What do YOU use to convert old photos and slides to a DVD

[DawnM]

or to get them uploaded to the computer?

I have loads and loads of old slides and pictures from about 3 generations of family.

Thank you!,

Dawn

 

[gokenin]

you need to purchase either a film scanner or a flatbed scanner. the film camera will scan negatives and some i believe are able to scan slides as well. Should you only have pictures and not have the negatives you would be looking for a flatbed scanner. I cant recommend any particular ones as I have only recently gotten back into film and have not gotten to the point that I want to scan my own film yet. Just not there yet.

 

[DawnM]

I would say that at least half of the pics are on slide, so I would need something that would do that. If it could do both that would be even better.

Thanks,

Dawn

you need to purchase either a film scanner or a flatbed scanner. the film camera will scan negatives and some i believe are able to scan slides as well. Should you only have pictures and not have the negatives you would be looking for a flatbed scanner. I cant recommend any particular ones as I have only recently gotten back into film and have not gotten to the point that I want to scan my own film yet. Just not there yet.

 

[MICKEY88]

some flatbed scanners have trays for scanning negatives and slides..

not sure about other brands, but HP has several models that will do this..

 

[boBQuincy]

I use a slide duplicator that attaches to a SLR like a lens. It is fast, inexpensive, and gives good quality images.

 

[Frantasmic]

I bought the slide scanner at Brookstone last year. It connects via USB. It was relatively inexpensive; however, it didn't come with software that was compatible with Vista. I purchased some more RAM for my XP machine I still have, but I haven't gone back to check if that makes the process any quicker. It was very slow with the scanner.

If you have a lot of slides, I'd suggest a quality scanner (more than $100) or go the route Mr. Quincy suggests above.

 

[YesDear]

I have an epson scanner that has a negative and slide attachment to it. It does a great image job but is slow. There are several brand machines out there that will take a slide and convert to a jpg. I do not know about the quality.

Then you could spend $$$ and get a nikon image scan. Great machine but expensive.

If Bob says his gizmo works well you can count on it!

 

[seashoreCM]

Scan prints at 300x300 dpi. Scan slides and negatives at at least 2400x2400 dpi (a little more for really good ones taken with an SLR).

For flatbed scanners it seems you really want one with twice the resolution you will use (600x600 or 4800x4800 dpi respectively). Some are a little blurry at their maximum resolution; for example a 600 dpi scanner might scan tracks a little wider than 1/600'th inch each. If you know for sure that the scanned tracks are not too wide, you can go ahead and buy one without twice the resolution.

Some slide scanners can handle images wider than 24mm (35mm lengthwise). Some professional cameras take 60x60mm or 60x85mm negatives (120 size); many older Brownie cameras took 40x40 or 40x65mm (127 size). The latter few sizes can be reasonably accommodated by a film scanner that takes 35mm slides crosswise (36mm scanning bed).

 

[MarkBarbieri]

I'm usually a do-it-yourself kind of guy. Heck, I still change my own engine oil. For scanning, though, I say ship them off and have someone else deal with it. Let someone like ScanCafe (not an endorsement, just mentioning them as someone in the field) do all the work. It may be cheaper to buy your own equipment, but it is just too darned much work for me.

 

[boBQuincy]

I'm usually a do-it-yourself kind of guy. Heck, I still change my own engine oil. For scanning, though, I say ship them off and have someone else deal with it. Let someone like ScanCafe (not an endorsement, just mentioning them as someone in the field) do all the work. It may be cheaper to buy your own equipment, but it is just too darned much work for me.

I go along with you, I change my own oil (rebuild my engines, align my wheels, etc.) and I would still probably send negatives off for scanning. For slides however, if the requirements are not too severe and enough resolution for web or monitor (or HD tv) will do the duplicator is just too easy.

With the camera tethered to the PC it is possible to crank out 3 or more per minute, much faster than a scanner, and at resolutions up to whatever our cameras can provide. I don't know that the internal lens can do better than maybe 1800 x 1200 but that is enough for a good 4" x 6" print and far more than a monitor can use.

One catch, on a crop body only the central 60% or so of the slide will be captured unless we modify the duplicator slightly.

 

[DawnM]

Thank you! I will be looking closely at one of these for slides Bob and maybe shipping off the pics to get it done elsewhere.

I did find one place that will make a CD of your slides for .30 per slide......but it may be cheaper to do it myself.

My parents have loads of slides as well. When I was growing up that was the method of choice.....slide film.

Dawn

 

[MOmousefan]

I have a cheap Canon Canoscan 4200f flatbed that will convert 35mm slides or their negatives. When I taught I used the scanner in my classroom. It was an HP 475 and it was a jewel. It was also very expensive.

 

[disneygirlinnj]

I have an Epson flatbed scanner and I LOVE it. I've scanned a few thousand photos over the years...with a few thousand more to go! i forget which one I have exactly. I can go look later and let you know. It wasn't too expensive but works amazing

 

[MichelleinMaine]

If you have/can get your hands on a slide projector- I set up my DSLR to take a picture of the slide projected on a blank wall. I had it on the tripod with manual settings for the projection. Snap a pic, advance the slide, snap a pic, advance... I could go through a whole roll in 10 minutes.

I have the adapter for my HP scanner- deathly slow process!

 

[WillCAD]

If you have/can get your hands on a slide projector- I set up my DSLR to take a picture of the slide projected on a blank wall. I had it on the tripod with manual settings for the projection. Snap a pic, advance the slide, snap a pic, advance... I could go through a whole roll in 10 minutes.

I have the adapter for my HP scanner- deathly slow process!

I did the same thing with my grandfathers slides - all 4,000 of them - and by using the remote for the slide projector and the remote for my camera, I could go through an entire 140-slide carousel in about 10 minutes.

The quality is not as good as a scan, but it was good enough that my family all loved them.

 

[mum of two pirates]

Thanks guys wish i new if there was a projector around somewhere at my parents house.

 

[Experiment_626]

Thank you! I will be looking closely at one of these for slides Bob and maybe shipping off the pics to get it done elsewhere.

I did find one place that will make a CD of your slides for .30 per slide......but it may be cheaper to do it myself.

In terms of dollars, yes. But time is valuable too. Scanning slides and negatives -- doing it well -- is very time-consuming and tedious, to say nothing of the post-processing that is usually required.

ScanCafe might well be worth the money when you factor in your time. Scott Bourne has a discount code for Scan Cafe that can save you 20 percent off the total of your first order, no matter how large it is. He only gives it out on the Photofocus podcast, so I'll have to listen to an episode to jog my memory of what it is.

 

[Bstanley]

I used an Epson V350 (this was several years ago - I think they have advanced to a higher number since) to scan negatives, slides and photos and while I was happy with the quality - it was a time consuming process and if you tend to obsess about each dust mote it will be a lot MORE time consuming.

The negatives were actually the easiest - the V350 has a negative scanning mechanism built in to it that can handle a strip of up to 5 frames at a time. There is a slide adapter as well, but slides are manual.

The scanner was reasonably priced - $150 or so. The software that came with it was decent - you can set it to handle quite a lot of the 'dust mote' kind of problems all on it's own.

 

[Groucho]

I'd go with an Epson flatbed scanner with digital ICE. I think you can get one in the ~$150-200 range. Sending them off to be scanned professionally can get very expensive very quickly.

You said in the title something about converting them to DVD. Do you mean storing the files on a DVD or do you mean making a DVD that you can pop into a standalone player and play on your TV? If so, your quality requirements will be relatively low; DVD maxes out at 720x480 (on our NTSC TVs) which is very low resolution.

Many DVD players can also play raw JPG files but again, most will be stuck showing them at a low resolution.

 

[mabas9395]

Its 14 degrees outside right now. I plan on just staying indoors this winter and scanning a ton of photos/negatives where it is nice and warm.