Slide to digital questions

[Mendocino]

I have hundreds of old slides which I wish to preserve. There are places where I can have it done for .35 a slide. I've seen devices for sale that allow home conversion, I wonder if anyone has any experience with these?

Thank You for any help.

[Blues Heron]

1. maybe send a few non-critical ones in to see

if they do good work then cool. Slide scanners can be very slow, tedious, but you're in control.

[Dr Hobbitstein]

2. I had a negative scanner back in the day.

Paid less than $100 for it used. It would scan two strips of 6 frames (35mm film) or it could hold 4 slides. Took about a minute to do a full scan.

If you're at all handy with a scanner, then it's really easy to do yourself. You will have to color correct a bit with a photo editing tool. Such is the nature of film.

[jmowreader]

3. Check eBay for slide scanners

You can either buy a flatbed scanner with a transparency adapter or a dedicated film scanner. The flatbed is the wrong way to go - unless you want to drop $800 on an Epson V750, the pictures you get out of a flatbed look like shit.

You probably want a new slide scanner, and there are two brands to worry about: Plustek and Pacific Image. Both work.

If you get an old one you'll have to buy a "SCSI" card for your computer to connect it. SCSI is old home week for me; for you it'll be a form of slow torture.

[csziggy]

4. I like the Epson flatbed scanner for scanning slides

I have two, the older Epson Perfection V500 and a newer Epson Perfection V800.

The V500 will scan fewer slides at a time, the V800 can scan a dozen at a time and can also scan large format (up to 8" x 10&quot negatives. Both will scan photos. The quality of the scans from each is excellent and equivalent.

I bought the V500 as a refurbished item directly from Epson. Right now they have the Epson V550 for $120 which includes free ground shipping - https://epson.com/Clearance-Center/Scanners/Epson-Perfection-V550-Photo-Color-Scanner---Refurbished/p/B11B210201-N I've bought a number of refurbished scanners and printers from Epson (and Brother) and never had a problem with any of them.

I have scanned thousands of slides with the two scanners - I am scanning all the family photos, negatives and slides. The software and hardware does automatic dust removal (with Digital Ice) and can adjust the color. For some of the slides the old film had degraded and the color correction gets rid of the magenta or blue cast without spending a lot of time adjusting each slide individually.

While I have VueScan, a third party scanning software I bought for some of my older scanners, the newer Epson scan software is so much improved, I seldom use VueScan anymore. Mostly I use Vuescan for odd sized slides and negatives that the Epson software does not have provision for.

I had more than one dedicated slide scanner in the old days - started with a Nikon in the 1990s, went to an Acer, and have some off brand thing my Dad gave me. Partly because of technology advances, the Epsons do a much better job than any of the dedicated ones I have used. I have to re-scan all the slides I did with the dedicated scanners because the quality was so poor compared with what the Epson scanners do.

[FakeNoose]

5. Used to be standard equipment in the printing industry

There are a lot of offset printing companies that are going out of business, or selling old equipment cheap.

I've worked in printing for a lot of years, and just about everybody has gone digital since about 15 years ago. They sold off their old film-related equipment, mostly cheap. You need to find a scanner for "film positives" which is the term printers use for slides. Ask around if you know anyone in printing, or look in trade publications for classified ads on used equipment.

The more expensive scanners would handle large film, usually 20" or larger. You should look for a small one that handles films that are smaller format.

[Mendocino]

6. The quality of the slides

I wish to transfer is quite good. They've been in carousels for years, kept in boxes, so virtually no dust, protected from scratching and always kept in a cool dark place. I'm more interested in basic preservation than technical quality. A device I saw was a Wolverine F2D for about $140. It's said that you can transfer about 6 slides per minute with practice. I've got the time to do hundreds. I can fix minor flaws and color/lighting on my pc after the transfer. This device also can do Super 8 of which I have about 10 reels.