Is there a film scanner that can read the data from APS films and include it in the EXIF metadata?

I've a bunch of APS films that I'd like to scan but all the film scanners I've seen on the market today are 35mm scanners; and whilst some have little carriers to allow you to physically scan APS, none seem to exist that read the metadata or even at the very least motor drive and automate the scanning?

Is there a product I've missed, that might be found on the likes of eBay; or would I be better off getting them scanned at my local friendly photolab?

Answer

Well, I've searched for this for a good long while. It took some real search foo, but I eventually found the terms that seem to produce a few god results: APS Film Magnetic Strip Reader.

It seems there is only one product that can be found that can read the magnetic strip on APS film that contains the EXIF metadata. Its the Nikon Coolscan IV APS Film Adapter, a discontinued product that does not seem to be available from any commercial storefront on the internet. I did a search on eBay for Nikon Coolscan, and there seem to be quite a few things, including APS specific gear. The APS Film Adapter was not listed when I did my searches, however its eBay, so you never know.

From what I can tell, the Coolscan scanners and the film adapters seem to be pretty expensive...as in, the $2000-$3000 range. Not exactly consumer-level gear. Most of the information I was able to find (which included the links from @nik, as well as several other similar sites and forums) seemed to indicate that the advanced features of APS film never really took off, and the magnetic strip that contained the metadata was never really effectively used. Seems like that is partly due to the downfall of APS as a film format (couldn't tell you why it really failed, never knew much about it.)

There was one other product that I found, the Fuji Frontier Minilab, that seems to be able to scan APS film. A lot of information seems to indicate that it can read the magnetic strip and extract the EXIF data from it, however I couldn't find anything that actually confirmed that. Sadly, it is a commercial product, rather huge, and probably far outside of any individuals price range. You might try taking your APS film to a shop that uses the Fuji Minilab, and see if their scans include the EXIF metadata. Beyond that, I couldn't find anything else relating to scanning APS film and including the EXIF in the resulting digital images.