Best way to digitize slides?

[Paul_B]

FiL has lots of slides and no longer got a working way to show them. A cheapo slide digitiser is absolute garbage and is not user friendly, takes about 5 minutes per slide to get onto the computer due to a very unfriendly USB route or memory card route.

So what are the best options? Take them to a service that does it for you or is there an economic slide digitiser that is easy to use? I think he has 500 to 1000 slides and they date from the 60s when he spent a long time overseas. Irreplaceable images.

I think i saw somewhere it is about £250 to350 to digitise with a service, but how much for a user friendly film and slide scanner? how long would it take us to scan say 500 slides ourselves if we found a scanner that was worth getting vs time and cost of using a service.

Any advise or recommendations?

 

[Broch]

It depends entirely on what resolution you want/need. I have an Epson photo scanner that does a reasonable job of scanning negatives and slides. Mine is the (now obsolete) Perfection 550, a maximum optical resolution of 6,400 dpi with interpolated resolutions of up to 12,800 dpi and up to 48-bit colour depth.

But I've also used a slide copier on my digital SLR. It attaches like a lens to the camera and the slide is held about 150mm from the sensor. They are quite cheap, will copy to the resolution of the DSLR, but, obviously, only one slide at a time. You also need a repeatable and diffuse light source behind it.

If you go the scanner route make sure it will do slides and not just prints.

I would suggest the first thing to do is go through all the slides, maybe with a cheap light/lens viewer, and discard ones not worth scanning - I'd be surprised if you didn't reduce it by 50%.

 

[Silverclaws2]

I used one of these ;

DIGITNOW Slide Scanner

Except I bought mine pre-owned for £9 on ebay.

It's a bit freaky to get the hang of to describe a distinct learning curve but it eventually did the job.

 

[gibson 175]

Maybe approach a museum. curator or conservation officer might be able to point you in the right direction. a lot of old media collections have been digitised for museums now.

 

[Paul_B]

Oh FiL would like that... Slides taken in his youth are worthy of a museum, how dare you!!!!

Seriously joking there. Actually my Mum worked in a university and they had an audiovisual unit. She got them to recover an old photograph of her great grandparents or grandparents I can't reemember. It was one of those faded or fading sepia prints of sort of 1800s garbed couple in a pose. Possibly taken by one of those glass slide cameras!! They were Swedish immigrants to America late 1900s IIRC and this was the only image of them. Must have been her great grandparents. The uni unit managed to not just dupe it but to actually recover detail that was not in the photo that we could see. IIRC they also removed a tear or other mark. It was amazing what they did.

Not sure I can access their services now though. I think I will have to look for a commercial service.

Thanks for the ideas.

 

[Urvin]

Pay the £250–350 service if you want it done right and fast. Cheap scanners are garbage. DIY with a Plustek 8200i (~£300) works but expect 25+ hours and a learning curve. Anything cheaper? Don’t bother.

 

[Cavendish]

If you decide to go down the commercial service route then Mr Scan did great work for me with some ancient slides up to 60 years old. (Usual disclaimer re no affiliation etc)