Slides to digital conversion

[Jeff423]

I just discovered 300 35mm slides that I would like converted to digital format.
Costco will do it for about $100.00, I can get a machine that will do it for $40 - $75. I'm thinking that by the time you fed 300 slides through a machine you might think Costco was a better deal.
Does anyone have any experience in doing this?

 

[DWalt]

It's not difficult and it goes fairly fast, at least the scanning part. I have a dedicated 35mm slide scanner, but I haven't used it in over 10 years, could probably scan 2 or 3 per minute with it. If you want to do any adjustments to the image after scanning (contrast, color balancing, cropping, etc.) that is what takes more time. Having 300 slides, you may want to go through them all first to eliminate scanning any you don't care much about before you start.

 

[Jeff423]

Thanks,
I have been looking at them since the first post and probably half, if not exactly duplicates are close enough to be duplicates and don't need to be scanned.

 

[TripLeader]

I did a project like that about 5 or 6 years ago. I scanned my wife's old family photo slides. There was probably 400 or so.

I did it for about an hour or so on most nights for about 2 weeks. The time wasn't a big deal to me.

We bought a scanner for about $80 bucks. It had good reviews for digitizing slides. It came with a plastic insert to hold the slide in place during scanning. It also told the machine the correct size to scan.

It saved us a couple hundred bucks to do the work. And it has been nice in the time since to have a scanner.

I also did a few touch ups on the digital images as I went: removing dust spots, hairs, and other things that happen to 40+ year-old slides.

 

[rwsmith]

I have a ton....

I have a ton of slides that I need to go through and digitize also. Just going through them is going to be a job.

 

[H Richard]

Having formerly been a pretty deeply involved serious amateur photographer I have probably 3000+ slides of family and contest/salon slides quite a number of which were award winners. I go blank every time I think about the job of just going through them. They have already been culled once previously. The family doesn't seem concerned about looking at any of the old family vacation slides etc., so I just can't get excited about doing it, and don't see the cost of $400 - $500 or more.

 

[rwsmith]

None of mine....

Having formerly been a pretty deeply involved serious amateur photographer I have probably 3000+ slides of family and contest/salon slides quite a number of which were award winners. I go blank every time I think about the job of just going through them. They have already been culled once previously. The family doesn't seem concerned about looking at any of the old family vacation slides etc., so I just can't get excited about doing it, and don't see the cost of $400 - $500 or more.

...were 'award winners', but a few are things that have framed and some I would like to. Maybe a dozen out of a thousand or more.

Oh, many of them I probably won't even be able to identify the subject, especially if it's just an 'art' shot. 10 different exposures and maybe one came out decent.

 

[Ranger17]

For decades I’ve had shoeboxes full of slides and developed negatives from around ‘60-68. Never paid attn to them, until last year when an Ancestry test found my paternal side of my (long lost) family. While i was never given any pix of me as a child or with my father, suddenly those old pix held memories. I had a couple dozen scanned and printed to start with, but figured part of my journey would be looking thru those shoeboxes.
I picked up a little Kodak scanner that handled the slides and those negatives quite well, in fact i was amazed as to how well the colors came thru from the slides.
Yes it took me hours of spare time as we ended up having 1000 total. But i didnt actually mind it, each image was a discovery of my youth and family and i was able to give copies to my relatives.

 

[BigBoy99]

It may take time to scan all of the slides but what kind of value can you place on recording and saving family history? Maybe many generations from now, some decedent may be very glad to be able to see what his ancestors looked like.

 

[DWalt]

I have several hundred remaining 35mm slides , all over 40 years old. Until several years ago, it was well over 1000 until I went through them and got rid of those it was pointless to keep. The Kodachrome slides are still as good as new, with the same vibrant colors, but the Ektachrome slides were generally badly faded. The big advantage of Kodachrome was its permanence, but no way you could process it yourself, unlike Ektachrome. Sadly, Kodachrome is now extinct, never to return. I still have two Carousel projectors and at least several dozen Carousel magazines. I once had a small fortune tied up in darkroom equipment and film cameras but I got rid of everything about 5-6 years ago. Most of it I just threw or gave away as no one wanted them.

 

[Ole Joe Clark]

Will the scanners work on the old 126 size black and white negatives? I love old family photos. Precious Memories.

Have a blessed day,

Leon

 

[Ranger17]

Will the scanners work on the old 126 size black and white negatives? I love old family photos. Precious Memories.

Have a blessed day,

Leon

This is an example of the old negatives i was able to scan in my little Kodak Scanza I used for my project. I believe they are 126, the Scanza manual said it handles them as well. I actually got the scanner for my slides, doing negatives was a bonus. Just had to make sure I used the correct setting vs slides.
Though being square it seemed to work well. And on this unit going one at a time it was pretty simple to adjust if needed.

And I agree, old pix are pretty awesome especially when discoving special times and people. Last year was the first time I saw pix of me and my father, definitely a nice moment after 50+ years.

 

[DWalt]

There were film scanners that were adjustable and would handle about any negative size. I once improvised a crude backlight so I could scan some very old 5x7 glass plate negatives on a conventional flatbed scanner. It worked OK, but the negatives were very dense and low contrast. I managed to get some not-too-bad positive images from them using Photoshop.

Here is your positive image:

 

[Ranger17]

There were film scanners that were adjustable and would handle about any negative size. I once improvised a crude backlight so I could scan some very old 5x7 glass plate negatives on a conventional flatbed scanner. It worked OK, but the negatives were very dense and low contrast. I managed to get some not-too-bad positive images from them using Photoshop.

Here is your positive image:

Thx DWalt.

A version I had, not sure if a second shot or if it was due to cropping in my little scanner but mine was closer in. Just showing for reference for the OP or any others looking at a project like this for quality. Noting the low res uploads and i did not alter any pic i just scanned and saved.

Me in my first mustang lol is an example of one of the slides i scanned showing how the color still was strong after 50 years in a shoebox.
And lastly I found one of my mom as she saw the news of Kennedy’s assassination.

It is amazing what one finds when they tackle old photos.

 

[DWalt]

It's surprising how much old pictures can be improved in Photoshop. Several years ago I found a packet of Kodacolor prints which my father had taken at our wedding many years ago. Some were stuck together and I had to soak them in water to separate them. They all had that faded and washed-out look that color prints get with age. I scanned them and gave the scans the Photoshop treatment, and most looked like they could have been taken yesterday. They were the only pictures of our wedding we have as we couldn't afford a photographer.

I think your picture is the same as the one I did from the picture of your negative, but just cropped tighter. And of course the scan of the original negative will be of much better image quality than a picture of a negative. If you had a light box and a decent quality digital camera with closeup capability, you could take pictures of the negatives instead of scanning.

 

[Absalom]

It may take time to scan all of the slides but what kind of value can you place on recording and saving family history? Maybe many generations from now, some decedent may be very glad to be able to see what his ancestors looked like.

^^^ This should probably be your main criterium to keep it manageable.

Weeding out is the important part. I speak from experience.

When I did a batch of slide conversions a few years ago, I threw out every picture that didn’t have people in it.

I mean, wow, a lake and trees! Look, a flower pot! And that church looked just like today (and a hundred years ago).

On the other hand, my parents 40 years ago, and the last photos of my grandparents, that’s priceless.

 

[dave holl]

I packed up about 200 slides that I had sorted from 1000 or so and took them to CostCo. They transferred them to a DVD and made prints. I forget what the exact cost was but very reasonable and they did a great job.

 

[Jeff423]

I have several hundred remaining 35mm slides , all over 40 years old. Until several years ago, it was well over 1000 until I went through them and got rid of those it was pointless to keep. The Kodachrome slides are still as good as new, with the same vibrant colors, but the Ektachrome slides were generally badly faded. The big advantage of Kodachrome was its permanence, but no way you could process it yourself, unlike Ektachrome. Sadly, Kodachrome is now extinct, never to return. I still have two Carousel projectors and at least several dozen Carousel magazines. I once had a small fortune tied up in darkroom equipment and film cameras but I got rid of everything about 5-6 years ago. Most of it I just threw or gave away as no one wanted them.

Interesting - most of my slides are Ekatchrome (I always thought it's colors were better than real life) and are in in good shape 50 yrs later. But they have been in the dark in a climate controlled environment.

 

[Jeff423]

I packed up about 200 slides that I had sorted from 1000 or so and took them to CostCo. They transferred them to a DVD and made prints. I forget what the exact cost was but very reasonable and they did a great job.

Around here Costco's price is 32 cents per slide.

 

[Ranger17]

I didnt have a slide viewer that worked well so didnt skip any when scanning. Thankfully though many had dates written on them so i was able to scan and save most in batches by year. Makes it easy now to go back in my pc to search a specific period for an image.
And when i gave copies to some family members it was cleaner for them as well. Instead of saying “here’s 1000 pix, happy hunting” lol