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General discussion

How do I best transfer slides to digital images?

by smedby Jan 8, 2007 2:45PM PST

My father has mountains of slides and I need to figure out a way that is not to expensive to get these slides transfered to digital images/photos. Anyone with suggestions, please give me an answer. What exuipment, software etc.. do I need.

Thanks.

Discussion is locked

10 Posts
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A scanner?
by BowerR64 Jan 8, 2007 3:04PM PST

Would a scanner work? if you have one try it or see if some one you know has one you can try it with. You may be able to fit like10 of them on the surface and scan 10 slides at a time. My dad has some also i may try it myself.

Ive seen these slide adapters on e-bay before that you fit on the camera and they have a fixed distance from the lens and a little light box or somthing that shines threw the back. The problem is you will have to go threw them all one at a time shooting each one. You put your camera into macro and shoot them at this fixed distance from the lens. It may shoot better quality images then the scanner i dont know.

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Transfering Slides
by Don_In_Laveen Jan 25, 2013 8:30AM PST

I do have a piece of equipment I used to transfer pictures to digital back in the stone ages, it is a Sony Telecine Adaptor. You mount a picture on one side and put your camera on the other side. It worked ok for pictures but I have not tried slides. If I use the scanner Hp 73010 should I use custom settings 300 pix or more hire light.contrast balance or shold I go raw and fix in PS? Any thoughts? PS the Telecine Adaptor (spelled correctly) does not have an internal light source like a slide board.

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If you want to do the work yourself, you will need a scanner
by Kiddpeat Jan 8, 2007 5:11PM PST

There are scanners that are built to scan slides, and there are general purpose scanners that have slide adaptors. Either will do several slides at a time, but you will have to name and save the photos after scanning.

I have an Epson V750 Pro which is a bit pricey, but has most of what you need to do a quality job. It comes with all the software including Adobe Photoshop Elements, and can operate in as sophisticated a fashion as you wish. It all comes with several adaptors including one for 35mm slides. You simply load your slides, and place the adaptor on the scanning bed. The scanner will find the slide images and scan them.

Besides the scanner, you will need a DVD or CD burner. You are better off with DVDs since they will hold many more images. You will, of course, also need a computer.

You can also have this done at a photo store. Around here, they charge about $.25 per slide. You cannot do this with a digital camera. Cameras do not have enough resolution to capture slides.

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35 slides to computer to DVD
by Grace Pietramala Sep 9, 2009 3:04AM PDT

Further to the CNET 35 slides using Epson V700, computer to DVD.
I was purchasing the Epson V500 scanner. I have 3,000 slides to transfer, i stored them well but I am sure they need some cleaning up.
Once I tranfer to the Computer are there any other steps, I need to follow, before burning to DVDs.
thank You grace

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35mm Slides
by snapshot2 Forum moderator Sep 9, 2009 10:54AM PDT

Your slides will likely have some surface dust.
You can buy cans of compressed air.
A very brief blast of air on each side of each slide will get rid of that.

Slides to DVD.
I assume you want to create a DVD that you can play on a set-top DVD player that is attached to your television set.

You need slide show software.

If you want to do a first class job of creating a slide show, with background music and possibly narrate in the foreground, get a full featured slide slow program.

I have been using Proshow Gold by Photodex for several years.
You can download a full functioning trial copy, to see if you like it.

You can also do a Google search for "slide show software" and find hundreds of slide show programs.

I have found that 8 to 9 seconds is enough show time for each slide.
But that is adjustable for each slide. If you have a long narration, you probably want to keep the slide showing for the duration of the narration.

..
.

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How do I best transfer slides to digital images?
by hellergang2 Jul 3, 2009 12:04PM PDT

i want to re-ask this question with a higher requirement. I have over 3000 slides in slide reels. I want to digitize them all with some sort of equipment and not paying $1 a slide. So, I need a high volume solution, that cleans the slides, etc.

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35mm slide scanner
by snapshot2 Forum moderator Jul 3, 2009 12:59PM PDT
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flatbed+adapter versus film scanner
by fihart Jul 3, 2009 1:23PM PDT

A flatbed can cost from under $100 and the results are surprisingly good (at least with a decent brand of scanner) but the process is vastly time consuming. I've found flatbeds to be a bit flaky -- sometimes having problems with white slide mounts affecting colour/exposure -- and sometimes not finding the slide at all.

Dedicated film scanners cost from $400 up to thousands and give consistent results (ignore products for dramatically less as they are basically digicam sensors with a film holder).

The worst problem I've experience with mounted slides (as opposed to neg film in storage pouches) is older ones suffer surface coating from air pollution which (at best) disperses the scanner's light and creates odd exposures. This means that older slides and badly stored strip film may need washing and careful dust free drying. A nightmare.

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Have you transferred the slides yet? I am looking to do the
by ski50 Nov 13, 2009 11:52AM PST

same and wondering what equipment you chose and how it worked.

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You might try a camera
by duanegrasse Dec 21, 2009 4:00PM PST

I have a flatbed with slide adapter. VERY slow going, and not great quality. Had about 1500 slides to do, so I experimented with a camera and am very pleased. You may not agree, but here was my situation:
The slides were well organized in carousels. They were family photos from the late 60s to early 80s. Typical amateur snapshots.
I set up the projector with a nice big screen in a pitch dark room, and lined it up square to the screen. There is a little keystoning, but I aimed it as straight as possible, with the camera lens directly over the projector lens. Low speed, long exposure, no flash, tripod, auto-timer.
Once you get set up and work through a few, you can fly through them rather quickly. The slowest part was tilting the camera for the portrait/landscape orientation changes. Even that eventually became rather quick.
I did some touching up. Auto-correct for contrast, etc., which is easy if you image editor does batch processing; cropping/straightening if you want to make them pretty.

Good luck.

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