Slides. Conversion to digital.

[thieuster]

This weekend marked the beginning of moving to a new house. 'De-cluttering' is the buzz-word for the next 10 days before we start packing and start chucking a lot of stuff in the skip.

I stumbled upon >1000 slides. Mostly from my father, some by me. A quick look showed interesting pictures. My apprenticeship in London, late 78, followed by the horrible 78/79 winter. Just to name a few. I did a quick search 'conversion to digital' and as far as I know, there are two routes: DIY with a special scan device or handing it to a specialized company.

What's your experience?


*Update: all what was stashed under the rafters etc is selected. 2/3 to be thrown away.

[sish101]

A few years back, I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time scanning in all our photos, plus all the photos and slides from my parent's house. I bought a second hand slide scanner and a second hand flatbed scanner from eBay. When I'd finished with them, they went back there for sale. I did the scanning over the winter so it gave me something to do on the dark nights.

There are companies which will do it but you then have to trust the postal service and the company to not lose your material, plus if you're paying for each slide to be converted, you'll have to check them all individually to make sure they're not photos of anyone's feet!

From memory, it was a Plustek slide scanner.


Sent through the ether by diddling with radio waves

[Qatar-wol]

As sish101 says, I think - do you have the time to make it a project? If so, then get a scanner, and have a go!

About 7 years ago, I decided to do something with the 600 or so old photos I had. I pulled in a further 600 from my parents, from the inlaws, and we had the scanned by a company that offered the service. I sent them in three packets, RMSD, and they were all returned in one piece. It wasn't too cheap, I don't think, but I was happy to have the work done for me! Now I have all these love old photos on my MacBook in front of my now -



The kids look at them once or twice a month, and I find myself referring to the photos far more often that I thought I ever would. I was really happy that I had it done. Certainly, I get a lot more use of out them now that I ever did when they were gathering dust. I've tagged faces, I've sat down with people who won't be around forever, and tried to name as many people as I can.

Have fun, or pay to have it done, but get it done!

[monogroover]

I did this a few years ago with a scanner with a slide attachment built in - this worked really well. The painful part, depending on how much it bothers you, is removing marks left by specks of dust from the images. It's quite a painstaking and time-consuming job.

Here's a gratuitous pic of an exposure from a set of slides I discovered at my Mum's house, taken a few years before I was born in Hartlepool. My grandfather, my brother and one of my cousins.

[sish101]

I did this a few years ago with a scanner with a slide attachment built in - this worked really well. The painful part, depending on how much it bothers you, is removing marks left by specks of dust from the images. It's quite a painstaking and time-consuming job.

Here's a gratuitous pic of an exposure from a set of slides I discovered at my Mum's house, taken a few years before I was born in Hartlepool. My grandfather, my brother and one of my cousins.

As I'm from Hartlepool I recognize that church in the background!

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[Shane]

Depending on how large you want the images, and if you have this already, you can use a DSLR or mirrorless camera set up on a tripod. Most cameras nowdays have around 24MP in resolution which would be enough to get you plenty resolution. The one thing that would make this much better is a macro lens, but you could pick up older versions from Canon/Nikon or 3rd party ones that are compatible with an adapter (you'd be focusing manually so wouldn't need autofocus). The set up is quite straightforward but you do need a few pieces of equipment so it really depends on whether you think it's worth the effort. I would definitely go the camera route rather than the flatbed scanner option.

[Mr Pointy]

The huge advantage of using a proper slide scanner is that the software can do an automatic dust & scratch removal pass if the scanner has that capability. A proper scanner is slow but the results are far better than a flatbed or a camera & macro lens. It's a nice winter project.

To have 800 slides scanned professionally would be about 36p each or £288 - not much more than the cost of a scanner. I'm sure there are similar companies where you are.

https://www.mr-scan.co.uk/slides.html

[monogroover]

As I'm from Hartlepool I recognize that church in the background!

Sent through the ether by diddling with radio waves

Taken just near the archway with the steps down to the beach, near the Town Wall, in the mid '50s. The car would have been parked where the white Citroen is on Street View:

https://www.google.com/maps/@54.6948...7i16384!8i8192

[Kevin]

I used a Plustec 8100 with good results.
Lots on ebay.
Hi Res can take a while but a lower res is fine for PC, facebook etc then you can decide which ones you want to scan in Hi Res.

If you have boxes of slides like I did from my father there were a lot to go through so a light box and loup were good for a first pass
He loved taking pics of views whereas the only pics all the extended family were interested in were those with people in them.

[Kingstepper]

The huge advantage of using a proper slide scanner is that the software can do an automatic dust & scratch removal pass if the scanner has that capability. A proper scanner is slow but the results are far better than a flatbed or a camera & macro lens. It's a nice winter project.

To have 800 slides scanned professionally would be about 36p each or £288 - not much more than the cost of a scanner. I'm sure there are similar companies where you are.

https://www.mr-scan.co.uk/slides.html

Epson Perfection flatbed scanners (V850 etc) can also carry out automatic scratch and dust removal. Aren't cheap but have the advantage that they can scan 12 slides at a time so process should be much quicker. Will give good images for most purposes.

This and film scanners achieve good prices on the secondary market so much of the cost can always be recouped.

[thieuster]

Thanks for all suggestions. I like the 12-in-one-go: a slides cartridge houses 36 pieces. 3x loading is a lot quicker than 36 individual slides one-by-one...

[Mr Pointy]

Epson Perfection flatbed scanners (V850 etc) can also carry out automatic scratch and dust removal. Aren't cheap but have the advantage that they can scan 12 slides at a time so process should be much quicker. Will give good images for most purposes.

This and film scanners achieve good prices on the secondary market so much of the cost can always be recouped.

That may be true but a V850 Pro is £776 - more than double the cost of sending the OP's slides off to be done professionally on a much better scanner.

[Kingstepper]

That may be true but a V850 Pro is £776 - more than double the cost of sending the OP's slides off to be done professionally on a much better scanner.

I'm sure the OP can do the maths but was giving him another option and pointing out that flatbeds aren't all rubbish and the software you mentioned is also available for these. As suggested, it can probably be sold for ~£500+ afterwards.

A slide scanning service may use a better scanner but I'm not convinced the results would be better in practice, results will depend on operator input. Professional doesn't necessarily equate to good - photo printing was always a lottery.

[thieuster]

Apart from the technical side of things: I had a great evening last night looking at all those slides. Tons of pics of my (late) parents, the dogs, the house and everyday life! Given the amount of winter wonderland(...) pictures, It must have been a lot colder then (70s, early 80s) then today! Funny how the brain works: I can even remember that I took some of those pics, but others were a complete surprise when I saw them again! We're talking 40 - 50 yrs ago.

On thing is sure: those slides deserve better than being boxed-up!

Menno

[David_D]

Very interesting thread.

I've had Nikon Scanner as a saved search on eBay for ages. They made top notch photo scanners including some with useful extras like a slide feeder. I think one issue was that the Nikon software is no longer supported on anything post Windows 7 (or maybe earlier). You can use other software I believe but no idea how easy or otherwise it is.

Plustek looks like a good option. Maybe something to treat myself to for the dark lockdown winter evenings.

[Kingstepper]

Very interesting thread.

I've had Nikon Scanner as a saved search on eBay for ages. They made top notch photo scanners including some with useful extras like a slide feeder. I think one issue was that the Nikon software is no longer supported on anything post Windows 7 (or maybe earlier). You can use other software I believe but no idea how easy or otherwise it is.

Plustek looks like a good option. Maybe something to treat myself to for the dark lockdown winter evenings.

As well as Nikon, Canon and Minolta also made very good machines and fetch high prices when they do crop up though using supplied software will be an issue with any of these.

[LRB255]

Great thread thanks

Similar, had a house move a couple years ago and found lots of old photos (some curled at the edges) and negatives and briefly thought of maybe scanning them but got put back in a box and stored

£300+ doesn't seem too bad, so would investing in a quality scanner then reselling equate to a reasonably high quality digital copy (excluding time factor) or the professional high street be far superior

As Qatar-wol says, get it done and thanks for the kick up the backside

[Mr Pointy]

Very interesting thread.

I've had Nikon Scanner as a saved search on eBay for ages. They made top notch photo scanners including some with useful extras like a slide feeder. I think one issue was that the Nikon software is no longer supported on anything post Windows 7 (or maybe earlier). You can use other software I believe but no idea how easy or otherwise it is.

Plustek looks like a good option. Maybe something to treat myself to for the dark lockdown winter evenings.

It's true the Nikon software isn't suppoerted but it's not a big issue as there is an excellent substitute from Hamrick called Vuescan:
https://www.hamrick.com/index.html

It's not cheap at £60 but it will drive just about any scanner & I found it easier to use than the Silverfast software that comes with many scanners, including Plustek models. What may not be obvious if you haven't scanned before is that while the hardware is key to the optical results obtained it's the software that you really need to learn & understand & can make or break the process.

There's a lot of information on this site although sadly it's not as up to date as it used to be:
https://www.filmscanner.info/en/KnowHow.html

Scanning properly is incredibly time consuming but acceptable results can be achieved with a little practice.

[higham5]

A point that I havnt seen mentioned is not just the scanning but the cataloging the images once scanned. We bought a cheap Ebay slide scanner and my wife did them over a few weekends. We created files by person and also tagged the images by year.

Then we pushed the whole lot up to Gdrive and then advised the kids mother in law etc a password to access and edit,

[blackal]

I bought a pretty good, recommended slide scanner to transfer a lot of my father’s negatives. BUT - the negative strips had curled with age, and it was not satisfactory.

I ended up sending the strips to the fella they were primarily for, who worked at a Norwegian publishers- and he strip-fed them into a professional machine.

I’m not sure if there is any way of flattening strips at home.

[jcm3]

Top notch solution, the Negative Supply strip carrier and mounted slide holder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfty...X_S_Dv&index=1

or a homebuilt alternative https://youtu.be/luI0b_f3IJI

[gerard]

A neat solution from Nikon if you have a digital DSLR. There used to be universal mount ones in the 1980s. Very quick and easy. High resolution too.


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[Franco]

Depending on the numbers.

I would suggest you find somebody locally, who is recommended to do a good job. A company or a gifted photo technician.

This way you do not risk loosing them in the mail.

You can bring them 20 or so to see if they do it correctly , clearing them with compressed air, individual focusing rather than fixed focusing (They can be slightly warped, some more than others)