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General discussion

Digitizing slides

Apr 18, 2009 10:57AM PDT

I have a huge number of slides that are already 20 plus years old. I am thinking about scanning them or converting them into digital photos, in one way or another. I already have an HP flatbed scanner. I am wondering about my options:
(1) buy one of those trays that fit over your flatbed, and let you scan your slides.
(2) buy dedicated converters for slides that work on their own, making digital copies. I?m seeing one for 100 bucks, which I would think would cost more than (1)
(3) any other option that I haven?t listed?

Does one of these generally work better than the other? I?ve never worked with this before and honestly have no idea if one option has been more reliable/given better quality copies or not?.

When I say huge number, I mean hundreds if not thousands, so it really wouldn?t pay to ship them somewhere to have someone else do it for 20 cents a slide or whatever.

Mods, I'm not sure if this is in the right forum or not...feel free to move as appropriate.

Discussion is locked

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scanning slides
Apr 20, 2009 1:58AM PDT

Some observations:

1. Can your HP scanner be retrofitted to scan slides? It needs to have a cover that emits light. The scanner had to be built to scan slides to begin with.

2. I've seen the ads for the $100 slide scanners, but an skeptical. Have not seen a review of them. That's really cheap, so I'm suspect. Real dedicated slide scanners are hundreds of dollars, but are designed to do that job and create good images from the slides.

3. If you can retrofit your scanner and/or buy a $100 slide scanner, be prepared to spend LOTS of time scanning your slides. It is tedious work, especially with a flatbed scanner that "also does slides." Also, the quality of the image scan is just okay. I've gone that route, and some slides scan pretty nicely, and others just don't scan well at all. Dust on your slides will show up like snow on the digital image, so be ready to deal with that. Hope that your original slides are dust free and scratch free.

4. After all this, the 20 cents/slide charged by a service might just be the real bargain.

5. As you can see, there ain't no real cheap/easy/quick way to do this.

Good luck.

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Simple Scanning of slides
Nov 24, 2009 12:10PM PST

I also was looking for a cost effective way to digitize my families collection of slides. I tried one "cheap" slide scanner bought online, and found it very time consuming and not at all satisfactory. Frustrated I tried to upload my slides, "old school".

I was lucky enough to have a nearby relative that still had the old slide projector and retractable floor screen. I also borrowed a tri-pod to hold my digital camera. I loaded up the carrosels and trays with slides, tweeked the focus for each slide before I snapped the image with my digital camera. It's important to turn off the flash feature. I could snap a 100 slide carrousel in about 45 minutes.

I uploaded the images from the digital camera and presto! Simple, good quality and fast!