Old 35mm slides-- getting them on a CD

[si-am]

I have "inherited" (ie, my mom didn't want to store them anymore so she dumped them on me) boxes and boxes of old family 35mm slides. It took me about six hours, but I went through them all and have picked out a couple of hundred (maybe more) that I'd like to somehow get on CD or DVD for easy viewing/reminiscing.

Has anyone done this? Can you recommend any good places that will do it for you? I've found lots online but I'm sort of anxious about sending something so irreplaceable through the mail.

I read somewhere that you could just project the slides on the wall and take digital pics of them, but I'm not sure of the quality there.

Any ideas or advice?

 

[MarkBarbieri]

If you have a DSLR, you can buy a device that attaches to your camera and you can shoot the slides that way. You can also buy decent slide scanners relatively cheaply. Just be careful that you get a USB device and not an older SCSI device unless you know how to deal with that.

The easiest way to get a slide onto a CD is just to use a bit of tape or glue, but the result probably won't match what you want.

 

[GoofyontheHiSeas]

If you don't want to go Mark's route, you may want to try Costco if you have one near you. Check online under their photo center. An estimate I did for 200 would run $79 ($20 for the first 50 then $0.35/slide after that. I have scanned many hundred of them it can be time consuming.

 

[si-am]

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[Frantasmic]

Various places make slide and/or negative scanners. You can generally find one for under $100 and do this yourself.

It can be quite time consumming if you have several hundred. I attempted this last year and only got to around 10-15 slides. However, I had an old XP and a memory problem I've since corrected, so I'd like to attempt it again.

So, if you are really concerned about losing your source material, you could go this route. If your time is valuable, you could go the other route and send them off. If you live in a larger city with a camera store, they may perform the service for you.

 

[Bstanley]

I puchased an Epson V350 for the same reason - I had a pile of old negatives and slides that I needed to digitize.

The negatives were fairly easy.

The slides were a chore.

Unless you have a need for a good scanner I would go the 3rd party route.

 

[boBQuincy]

There are a few methods, some good, some not so good, some expensive...

At the low cost end ($50) are the duplicators that attach to a dSLR. The quality is pretty good and with the camera tethered to a computer it goes quickly. I scanned about 1000 slides with this in a few evenings. One issue: on a crop camera it does not copy the entire image although it can be modified to do so.

Slightly higher in cost are the $75 dedicated scanners we see in catalogs. Most of these are not anything I would use.

Continuing on we have some Epson scanners, the V500 ($150) and the V700 ($500). The V500 may be ok if you are not too demanding and have time, it scans 4 slides (12 negatives) at a time. The V750 has a greater dynamic range and scans 12 slides (24 negatives) at once.

At the high end we have Nikon's film scanners, excellent quality, one slide at a time. This is what many scanning places use.

 

[si-am]

Hmmmm. Our best camera is a Canon S3, so I guess the slide attachment won't work here.

I think I'll check around at Wolf Camera or maybe some other local places and see if they can do it for me.

I don't see myself spending time scanning each of them-- who has that kind of time?

Worst case scenario I mail them off.

Thanks again!

 

[Groucho]

There's plenty of options above the Nikon scanners, too.

Quality-wise, though, those are the best quality that Joe Consumer is likely to get. You will probably need to use VueScan to get them to work on new operating systems (and to get more options), and there are many schools of thought as for getting the best results, none of which are particularly easy.

One thing to note - if you are willing to tie up a decent chunk of money, the Nikon scanners pretty much don't depreciate. You can pick one up on eBay along with a slide feeder (so you can do a whole bunch of once) then resell it for what you paid for it or more. Only the higher-line models can support the slide feeder and you may be looking at $1,300 or more for both.

If you're willing to give up a little quality for a lot less hassle, one of the Epsons with Digital ICE is certainly a much more affordable choice!

 

[seashoreCM]

You must use a scanner specifically intended for slides and/or negatives. Some are flatbeds also used for paper documents but a regular flatbed will not work.

Slides and negatives should be scanned at at least 2400 dpi, 3600 dpi if they are extremely good quality and you want to make large prints some day.

For viewing on a TV or digital picture frame or using a digital projector, 1200 dpi will suffice.

It is not too tedious to scan slides and negatives as-is. You spend time when you want to tweak each one, for example it was too dark and you want to lighten it.

You can get good results by projecting the slide and taking a picture of the screen. The result should be good enough for 4x6 prints or viewing on a TV or other digital means. Note that some projectors may give a picture that is a little darker at the corners and this is more noticeable in a photograph of the screen compared with viewing the screen directly. Still worth a try. Incidentally one of the problems you might run into is dust in the air illuminated by the projector beam and showing up as white or gray dots.

Digital camera hints: http://www.cockam.com/digicam.htm