the per scan charge is likely to range from a low of $1 to $4 or more per 35mm slide or negative. My 120 film originals could easily run to twice that amount for each frame.
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