35 mm slides converted to digital format

[PILOON]

I'm in that same boat.
Problem is patience, which I am in short supply of.
It'll be 'round toit' thing I guess.
I did start a while back by projecting and selecting some 'keepers' but that soon got boring.
1st step was to load the projector and view to select the keepers but after some 7-8 carousels I kinda gave up, then the wife decided to put that away as she wanted that work space.
So that's my excuse!

 

[RalphVa]

The Digitnow gizmo bought around a year ago was only about $40-60. Kodak and some others are much more expensive.

 

[Jims1025R]

I used a copier by "IT" (Innovative Technology), it copied negatives and slides, and did a super job. I had tried to photograph them with a macro lens on a digital camera, but go poor results. The film in the frame was not entirely flat, so part of the image was not in focus - depth of field was a problem. However the IT devise works, it took care of focus perfectly.

The other hing I noticed is that once copied to digital, I could actually adjust the exposure in Adobe to actually get a better photo than the slide had been. I was very happy with the results.

 

[jigs_n_fixtures]

Here comes the techno Geek part: depending on the slide film, there are from 1500 to 3500 grains per inch. The slower the film, the smaller the grain, and more grains per inch. Kodachrome 200 was about 2000 grains per inch. To capture teh full fidelity, you need to scan at that, so for a 35mm slide you are looking at about 5.2 MegaPixels.

This is slow and time consuming to do. When I converted some 2500 slides I bought a very expensive scanner which had an auto feed feature, it was a Japanese brand, maybe Fuji, been a while. It took standard Kodak Carasol trays. I would load one up with the 100 photos, and launch it, and load the spare tray. That can take a bit, becasue you want to blow any dust off, before you load them. Then come back the next day, change the Carasol out, and load slides in the one that just finished. Took most of a month to run them all through.

The compression strategy is that it starts at pixel 0,0, and decides what colors and gray scale that pixel is and records it. Then it goes to 0,1. If things haven’t changed it goes to 0,2, and analyzes it. If it hasn’t changed, it move on to the next one. If it gets to 0,5 and something is different then it records the location and the new data. And ,moves on until it finds another change.

Things that are pretty uniform can scan quickly, things that have its of changes take longer. Sometimes a lot longer.

There is no quick, easy way to do it and capture the potential of the film.

 

[JasperFrank]

The difficulty with slides, is that they color change, fade with time are are not standardized. There were different formats of slides. They tend to go into the red and yellow color spectrums. Getting anything back to originality is guess work. That said, I have used with great success, dedidicated slide scanners. One slide at a time and I have to say also, this took forever and each slide required a great deal of post scan correction. It the picts are really important, I would have a Pro do it and pay the price and recieive TIFF digital imagines, which will be rather large. If you want to do it on our own, and you already have a 1200-2400 DPI bed scanner, you can take the slides out of their carriers so you are only using the film. Lay the images all out and do one scan as one large image with very high resolution, save as jpeg.. Then cut them up individually. I use Irvanview for corrections, as its easy to see if you need to do a later Batch correction on a set. Normal human eyes can't see better then a 1080 display.

 

[3Ts]

My slides are about 50 years old and have had color changes. I bought one of the OpticFilm scanners specifically designed for 35mm slides. First I projected all the slides onto the wall and selected the ones I wanted to scan. Then I took the time over several months and scanned them one at a time and did the post processing to correct the color and exposure as much as I could, at least they are now better than the film. It did take a long time but they're better than the film. Our wedding photos were sent out for copies and everyone of them were lost, so I'm not sending out any more pictures.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

I use a canon flatbed scanner, has a slide adapter. I’ve done hundreds, and have about 700 to do now.
Dust is a problem, I try to keep the scanner clean.

 

[RalphVa]

So many photos and slides are just junk or are of stuff one can youtube or Google to find many pictures of any more. The ones to save are of people and unusual things.

 

[oosik]

I don't have many old slides and I don't have a whole lot of patience. All my slides are 50 years plus. I'm just going to keep them - as they are.

 

[m7040]

I use a canon flatbed scanner, has a slide adapter. I’ve done hundreds, and have about 700 to do now.
Dust is a problem, I try to keep the scanner clean.

Are you using the RS40 scanner?