lastminute
Established Member
Lots of old slides I want to transfer to pc...any advice most welcome.
Thankyou
Gerry
Thankyou
Gerry
35mm slide to pc?
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ajs
Established Member
How many are you talking about? Film scanners are a thing, cost perhaps £150-250 for a reasonable one. Don't have any recommendations since it's probably ten years since I last looked into it.
Alternatively most high street photo places will be able to do it (it's essentially photo CD) Better results but of course if you have a lot it could work out expensive.
Alternatively most high street photo places will be able to do it (it's essentially photo CD) Better results but of course if you have a lot it could work out expensive.
You can buy a slide copier; I have one somewhere but it is quite labour intensive. It was very expensive when I brought it but had a good resolution; I did a few and gave up. They can usually do negative strips as well.
Some scanners have an attachment or they used to and you can buy attachments for digital cameras.
It might be better to send them off to a professional company and get them to do it.
Some scanners have an attachment or they used to and you can buy attachments for digital cameras.
It might be better to send them off to a professional company and get them to do it.
Jacob
What goes around comes around.
Simplest is to project them as large as you can and photograph them again with your DSLR or good quality phone. Quality can be better than you expect
heronviewer
Established Member
I bought an Epsom scanner which ,with iis software, did a very good job and I was able to correct most of the blue discolouration that had appeared over time. Not a quick job though.
How many slides and how important is quality. What's the budget? There are many solutions. and some very good scanners which will do the job.
I archived all my slides and negatives, very high resolution and 16 bit per channel, using an Epson V700 photo scanner. It does 12 slides at a time and if selected, will do dust/scratch removal, colour correction, noise reduction and a host of other options. I don't do any correction on bulk scanning. it would take forever. If you save to an uncompressed or lossless compressed, you can do the correction later and produce JPG for distribution. It made the task a lot easier, but each image was 30 to 150MB, depending on the complexity of image. It took me a long time to scan everything, but I did it as a background task while doing other things.
I archived all my slides and negatives, very high resolution and 16 bit per channel, using an Epson V700 photo scanner. It does 12 slides at a time and if selected, will do dust/scratch removal, colour correction, noise reduction and a host of other options. I don't do any correction on bulk scanning. it would take forever. If you save to an uncompressed or lossless compressed, you can do the correction later and produce JPG for distribution. It made the task a lot easier, but each image was 30 to 150MB, depending on the complexity of image. It took me a long time to scan everything, but I did it as a background task while doing other things.
That has just reminded me it was another reason I stopped as I couldn't afford lots of CD's as they were at the time or hard drives.
sploo
Somewhat extinguished member
If you have a DSLR with a macro lens then you can directly photograph the slides (with a suitable backlight).
Some years ago I made a simple jig with a screw hole to mount the camera, and a couple of slots to hold a slide in a fixed position; though you could just put the camera on a tripod (but you'd still need a way to hold the slides). I rigged up a flashgun to fire onto a diffuser to supply the light from behind the slide for each shot, but a lamp or LCD light (on all the time) should be fine too - just less light power.
If you don't have a macro lens then extension tubes with a "normal" lens can be an alternative, as it a lens reversing ring. The issue is that you need to achieve 1:1 reproduction if you have a full frame DSLR (i.e. a ~35mm slide completely covering the ~35mm sensor on the camera). If you have a camera with a smaller sensor then the required magnification is reduced; e.g. my (small sensor) phone can just about focus on something that small.
Some years ago I made a simple jig with a screw hole to mount the camera, and a couple of slots to hold a slide in a fixed position; though you could just put the camera on a tripod (but you'd still need a way to hold the slides). I rigged up a flashgun to fire onto a diffuser to supply the light from behind the slide for each shot, but a lamp or LCD light (on all the time) should be fine too - just less light power.
If you don't have a macro lens then extension tubes with a "normal" lens can be an alternative, as it a lens reversing ring. The issue is that you need to achieve 1:1 reproduction if you have a full frame DSLR (i.e. a ~35mm slide completely covering the ~35mm sensor on the camera). If you have a camera with a smaller sensor then the required magnification is reduced; e.g. my (small sensor) phone can just about focus on something that small.
rogxwhit
Established Member
Scanners are slow, since they have to whir and track across every frame. How long have you got? The digital camera method, if you can rig up the lighting, focus and framing issues, is instant - position, click, position, click ...
Cheap scanners are available but they're absolute junk.
You have a camera? And what quality of result are you after?
Cheap scanners are available but they're absolute junk.
You have a camera? And what quality of result are you after?
Adam W.
A Major Clanger
Agreed, the Epsom scanners are very good, couple it with photoshop and you're onto a winner.
ajs
Established Member
Epsom scanners? Photoshop? It that what the bookies use when the "wrong" horse wins?
Jacob
What goes around comes around.
Adam W.
A Major Clanger
Lons
Established Member
It really depends on how important the slides are and your expectations regarding quality.
My inlaws had boxes full of slides which were irreplaceable memories from my wife's childhood and we also had 50 or so of our own worth reproducing, I bought a cheap scanner for about £30, from Aldi if memory serves and spent a few evenings scanning with perfectly acceptable results for our needs, some of the really important ones got a little photoshop treatment but most of what we wanted were good enough.
Yep it takes time but we all know, blokes really can multitask despite rumours to the contrary and I watched TV while scanning them. They were saved on my laptop then on to DVDs and given to family members.
You'll definitely get better results from an expensive scanner or pay a sizeable sum to have them done by a professional, depends what you want and how deep your pockets are.
My inlaws had boxes full of slides which were irreplaceable memories from my wife's childhood and we also had 50 or so of our own worth reproducing, I bought a cheap scanner for about £30, from Aldi if memory serves and spent a few evenings scanning with perfectly acceptable results for our needs, some of the really important ones got a little photoshop treatment but most of what we wanted were good enough.
Yep it takes time but we all know, blokes really can multitask despite rumours to the contrary and I watched TV while scanning them. They were saved on my laptop then on to DVDs and given to family members.
You'll definitely get better results from an expensive scanner or pay a sizeable sum to have them done by a professional, depends what you want and how deep your pockets are.
You could certainly rattle through the slides doing it that way and if you got the set up correct, probably reasonable quality.
My scanner is a lot slower. I scanned my slides at 6400 dpi, 24 bit, ( over 100Mb per image), The scanner does 12 slides at a time. It took about 43 min to scan the 12 slides, but I was able to let the scanner get on with it. It only takes 2 min to unload/load the slides, then I left the scanner to do it's work and I did other things, so whilst the time to scan is a lot longer, It only took me a couple of minutes every so often.
Here is an old slide, 50+ years sitting in a slide box. No cleaning before scanning. Scanned at 6400dpi, 24 bit. The image on the left is scanned with Digital ICE on the Epson scanner. It uses a two pass scan, the first uses IR to detect scratches and dust on the surface. The right hand image has no dust removal. It works very well, but I don't apply it when bulk scanning. It takes 8 minutes per slide and it can introduce artefacts.
Mine was a Konica from memory and I had the same process as @Sandyn . I also brought some cleaning fluid so would wipe over the slides/negatives first and use an air blower.
I used to save at maximum quality and a uncompressed format with minimum manipulation from the scanner as once the information is modified/removed there is no way to get it back.
I didn't have photoshop at the time and was using Gimp; software has improved a lot since then and you can probably get a lot better output now when post processing.
This thread has got me wondering where my scanner is now.
I used to save at maximum quality and a uncompressed format with minimum manipulation from the scanner as once the information is modified/removed there is no way to get it back.
I didn't have photoshop at the time and was using Gimp; software has improved a lot since then and you can probably get a lot better output now when post processing.
This thread has got me wondering where my scanner is now.
Also, in the future there will be all kinds of processing to recover old images, but better than the AI stuff of today.
You might have problems with the scanner driver if it's really old, in which case give Vuescan a check. The site now looks a bit like one of those scam PC driver sites, but it's genuine. I had a copy, but since moving to a new win 10 PC, no idea where it is.
I agree
I had forgotten about Vuescan and as you say my old driver will be very unlikely to work with Windows 10
