UKC

Spent the weekend clearing out my fathers house. One of the few joys was that I came across nearly 20 years of slides from both himself and his father. There are also some Super 8 film marked "wedding" not sure who's though!

I'd like to work on digitising my the slides and negatives for both myself, and as a token for his brothers. It looks like a mixture of 35mm negatives, slides, and some old medium format as well. There are also some other negatives I've not touched which look like they are from an early <40s camera. Not to worried about them yet.

The question - I am aware this is going to be a bit of a long term project. But there is enough content that I think getting it done professionally will cost more than buying a scanner and doing it myself. I can use the winter evenings productivity rather than just watching TV!

Has anyone got any experience doing this? What sort of scanner works?

I'll be using a Mac - pulling it all into Lightroom and doing any work there.

The other benefit is I now have two new medium format cameras as well as a nice Cannon SLR and a bag of prime lenses to play with too

In reply to greg_may_:

Hi Greg,
I had a similar issue - old slides (both my own and my father's).
I bought a Minolta DiMage slide scanner several years ago. Whilst it gives excellent image quality, slide scanning alone is a slow process. If you add post-scan processing into the mix its even slower>
My scanner takes 4 slides at a time, and from memory (I haven't scanned slides in a while) it took over 5 mins to scan all 4. Whilst this might not seem long - its not long enough to go away and do something else, but seems interminable if you sit watching it! I tried reading at the same time, but ended up concentrating on reading and forgot the scanner!
I have a colleague at work who has a need to scan almost 3000 slides. The cost of getting this done professionally was not punitive £70+VAT per 100 slides if I remember correctly. I presume that equipment used by professional companies would be faster/higher capacity throughput?
FWIW, my biggest issue was slide quality - so many of the old ones had fungal growth which requires a lot of post-processing.
Good luck.
N

In reply to greg_may_:

I know that you didn't mention old prints. But anyway, ... for old prints, I've found that photographing them with a decent to high end lens on a DSLR can yield pretty amazing results (processed through LR).

In reply to cousin nick:

5mins for 4 slides...bloody hell, that is not fast. I may need to sit down and work out the economics of doing this!


In reply to ChrisJD:

That was my plan. There are probably going to be a chunk of images that there are no negatives for - mostly old medium format images and some big plate images from way, way, way back when.
How did you go about lighting for it?

In reply to greg_may_:

Using a PC and Epson scanner, I got up to 1 slide per minute.
Important to experiment and get all the custom settings and the slide carriage all set up correctly, then you're away.
Easy to do a batch each day.
DC

In reply to greg_may_:


Natural light and camera on a tripod, with a few shots of white balance card, which can then use in LR to sort WB. Avoid refection on the photo you are shooting.

Leave space around the photo (don't fill the frame with the photo) when shooting as you can correct any perspective misalignment in LR - i.e. don't fret too much about shooting square on; but this will crop the image - hence leaving the space around the edge.

In reply to greg_may_:

I had exactly the same issue when my father passed over 10 years ago, we found thousands of images in the loft, thankfully most in good enough condition to digitise. I bought a relatively cheap Veho colourbright VFS-002m Slide and Negative scanner from Amazon, complete with bespoke software. After a few teething problems I managed to get very presentable images, much to my family's delight. The time taken didn't seem at all wasted as each new image stirred bygone memories, some happy some bittersweet.

For the movie films (not sure what format they were) I used Alive Studios, they were in Edwinstowe, now appear to have moved to Teignmouth, and was very pleased with the service and results. I have no affiliation to them at all.

In reply to greg_may_:
This comes up quite often.... I've used MrScan, which has done a great job on my slides, as well as some older family slides I have. They scan on professional scanners, which are beyond the pockets of most of us, and includes post-scan processing for dust removal etc afterwards and is reasonably priced IMO. There are some examples in my photo set on here. You send the slides and download the scanned images and get the originals back later, if you wish. Quick and easy.

In reply to greg_may_:

I had my ankle fused 5 years ago and was on crutches for several months. I used some of that time to scan in my old slides.
I used a Canon Canoscan which I think cost about £150 but there's probably a newer version out now.
It gave very satisfactory results but was quite slow. The 5 mins for 4 slides (it does 4 at a time) sounds about right. You could do them faster but on a lower resolution.
You can do other things whilst scanning is in progress, I wasted a lot of time reading and posting stuff on here, but then I was pretty immobile so couldn't wander off and do more useful things.
I found the post scan photoshopping took at least as long as the scanning.
On the plus side, I'm glad I did it and so were my climbing partners as I made up a CD for each of them of the photos I'd taken on our various climbing trips.

In reply to greg_may_:

If B&W negs, then do a low image scan to decide which ones are worth enlarging. If they are 35mm then quality will not be good because of grain, to say nothing of degradation of neg (To preserve they should be sealed in a moisture proof bag with silica gel insert and kept in a fridge!). Drum scanning does give superb results if the slides are very good quality. Here we are talking Kodakchrome 25 or similar. If larger than 35mm then you will have to use a commercial outfit. I too use a Minolta Dimage scanner that cost close to £500 nearly 10 years back so no cheap options really. the other option is to set up a darkroom and do it yourself the old way!

In reply to greg_may_:

Do a Google search for taking photos of your negatives/slides using your DSLR.

In reply to greg_may_:

There are much faster scanners, you just add quite a lot of noughts. You pays your money.........

In reply to greg_may_:

Oh sh1t!
Misread your topic as 'disgusting old images'!
What a let-down!&#128530;

In reply to rodgit:

Sorry to ruin your day Never know, there might be the odd one.

Thanks for the useful replies. I've left the stack of images in the house for now, will be taking them back over New Years to figure out what to do with them. Thankfully, most of the images are stored on negatives in folders, in the dark, and were in boxes full of silica so little to no fungus that I found. Only time will tell now!

In reply to greg_may_:

I've had a look at the volume and a bit of costings and I think it makes sense to get someone to digitise the images for me. It's not too expensive considering I can use money that was left to me to pay for it, then gift the images of my grandfather to my dads brothers and families.

Interestingly I've also found some old 8mm and Super8 reels. Looks like they are in ok nick and a friend has a hand projector so we're going to have a look at them in a few weeks and see what is on them.

More interestingly is I've had a bit of a play with the SLR and found out that it was quite a regarded camera - Canon AE-1 Program. It has a reel in it with a few images shot, so I'm going for a wander to finish it, then send it off for processing while getting the camera serviced. The mirror return is _quite_ squeaky at the moment.

Next project, getting some medium format B&W film to see if the other two cameras work!

In reply to greg_may_:
I've got a Canonscan 8800 something or other which takes 4 slides at a time or (I think) 3 or 4 neg strips; also prints 2 or 3 at a time. Just over a minute for 4,slides and very good quality. It's still a lengthy business but very rewarding and I seem to remember it as about £100 or so. It's paid for itself already.

In reply to colinakmc:

Hmm, Ill have a look at that. Not an infeasible price to get some of the images I'll want sooner rather than later.

In reply to greg_may_:

Before you buy a scanner, try and research if it can cope with Kodachrome slides? The emulsion is much denser than E6 type trannies, and causes endless headaches, It might be worth your while, sending the Kodachromes you value most off to a specialist who's scanning them regularly, and commercially?

In reply to dek:

That is a very good point. I'll have to take a look as I think there are several film types used.

In reply to greg_may_:
Use a professional as you suggest. I spent hours trying to scan my slides and ended up giving them to the Fuji shop in Chamonix in batches asking them to do them when they had spare time. All bar one of the pictures in my gallery are from scanned slides. They may not be super slick but they are photos taken when actively climbing and represent what can be done with old pictures.