Slides To Digital

[Al Agnew]

Since I went completely digital a few years back, I've already amassed many thousands of reference photos that I use in my artwork. I don't know what I'd do without Bridge on my Photoshop CS3 to sort and edit them. But as you might guess, I have many TENS of thousands of slides and prints that I took before going digital. So far I have not been able to find a good way to get them scanned. The slides are especially troublesome because they are so difficult to view without a light box and loupe (which I have but it's still a pain) and pretty much unusable while I'm actually painting unless I scan them and print them out. My dedicated slide scanner takes a good 5-10 minutes to scan one slide, then I have to print it, and since I'm only printing occasionally, my printer ends up having the ink clog up between printing sessions.

I'm actually considering taking a batch of slides down to my basement photo room that I use for taking photos of my artwork, projecting them onto a screen, and photographing them with the digital camera. I hear that when you take slides to Costco to have them digitized, that's how they do it. Any other ideas, thoughts, hardware you know of that might work? I can get them done professionally, but the cost for that many slides is prohibitive.

[Sherwood Flycaster]

Not sure if this helps or not Al, but it's all I have to offer! I've got a number of slides myself that I'd like to get digitized (not nearly the number you seem to). The auto slide feeder is especially interesting. Your idea of project and shoot seems plausible as well, though a few more steps to the process I think.

Of course the cost looks a bit restrictive, but what would it possibly cost to have it done for that many slides I wonder? May be cost effective in your case.

Slide Scanning

~SF~

[CBNMO]

Al, my interest in slide scanning took me to this site, it's the best one i've found. I have been pondering buying a Nikon 5000 series film scanner with a 50 slide, auto feeder. My idea was to buy used, scan the slides i have then resell, for a loss with my track record.

http://www.scantips.com/

When I went to verify the address, I found he has a new article titled "Scan thousands of slides with a digital camera". Hope this is helpful.

http://www.scantips.com/es-1.html

I admit his articles are very detailed and way over my know how, but he does a good job of trying to explain it so that even I can follow along, part ways anyway. I see an add for a Wolverine film scanner for converting slides and negatives to digital, but know nothing about it. I reccomend this site to anyone looking for slide scanning info.

[tippet7]

If anyone is interested, my wife is big into digital photography and all sorts of gagets for her MAC.

She does slide to digital scanning on the side and has all sorts of equipment to do so. I dont know what she would charge, but if you are interested, shoot me a pm and I will get you in touch with her.

John

[Sam]

Hey, fellers. I was following this conversation a couple months back about scanning 35mm slides onto the computer because that's what I needed to do also. My Dad left a whole bunch of 35mm slides he took from about 1957 to 1981, irreplaceable family photos. Trouble is, we haven't had a working slide projector for years and have no way to look at them.

I ended up buying a slide scanner from Kim Komando - she's the gal who has a nationwide computer show on talk radio. This outfit works real well and real quick, and I'm satisfied with it. Here's the link:

http://store.komando.com/p-385-slide-neg-scanner-to-pc.aspx

I've probably scanned about 1000 slides now, with maybe 2000 left to go. I'm making a wintertime project out of scanning the slides, doing it in my spare time when I feel like it - so it'll probably be about two more months before I'm done. Once I finish I'll have no further use for the slide scanner.

I paid $119.95 for the slide scanner, plus shipping. I'll sell it for half price - $60. plus postage, when I'm done with it. I've got the original box, instructions, CD program, and all attachments, of course. It scans negatives too.

Let me know if you need it.

[troutgnat]

Al,

I work in mgt at Walgreens and spend plenty of time in the photolab there. Walgreens has the slide scanner equipment and can do this for you! They will scan them into the Fuji machine and them download them all on a CD for you. You can do whatever you want to them after their on a CD. It is very inexpensive. I would look into this if I were you, it will save you alot of time and money.

[Geoff]

All I know is going from digital to slide IS NOT cheap...it kinda sucks.

[CBNMO]

I believe that WalGreens and WalMart only scan and save the slides with JPG format. I was told they can not, or will not save them to a TIF file format? It's my understanding that TIF is higher quality (and yes its also a larger file size), that won't degrade each time the file is saved (compressed). I want to save each file in TIF format for a master copy. JPG is great for web viewing, emailing etc.

The slides I want to copy are family pictures and from the Korean War, from the 50's and 60's and I want to save them at the highest quality I can, at least for the master copy. Anyone know if this is correct?

[Mo Mac Man]

Yes and no. If you are continually doing a "Save As" each copy will degrade some. It's like a copier. The copy of the copy of the copy is noticably different.

However, if you keep the originals as they come, jpgs will work fine. Most digital cameras save images as jpgs unless you tell it to save it as a RAW file. But then only photo editing software like Photoshop can use them. I would scan them somewhere, copy them onto your HD, then put the CD away someplace safe as a back-up/archive. Each time you need to save something small to email or post, do a Save As from the original file. Keep that original file unchanged and you will always have the best copy available for prints.