35mm slides to digital

[JGarrick]

You might want to visit the forum areas at either photosig.com or photo.net. You'll find plenty of expert advice on slide and film scanners from people with pretty high standards for what's considered good quality. The magic price point where they transition from not worth buying to decent seems to be around $400. Unless you have an awful lot of time on your hands, I'd recommend something with an automatic feeder and automatic dust and scratch removal. It can be very seriously time consuming to dust spot a scan by hand. The automated software isn't perfect, but it'll get you about 90% of the way there or more - probably good enough for on-screen display or small prints in most cases.

Also, the things seem to change on internet time - any advice more than a few months old about specific models is probably no longer valid, so check the posting dates.

One other thought: Make sure you have plenty of free disk on your computer - the image files can consume space at a rather alarming rate if you start scanning box after box of old slides and negatives.

 

[Tom]

Thanks for the advice.

 

[rubysamm]

Hi Tom,
I stumbled upon a web page today and it reminded me of your inquiry a month ago regarding slides.? Since I have many of my own I found this to be an interesting inexpensive way to convert slides to digital.
I haven't tried it yet but it sure looks interesting
http://cj-and-m.com/HomePage/Slide2Digital.html

Good Luck
Lori

 

[Tom]

Thanks for the link Lori, interesting. I could imagine it taking a very long time to snap photos of slides one at a time but, for a small quantity, that looks like an economical solution.

 

[Lowell]

Tom,

I have a Cannon 4200 flat bed scanner that will scan two slides at a time.  It does a good job but take lots of time to load 2 slides, then scan them, then reload.  I contacted Cannon and they sent me another set of slide holders which allows me to load the next two slides while the first two are being scanned.  Still not fast, but faster and cheap.

I have to say I enjoyed looking at the old slides and e-mailing the best to family and friends. The pictures of my nephews with long hair teens make a big hit with their own sons an daughters.  They keep asking for more.

Jake

 

[Ron]

I mentioned earlier that a device to copy slides could be made out of PVC looks like somebody did just that. ;D

 

[Tom]

Thanks Jake.

 

[Lowell]

In my last issue of Popular Science, I saw a short paragraph that stated the life of a CD-R disk is 3-5 years.  Is that correct?  Does that mean that all the slide I scanned and put on CD will deteriorate in a few years?
Jake

 

[Chet18013]

The answer is "it depends". There are several grades of blank media availabble for CD's and DVD's. The ones you generally see in COSTCO, SAMS Club, etc have a dye based layer that holds the data. This can degrade with time. KODAK and SONY both sell archival grade blanks which have up to a 50 year projected life, but you have to look to find them.  I have found that the COSTCO brand CDs that I made 5 years ago are still good. I date the ones I want to not loose and will make another copy of these after 5 years. I've only been saving digital photos since 2002 and haven't lost any yet.

Chet18013