Convert slides to digital?

[richasco]

Anyone have any advice on converting slides to digital pictures? I have 20 or 30 slides from my grandfather that I need to convert to digital. I know that there are companies that you can send them to, or small machines you can buy and do at home. I'd like to here if anyone has any recommendations. I will be posting some of them here as there are quite a few from an antique car parade held in Atlantic City in 1956.

Edited February 16, 2018 by richasco (see edit history)

[1937hd45]

Yes! I've got 20-30 boxes I'd like to convert too. Who makes the best machine? Bob 

[8E45E]

I have a Nikon Coolscan 5000ED.  I would look for a good used one on Ebay.  

 

I used them for 35mm negatives, and a few slides.  It makes excellent images.

 

Craig

[Bleach]

I scanned several 1000 slides at one place I worked about 12 years ago. They had a scanner that you could load lots of slides in a cartridge and it would automatically feed and scan them on a batch. It would occasionally jam but that had something to do with the thickness of some of the slides. I would have to look at one of the discs I might have and see if it had any of the scanner's info on it.

Edited February 17, 2018 by Bleach (see edit history)

[Digger914]

5 hours ago, richasco said:

Anyone have any advice on converting slides to digital pictures? I have 20 or 30 slides from my grandfather that I need to convert to digital. I know that there are companies that you can send them to, or small machines you can buy and do at home. I'd like to here if anyone has any recommendations. I will be posting some of them here as there are quite a few from an antique car parade held in Atlantic City in 1956.

If you already have a 3 in 1 color printer scanner fax you can get a slide carrier that lays flat on the glass and holds your slides in place for a few dollars give or take depending on where you buy it. Then you only need to figure out how to set them in so you don't save them backwards and upside down.

[jp928]

Canon scanners sometimes come with attachments that take 35mm negs or slides. My experience with scanning Kodacolor negs on Canon scanners has been very good - excellent results. IIRC you can do several at once according to how many fit in the attachment.

This might help :- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO4X6vAtIxU

jp 26 Rover 9

 

 

[Robert G. Smits]

If you are only talking about 20 to 30 slides I would check with your Walmart, Costco or Walgrens as Many of them provide  photo/slide conversion services.  Many all in one printers or scanners have slide adapters.  A couple years ago my kids gave me a stand alone slide converter made by Wolverine that does a decent job and doesn't require a computer.

[John_S_in_Penna]

After creating the digital versions, I'd be sure to keep

the slides, too.  The slides may be much longer-lasting

than the digital.

 

Imagine that, in 1990, you stored all your vast family records

on 5" floppy disks.  That is a very short time as far as

history goes, but today, you likely wouldn't have any way

to look at them.  After 5" came 3-1/2" rigid disks, then

compact disks, flash drives, etc.

 

Also, who knows whether the common file formats such

as JPG will be readable 20, 40, 60 years from now?

Someone then might exclaim, "J-peg?  We haven't used 

that since Windows 2030!"

 

And any magnetic medium, such as disks or CD's,

degrades over time.  Your cherished photos might be

inaccessible to your grandchildren.  An AACA Library

seminar at Philadelphia a few years ago identified a

certain kind of CD used by archivists that is supposed

to have a much longer life.

 

Bottom line:  Keep the physical copies, too.

[8E45E]

1 hour ago, John_S_in_Penna said:

And any magnetic medium, such as disks or CD's,

degrades over time.  Your cherished photos might be

inaccessible to your grandchildren.  An AACA Library

seminar at Philadelphia a few years ago identified a

certain kind of CD used by archivists that is supposed

to have a much longer life.

 

Bottom line:  Keep the physical copies, too.

Compact Discs are NOT magnetic.  They use laser beams reflected off the shiny surfaces which are two different elevations, using the '0,1' binary number system to read the data.  DVD's have a second set of elevated surfaces at an angle which allow the storage of even more data than a CD.

 

Craig

[Tim Wolfe]

I bought a film & slide converter on line. You just download a program on your computer from a disc, put the slides in and it loads them on your computer. Very easy to use. I have hundreds of slides from when I was in the military.     Innovative Technology is the brand name.    Amazon has them for $29.99 Works just fine.

[Tim Wolfe]

Forgot to say that it doesn't work with a MAC computer.

[John_S_in_Penna]

57 minutes ago, 8E45E said:

Compact Discs are NOT magnetic. 

 

Okay, but what is it about CDs that isn't long-lasting?

After all, the archivist who gave the seminar specifically

mentioned a CD designed for longer life.

 

Here is a link:  http://www.verbatim.com/subcat/optical-media/cd/archival-grade-gold-cd-r/

Their description gives a hint at the limits of ordinary CDs.

For greater longevity, they mention a layer of non-corrosive gold,

and a harder coating on the recording side;  yet under proper

environmental conditions, even these are estimated to last only

100 years.  Hope there's a machine to read them in 2118!

 

I happily read old magazines from 1900 or 1920 and

reprint historic accounts from the early years of the auto.

Plenty of magazines from the 1700's and 1800's are still in

excellent condition.  Good paper, as was often used then,

is accessible for many decades, if not centuries.

 

 

Edited February 17, 2018 by John_S_in_Penna (see edit history)

[Doug Novak]

I converted my Navy Slides by projecting them on a white wall at home and snapping pictures of them with my Cell phone and my Digital Camera. From the Cell Phone I forward the Pictures to my Email address to down loaded the Pictures to the computer. Easy to do and the quality was surprisingly good. With the Digital Camera, with a SD memory card, same process except you take the Camera SD Memory Card out after taking the pictures and put the SD Card in the computer if it has the slot for down loading SD Cards. 

 

 

[CarlLaFong]

Sometimes, the lo tech methods are the best. I have all of my family's 8mm home movies. I made a "telecine" to convert them to digital. Works just fine.    http://jkcallin.blogspot.com/2014/10/magic-lantern.html

 

[Tim Wolfe]

You could load them on a computer and then make prints, download them on a disc and have someone print them. More options as time goes on.

[AndyC]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/192340198847

[hidden_hunter]

6 hours ago, John_S_in_Penna said:

 

Okay, but what is it about CDs that isn't long-lasting?

After all, the archivist who gave the seminar specifically

mentioned a CD designed for longer life.

 

Here is a link:  http://www.verbatim.com/subcat/optical-media/cd/archival-grade-gold-cd-r/

Their description gives a hint at the limits of ordinary CDs.

For greater longevity, they mention a layer of non-corrosive gold,

and a harder coating on the recording side;  yet under proper

environmental conditions, even these are estimated to last only

100 years.  Hope there's a machine to read them in 2118!

 

I happily read old magazines from 1900 or 1920 and

reprint historic accounts from the early years of the auto.

Plenty of magazines from the 1700's and 1800's are still in

excellent condition.  Good paper, as was often used then,

is accessible for many decades, if not centuries.

 

 

 

There were a lot of poorly manufactured CD's in the late 90's (as CDR drives became popular) that basically the internal structure of the disk starts to seperate. Generally it will look cloudy or milky in certain parts of the disk when this start to happen. Lots of laserdisc also suffers from poor manufacturing where the disk cannot be read any more. 

[Bush Mechanic]

4 hours ago, AndyC said:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/192340198847

 

 

I bought a similar device on-line. It is a FilmScan 35 I. Don't waste your money on this one. Borderline useless, as the focus varies, and the software is very basic. Clunky, with poor colour rendition, and problems with light levels. Gave up after a few slides.  I'm now looking at scanners which handle 35mm slides and negatives, and 120 format negs. Read the reviews.

[vermontboy]

I've used a wolverine on a few thousand slides and it is a bit slow but once you develop a rhythm it goes well. EZ to use. Got 30 or 40 thousand  to go if I live that long.

[Jim Bollman]

I have several different scanners I use depending on how many and where I need to copy photos/slides. The one that works the best where quantity is important is an older but good quality Nikon digital camera that has a lense that will take screw on filters and has a macro capability. Was fairly inexpensive since it was several generations out of date. I bought a slide copier attachment that was made to attach to a 35mm camera and adapted it the front of the camera with an adapter ring. The camera auto corrects for color balance of light source, exposure and auto focuses. The slide is directly attached to the camera no jitter problems. I just drop a slide in and point it at a fairly bright light source. Best setup is by a window and just point the camera outside on fairly bright day. Later I download to the computer and run through them cropping and any image correction. I usually do the post processing in front of the TV on a laptop. I keep the the original, unmodified scan and modified. Never know where the technology will be in the future.

[Robert G. Smits]

I was told by a IT consultant years ago to never trust a CD or DVD for long term storage.  My photos are stored in the Cloud (which I don't really trust long term) and on a back up solid state drive kept in my safe deposit box and backed up periodically.  

[Robert Street]

I am using a Canon 9000F for old 35MM, slides, and 120.  Have even successfully done a couple glass negatives that weren't too fogged.  All the adaptors work well and the software reasonably will correct most issues.  

Robert

[richasco]

Thanks for all of the replies. I tried using a template that I found online to make a light box for use on a flatbed scanner. It did not work well enough. I did see a few videos of the Canon all-in-ones that have the slide holder. They look like they work well, however I didn't see any with that feature that are currently for sale. So it looks like the choices are narrowing down to sending out to a professional service or getting a decent unit from Amazon.

[Robert Street]

1 hour ago, richasco said:

Thanks for all of the replies. I tried using a template that I found online to make a light box for use on a flatbed scanner. It did not work well enough. I did see a few videos of the Canon all-in-ones that have the slide holder. They look like they work well, however I didn't see any with that feature that are currently for sale. So it looks like the choices are narrowing down to sending out to a professional service or getting a decent unit from Amazon.

 

I have read that many of the services actually send out and are a "broker"  Not saying this doesn't work well but allot don't like that concept.

Robert

[richasco]

I ended up taking the slides to a local camera store to have them converted. I was a little nervous to leave the slides there, but it's better than sending them out in the mail and I supported a local business. They had two options for resolution, standard and a really high dpi. The standard was half the cost so I elected to go that route(43 slides totaling $35 with their flash drive). That may have been the best option, as I can now see all of the slides and go through them. There are a few that I now know that I can have redone at high resolution. The digital pictures came out a little dark so I have to adjust them with my basic windows picture software. Here are two pictures of my DeSoto taken in 1955 the first is the picture as delivered and the second is with basic enhancements in windows picture editor. I have to sort the other pictures and enhance them, I will post two threads in the Post WWII pictures forum for an antique car parade in Atlantic City in 1955 and 1956.

Edited February 22, 2018 by richasco (see edit history)