Converting 35mm slides to digital at home

[William930t]

Photobuffs:

I am interested in converting old 35mm kodachrome slides to digital format with a portable unit, there are several available under $150.00. DPI and resolution need to be good, plus I want to use additional software to edit. Anybody have recommendations?

Hundreds of sports car racing images to share!

[Joeaksa]

Slides can be a PITA but hope that there are some newer units out there.

I bought one 2-3 years ago and it was so much hassle that I gave up. Have thousands of slides that I need to do but too busy to mess with it right now.

[RWebb]

I think you will need to find a used slide scanner AND up your $150 by 2x to 3x. I hope I'm wrong tho since I'd like to do the same thing...

[PFFOG]

Well, you may or may not like my reply. I had the same issue, thousands of slides and they were starting to deteriorate.

I bought a good flat bed scanner, that would do 5 slides at a time, problem is it needs CONSTANT babysitting to swap out the scanned and put new in. It would have taken years.

So I bit the bullet and bought a used Nikon coolscan 5000ED, with the SF 210 slide feeder. Load 40 slides, and walk away. 4000 DPI resolution, color correction (BTW Kodachrome is HARD to scan an get good color quality), infrared dust and blemish removal. Coupled with Vuescan (better and easier than Nikons software), and you can get real quality scans. This set up is what the PRO's use that charge you $1/slide.

Now the bad part, you will have to spend $2200-$2500 for the set up. BUT don't let the $$$ scare you, when you are done you can turn around and resell it for as much or MORE than you paid. I got lucky, I found a couple of great deals, an ended up with a little less than $1000 in the set up, had it 2 years, and scanned thousands of slides and negatives, then sold it for over $3,000 when I was done. The price of these things is constantly increasing on ebay.

Believe me the quality is well worth the short term investment, a $150 scanner will not give you the quality you want.

[RWebb]

I was thinking of a used Nikon Colorscan V - IIRC, those are the ones before the 5000 came out and Nikon changed the numbering system.

[Evans, Marv]

I looked into buying one of the cheaper scanners & decided they weren't worth the trouble. I talked to the guy at the photo desk at Costco where they advertised converting slides to digital for 29 cents each. For $290, which is about the price of some of the cheaper scanners, you can have 1,000 slides done. Theat's the way I'm going to do it.

[stomachmonkey]

Agree with previous posters.

These projects always sound easier and more interesting than they really are.

Outsourcing is almost always cheaper and generally yields better results.

[William930t]

Good advice so far, I was hoping with modern micro-electronics that there would be a suitable in-home unit. I have included below pictures of the 35mm scanners I have found, they look good & simple to use but all feedback reviews are inconsistent















Needs camera attached

[ramonesfreak]

cant advise with the equipment but what i do is have the slides printed to 5x7 prints and then i scan the prints. then you have a hard copy to frame or give away or rescan when ever you want

whether its cheaper to buy the equipment or have them printed i have no idea

[boba]

Originally Posted by RWebb

I was thinking of a used Nikon Colorscan V - IIRC, those are the ones before the 5000 came out and Nikon changed the numbering system.

I have the Nikon Coolscan V, not sure if it is the same you are referencing. It works well but is still some labor intensive, you have got to handle the slides. It can also work from negatives which I found to be a nice feature. I got it new years ago and I seem to remember it was under $500.

[GH85Carrera]

The entire process of scanning slides is a real pain. The dust spots are black and look ugly. Most old slides are very high contrast with dark shadows and blown out highlights. Some of the dyes used in some slides make for strange colors from the scanner. Most of the slides are not flat and have a curve so the focus is a challenge.

The big things to decide before you buy anything is what you want from the final image. I suspect 99.9% of the slides you have are just something you want to look at and will never want anything more than a display for the computer. Those don't need to be a very high resolution scan. Only when you might want a print do you really need high resolution.



We have a scanner at work that cost more than twice what my first house cost. I scanned this slide of me driving my 914 back from 1979. This is cheating because no home scanner can make a scan like this. You don't need that level of scan for most "happy snaps" anyway.

One of the things I would suggest you look into is Picassa. It is a free program from Google and it has amazing facial recognition. Once you name a person a few times you will be amazed how well it will pick out the face for a person from every photo you have of them. It will make it very easy to find the photo again and put it into a album.

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by William930t

Good advice so far, I was hoping with modern micro-electronics that there would be a suitable in-home unit. I have included below pictures of the 35mm scanners I have found, they look good & simple to use but all feedback reviews are inconsistent

It's not only the electronics and optics.

The medium itself presents challenges.

In addition to the things GH85Carrera has pointed out there are annoying time consuming things like the slide holder itself.

Some scanners will require you to remove the film from the frame. Some will accomodate the frame but not all frames are identical so you end up dealing with things like shadows being cast on the edges of the image.

You need to clean every slide, dust, fingerprints, smudges, name each scan, catalog them.

Not saying it's impossible or not worthwhile, it can just be a major time consuming pain in the ass.

[masraum]

I bought my mother a regular flatbed scanner that had a slide slot/attachment/whatever. I think she was able to scan 4 or 6 slides at a time and the software was smart enough to save them as individual images. It's definitely time consuming, but I think the scanner was about $150 and it worked. It's just not a fast process.

[5String43]

Konica Minolta made a really great scanner there for awhile. Don't know if they remain available. I've got one of the things and it works a treat. Is not compatible with Windows Vista, unfortunately, but will run on previous versions, so I have to use an older laptop when I operate it. But it will scan slides, and also convert color negatives to positive, will read black/white negs, plus a lot of other stuff. Uses carriers that hold four slides at a time, or a six-neg strip.

Are there newer devices that are better? Don't know. But this one works really well
this is the version I'm talking about - I think out of production, but probably available on eBay.

Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III

Excellent dynamic range, thanks to 16-bit A/D, scans 35mm and APS formats, (APS with optional adapter), 2820 dpi maximum resolution, 8- or 16-bit scanning modes, software-based "Dust Brush" and "Pixel Polish" for removing dust and auto-improving color & tone, multi-sample scanning up to 8x for noise reduction in deep shadow areas.

If you seek one of these on eBay, be sure to get the instruction book, carriers and CD - useless without the CD.

Looks like this is the closest thing available today:

http://www.samys.com/index/page/product/product_id/34618/product_name/OpticFilm+7600i+Ai+Scanner

[RWebb]

boba - Nikon has add-on attachments to do bulk scanning

BTW - I had 10,000 slides when I stopped counting...

[William930t]

I found an unbiased source of of detailed scanner reviews including test shots, many to choose:

Digital Scanner Reviews

[slakjaw]

Canoscan would be the best cheapest route. Those ones at best but are crap and you will not be happy with them. I still shoot a lot of film and I use an Epson v700 which would run you about 500 bucks. Go get a canoscan.

[RedBaron]

Originally Posted by PFFOG

Well, you may or may not like my reply. I had the same issue, thousands of slides and they were starting to deteriorate.

I bought a good flat bed scanner, that would do 5 slides at a time, problem is it needs CONSTANT babysitting to swap out the scanned and put new in. It would have taken years.

So I bit the bullet and bought a used Nikon coolscan 5000ED, with the SF 210 slide feeder. Load 40 slides, and walk away. 4000 DPI resolution, color correction (BTW Kodachrome is HARD to scan an get good color quality), infrared dust and blemish removal. Coupled with Vuescan (better and easier than Nikons software), and you can get real quality scans. This set up is what the PRO's use that charge you $1/slide.

Now the bad part, you will have to spend $2200-$2500 for the set up. BUT don't let the $$$ scare you, when you are done you can turn around and resell it for as much or MORE than you paid. I got lucky, I found a couple of great deals, an ended up with a little less than $1000 in the set up, had it 2 years, and scanned thousands of slides and negatives, then sold it for over $3,000 when I was done. The price of these things is constantly increasing on ebay.

Believe me the quality is well worth the short term investment, a $150 scanner will not give you the quality you want.

Funny this thread popped up. Someone I know has literally thousands of slides that he wants scanned. I have been scanning them all summer and Christmas break as a side project, getting $100+ per drawer (the guy has 50+ drawers of paintings and architecture. Good money for a college kid.) I have been using his Nikon Coolscan 5000ED and the SF 210 slide feeder. You have to watch them, but if you surf Pelican/Rennlist and do it, it takes no time at all. I will check out that Vuescan software, thanks for the suggestion.

[island911]

Originally Posted by William930t

...

Needs camera attached

That's what I did. --kind of (getto Rube Goldberg version)

My uncle had thousands of slides on carousel -- NO WAY that I was going to take each out by hand.

So, I took the lens out of the slide projector, and stuffed my Minolta A2 in the projector lens opening. (set to full zoom, and macro.) The other key was in a backlight diffuser. - the projector bulb was way too bright.- I used a piece of milky white plastic behind the slides. ...click/click, went the projector/camera . .. about 1 second between.

Post processing was mostly all cropping. (optional) Some color tweeking on certain faded slides - Side note; most slide had awesome color. ..even decades old.

[911pcars]

DIY slide scanning is a possibility. However, if you have thousands of slides, how long will it take you optimize each scan? A few hundred? That's doable for some. Even then, it'll take awhile.

FWIW, I used this service a few years ago and was satisfied with their service and quality: Slide Scanning - Services - ScanCafe

I suggest sending a small batch as well as processing a DIY batch, then decide how much your time is worth.

Sherwood