UKC

Hello,

My dad's birthday is coming up, as a present he wants some of his slides converted to digital for online use and small printing, probably no more than A4.

He has a few thousand slides, doesn't want them all done, but will probably want quite a few done in batches, starting with a hundred or so. Has also has an old flatbed document scanner.

Can anyone suggest the pros and cons of the different options? I'm worried about sending them away because they are irreplaceable and am not sure of the quality of the scan. I could buy a purpose built slide scanner or an adapter for his existing scanner, but would be doing it myself, so don't want to spend ages scanning hundreds of slides if it can be avoided. Is there anything else I could do, or useful tips?

In reply to jonnie3430:

you can buy a stand alone slide scanner that loads to a memory stick/ chip for under £100, of varying quality. Build your own slide viewer or light box just with a bright bulb under glass / plastic and some thin white paper, so you can look at them quickly and decide which to scan. Holding them up to the light or window works to a degree, but it's slow.

In reply to jonnie3430:

I bought a slide scanner a few years ago thinking I would convert my slides to digital. In practice each slide takes several minutes unless you use default settings so I've only converted a relatively small proportion. And even when I spent quite a bit of time, I've never managed to get scans as good as those by whoever converted a couple of my slides to use for an article in the BMC magazine several years ago

In reply to summo:

He has a light table already, and has a projector to show the slides if that helps? Thanks for the response.

In reply to Doug:

Do you know who converted them? I could ask them.

In reply to jonnie3430:

Am interested in this, but not sure if 5mp is enough, and it seems from the reviews that there are some issues; https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B00OIQ1NJY/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=...

In reply to jonnie3430:

When I did something similar a few years ago I used a light table and the macro setting of my camera. Mounted the camera on a tripod and took photos of the slides. The quality was good but it did take a little while to crop the slide frame from shots. If you're happy to take a little hit on the resolution then you can do them in batches of 4.

In reply to jonnie3430:


Was done by the magazine at a time when most publications insisted on slides & wouldn't accept images from digital cameras (was in 2002)

In reply to jonnie3430:

I'd look at a service like http://www.mr-scan.co.uk/slides.html

Printing at A4 requires a decent scan; web use less so. Doing them yourself will be slow and unless you buy a dedicated scanner there will be a learning curve before you get decent results. Flatbeds and camera 'scans' can require a fair bit of gumption to avoid poor results, but you can do a load (up to 20) at once which can be a quick way to catalogue them.

If you're not doing them all there is a big editing job to be done, and probably only your dad can do it. Might be worth getting him started on that, aiming for three lots - print quality scans, web quality scans, scan not needed.

In reply to Adam Long:


Cheers all, I might buy the slide scanner I linked above, then for any where more detail is required, try the macro seeing on a camera, or send them off.

In reply to Adam Long:


I've used Mr Scan and been pleased at the price, though the results are a bit variable with high contrasty things. In the other thread you said you had your own scanners. Do these produce better results?!