Transferring wood working SLIDES to digital

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Hi All, I just came across a lot of 35MM slides( not all are ww'ing that I took a long time ago. I was wondering if there's a good way of converting them into a digital form that I can store on a CD? I have a digital camera and I think I can find the slide projector if that helps. I've seen the services that do them for .39 cents or less. Any good? Any ideas greatly appreciated! Thanks.

[Frank Hagan]

This is a tough one ... there are add-ons to inexpensive flat bed scanners that would allow you to do one-at-a-time scanning for a few hundred dollars. The ones I've seen have a unit that replaces the top cover so the light can show through the slide film to a pick up on the other side. But my friends that have tried it have had really mixed results. The problem is that the less expensive scanners have a fixed focus area that is really the surface of the glass plate, and the slide mount brings the slide just slightly above that. I did see an Epson unit with an integral slide and negative scanner unit, but I don't know how well that does.

There's a pretty good review of the higher end services at http://www.flatbed-scanner-review.or..._scanners.html

I would have to use the outside service, but I would try a few with them first to make sure the quality is there.

On projecting and then taking a picture of the projection: I did this with 8mm movie film, and it turned out OK. The problem with film-to-video is that the image can flicker. You won't get that with slides, but the problem is that you lose a lot of the quality of the picture this way. With a film, the moving image makes a lesser quality much more acceptable. So if you want the digital picture of your slide to be good quality, I don't think projecting onto a screen and taking a picture will work well.

They do sell "front silvered" mirrors and boxes for film-to-video transfer that also work for slides. These give a much higher quality image. They are called "telecine" boxes, and there are others that just have a front silvered mirror and ground glass screen (I have one of these called a "copy kit"). You can see a wide variety of these things by searching eBay for "video transfer". One of the telecine boxes is at http://cgi.ebay.com/Ambico-V-0652-Vi...QQcmdZViewItem
(I don't have any experience with this type, or with this seller, and the link is just so you can see what's out there).

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Frank,

Thanks so much for your very informative post. I'm going to go to the links to check them out. I really appreciate all the info. you've given me here. Alan

[Ed Blough]

Alan
I had the same question. And from everything I found the best and cheapest way is to get a special box what has a screen in it. As I understand it you you project from a projector your slides on the screen. On the other side of box you have a video camera using in in picture mode. You then project you slide and snap a picture of it. Then using video software you seperate each frame into a single picture and save it.
I don't know if this box is the telecine box someone else mentioned or not but I'm told you can do a slide every few seconds this way.

There are commerical services that do this but I'm told they are costly.

[Paul Berendsohn]

At last something here I can "authoritatively" contribute to (other than who makes the best tool guide, of course )

I spent 30 yrs in the photography business Alan... forget about DIY attempts, they're next to worthless. If you have tons of them, a good slide scanner will run you about 1000 to set up, a flatbed is a waste. There are plenty of good services that will give you a CD of your slides. Try Imagers in Atlanta, IIRC. Ideally get TIF files, not PCD or JPG.

If you have other questions, feel free to PM...

Paul

[Bert Johansen]

Paul is right. I had the same problem years ago and ponied up for a Nikon CoolScan, which cost about $1600 at the time. However, I was able to scan tons of slides at really high resolution, and felt it was worth it. (Lots of family pictures when my kids were little.)

Bert

[Dev Emch]

Doing slides is not easy! Not easy at all! There was a time when slides were more useful than they are today.... two computer add ons were popular. One was a slide printer which was a high rez imaging screen in a box with a 35 mm camera on the other end. This is how you got your slide shows from software to actual slides. The other was the reverse. You stick a slide into the box and its imaged on a type of high rez scanner bed. In both cases, the boxes were sealed to prevent ambient light contamination.

Now some photo labs may still have this hardware. If they do, take your slides to them and have them transferred to the higest rez you can get. Never rely on software rez manipulation at the image source. Rather, push the mechanical resoultion as high as possible. Later on, if you need to knock down the pix count, use your software like photoshop to do this. This is the short explanation.... I will not go into digital signal and imaging processing nor will I try to explain the principles or nyquist at this time. Trust me on this.

You may try to find some vintage machines used on the bay or in a used photo shop, etc. But remember, there may not be any drivers available for this machine and the new generation of operating systems and applications. So its a buyer beware again. If it were me, I would look up the photo labs in your town and call them and see if they have a dedicated slide scanner. Not an attachment to a flatbed scanner mind you, a dedicated slide scanner. If they look at you like your on drugs, walk!

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Thanks again guys; I knew I could count on you. It looks like the DIY method is not worth it and I'll check out the pros for this. I've been seeing anything from 29-39 cents/slide. I have to save those old slides of the kids from when I can't remember them anymore. I wish I had sharper memories of the kiddies when they were little but... At least this transferring of my old slides will work. Thanks again. Alan

[Lee DeRaud]

Decent film scanners are available at reasonable prices...this is the current model of the one I bought a couple years ago:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...&s=pc&v=glance
The obvious tradeoff is your time vs using the service, but even at $0.29/slide, 1000 slides more than covers the price of the hardware. At a more typical $0.39 to $0.50, no contest.