Digital Photos from slides

[Rowana]

/forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif OK all you experts out there - here's todays question -

Over many, many years, I've built up quite a colection of 35mm slides. There are well over 1000 at the last count, and I've decided to go digital.

So, what is the best way to convert them??

I've tried my scanner, but they come out very small, and when I blow them up to a decent size, I lose all the definition. Advice please.



Let's hope this thread does not go off on a journey into the unknown?

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[pvb]

You need a special slide scanner, which will cost you say £250-£400. Alternatively, there are lots of companies which will scan your slides and return them with digital files on CD, but the charge is likely to be around 50p a slide, so with the number of slides in your collection it'd be cheaper to buy the special scanner and do it yourself.

 

[Colin_S]

Sounds like a search on Ebay is the way to go. Buy some kit, scan all your slides and then sell it back on ebay afterwards. There's a few scanners for sale at the moment including this one about to end soon..... link

 

[FullCircle]

Ahaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I have just slung my HP930c printer in the bin because I have replaced it with an Epson RX500, which is an all in one copier/printer/scanner.
The wonderful folk at Epson have included a 35mm negative and a 35mm slide cradle to hold the negs while you scan them at high/med/lo res (hi res 4Mb file!) which neatly fits into a holder on the scan plate, and have a fully automatic piece of software which recognises how many slides/negs are present, and then deals with them in turn!!! Scans at 2400x4800
It then will print to 5760dpi optimised, and the results are very good indeed.
Also will read your camera memory cards direct in a mutli slot in the front (no need to use the PC).
Then you can optimise the shots with the included PhotoImpressions software and remove any redeye or marks or sharpen/soften etc.

I did some old negs from 10 years ago and slides from 1971. Excellent.
I am made up with this piece of exotica.

So I have junked the Printer,scanner and card reader all in one. 3 USBs slots for one.

Total cost from PC World? Just £149.99. Amazing.

Can you tell I like this?


Jim

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[aidancoughlan]

I'm in a similar position - lots of slides, and I've just bought a digital camera to cut down on film costs.

I looked into ways of scanning slides a while back but have put it off for the moment. (One cost not to forget is the time cost - 1000 slides at a couple of minutes each will take a solid weeks full-time work to scan!).

Apart from the dedicated film scanners (see http://www.flatbed-scanner-review.org/35mm_slide_film_scanners/35mm_slide_scanner_list.html) as a starting point, there a number of flat-bed scanners on the market now that have slide adapters. Some of them even seem to do a decent job of actually scanning slides - the higher models in the Epson Perfection range got good reviews, as did some of the Canoscan models.

I think I had settled on the Epson Perfection 3200 (12 months ago)before I got cold feet, but the market has probably moved on since then.

best of luck, if you come up with a good solution, post back.

Aidan.

 

[Strathglass]

I have a Cano Scan 3000F which is an A4 flatbed scanner with a 35mm insert. It came with software for slides and negatives.

I am quite impressed with it and it was not too expensive.

Iain

 

[Chris_Rayner]

What you want is a Nikon Coolscan 35mm slide and negative scanner. This will give you massive Tiff files in many colours. It will also remove scratches and restore colours. It may be more than you want to pay at about £400 or more, but it is very good. You will exceed the quality of most digital camera images with ease. Take a look at it. I have the Nikon Coolscan LSIV ED which I see has now been superseded by the V.

Theres a review here http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN/CSIV/C4A.HTM

 

[gjeffery]

About 10 years ago, after a house move, I was alarmed to find that my Kodachrome slides were deteriorating. Also, there were problems with mites eating the gel.

Initially it was a race to preserve the most interesting slides, in retrospect, I find that deterioration slowed down when I moved the slides to new storage.

After having some slides copied by Kodak, I bought a Canoscan FS2710 scanner in 2001. Results are quite impressive. It is possible to see far more detail in the scanned images than is visible when they are projected. The machine is fairly slow, about 3 mins per slide, and the main cost, (having bought the scanner), was in the time taken by the scan. To recover the maximum possible data at the first pass, I saved the images, scanned to the maximum resolution of the scanner (2400 x 1800 dpi) to bitmap files. At 24 bit colour, these are typically 26MB each. The other main problem is cleaning the slides before scanning.

I have several thousand slides, and have now scanned those that were most obviously deteriorating, buit I have not finished yet! The scanner is driven by an old W95 machine, and I understand that Canon are not supporting the scanner to enable use on 32 bit operating systems.

I do wonder if it is possible to find an SLR type digital camera that will take a conventional bellows and slide copier accessory. This could be significantly faster.

 

[Peppermint]

Epson perfection 1250. Does slides perfectly. Not a lot of dosh.

 

[Gunfleet]

srbfilm
do what you want. I have no connection but have bought specialised camera kit off them for years. They are engineers and make most of the stuff in house at a very good price.

 

[Guest]

It depends what quality you are after. A high resolution flatbed scanner (by which I mean one capable of scanning at over 3000dpi (dots per inch) like the Epson Perfection 3200, which will create a file size of about 30MB per picture (if saved as a TIFF file) will do a decent job.

BUT it has two big drawbacks: a flatbed scanner is VERY prone to dust on the scan. You will have to clean the scanner and each slide carefully in between each scan, and even then it will require quite a bit of retouching in Photoshop to get a clean picture, and to do the retouching well requires skill. Doing such careful cleaning is a real pain if you're doing more than 5-10 scans and I would say a flatbed is unsuitable for doing large numbers of scans unless you have months to spare. The top of the range latest Epson scanners have improved dust removal software at the scan stage, but it's still a big problem with them. The ultimate quality of digital file that you will get from a 35mm slide after retouching is roughly equivalent to a top of the range digital SLR in the 3-5000 pound bracket.

The other disadvantage of the flatbed scanner is that you can get better scans with a dedicated film scanner that beat any professional level digital camera (other than tethered digital backs on medium and large format cameras) if you use a high quality dedicated film scanner. The main reason for this is that the quality of lense used to focus the scan onto the CCD is of higher quality and optically optimised to resolve that size of image (a flatbed scanner has to cope not only with resolving images at 35mm, but at all sizes up to A4, and to start with the flatbeds are much more "budget", so there's less to spend on high quality optics. An analogy would be if you were in a darkroom doing b&w printing - the quality of the lense under the enlarger is critical to the quality of the enlargement that you get, and the focal length of the lense should be optimised for the size of the original slide (35m, 6x7cm etc.) that you are enlarging.

In my experience the dust removal software is much better in these scanners than the flatbeds, and the fact that the original is held vertically without a flat glass surface to gather dust makes all the difference. The other advantage of a dedicated film scanner is that loading the film is generally a quicker operation because that is what they are primarily designed to do.

In summary, a high resolution flatbed scanner, like the Epson Perfection 3200 (or higher/more recent specification) are extremely good provided you don't want to do a large number of scans on them, and don't mind being careful about dust and retouching the picture afterwards. A dedicated film scanner (like a Nikon, Minolta etc.) is easiest to use, will save time and in the end delivers superior resolution, if you can/wan't to afford it.

 

[cliff]

Jimi,

Epson Prefection 2480 Photo scanner does slides and negatives both in colour and black and white in addition to the "normal scanning" of up to A4 size documents or transparancies.

Worth looking at @~£70 (well that was what I paid for mine in INFINITI computers, Glasgow).

I have made copies of slides dating back to WW2 for my father and had excellent results considering the originals were a little grainy and faded. Other slides from 10~20 years ago came out better even when blown up to A4 size.

This machine will even convert the negatives to positives so you do not need to take negatives in for reprinting.

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