Slide Copier to PC

[ShiftZZ]

Any thoughts?

My dad has a load of slides and I wanted to transfer them to a PC...

 

[GeriatricWanderer]

I had a lifetime collection, +/- 1000.

Bought a copier from a fellow MHer and spent a weekend on a CS copying the lot - long tedious job but well worth it.

I still have the copy thingy if you're interested - I no longer need it (that's if I can find it!).

 

[Wildman]

have a look at this one
http://www.morgancomputers.co.uk/?page=product_detail&product=14833
or this
Broken Link Removed

 

[Deleted member 29692]

Any half decent scanner will cope with slides or negatives as long as you have some good software at the other end. Time consuming tedious job though.

 

[GJH]

Slide scanners tend to be confined to certain sizes of originals. That's OK if your slides/negatives are those sizes but they won't handle others (e.g. negatives from films we used in the 50s and 60s). Nick's suggestion is the solution in that case.

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[Lenny HB]

We have a Veho slide & negative scanner, as Graham says it will only handle standard 35mm slides & negs, but the quality is much better than using a flat bed scanner.

 

[GeriatricWanderer]

This is an example of what I got from my little slide scanner from a 40 year old 35mm slide.
Not brilliant but better than having the slides in boxes in some cupboard.

 

[Deleted member 29692]

The results can be the same with almost any scanner. The variables are the software used at the backend and the skills of the operator.

 

[GJH]

The results can be the same with almost any scanner. The variables are the software used at the backend and the skills of the operator.

There are variables between some flatbed scanners as well. When we had our business we used to scan old photos, transparencies and negatives for restoration as one of the services we provided. We used to use a range of different scanners and software (plus a home made light box sometimes).

 

[Deleted member 29692]

@ShiftZZ Can you define loads? If it's 000s then probably worth thinking about investing in a slide scanner as a labour saving device as much as anything. If it's 50 then probably not.

I suppose it really depends how much time you want to spend on it and if you want to spend any money on it.

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[1_man_and_his_dob(lo)]

My HP flatbed is getting on a bit but is great for general purpose scans and pretty good for negatives using the adapter and the supplied software. However, with the same adapter, slides are rubbish. I've resigned myself to getting a proper slide scanner...if I ever have the room. By which time they'll no longer be made

 

[Lenny HB]

I've gained a book scanner my daughter left behind when she moved abroad, a lot better than the average cheap scanner.

 

[Puddleduck]

There are companies that do this for a fee.... might be worth getting a quote.

 

[Deleted member 29692]

I've got one at work that's capable of 9600 x 9600 dpi.

The file it produces at that resolution at A3 is about four times bigger than the hard drive on the Mac it's connected to. Completely pointless technology. Never used it at more than 600x600.

 

[Peter A Forbes]

The Epson Perfection scanners had a plug-in slide/film scanner that took all formats in different carriers.

The software would convert colour negative to positive on the fly as well.

The scanners were the 1240U series, the slide adapter is the EU-33.

Just checked the carriers, 1 single 35mm carrier, 1 dual-strip 35mm carrier and two large format carriers.

Peter

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[DBK]

I bought a Reflecta x7 slide copier a couple of months ago, scanned my forty years' worth of slides, lent it to my brother so he could do his and then sold it on eBay. It made a reasonable price so the whole thing didn't cost me too much and it freed up a lot of space.

The Reflecta isn't a scanner, it is actually a camera, and this means it copies slides very quickly. It took longer to load the magazine with three slides than it did to copy them. The images it produced were all between 1 and 2 MB and of a good enough quality for viewing on a PC or on the web, which is all I was interested in. You can get expensive scanners which produce huge images but I doubt most folk need these.

The biggest problem I found was dust. You could spend ages trying to clean each slide but some of the marks can't be removed I found. So my solution was just to give each slide a quick blow to remove the larger mouse droppings and then edit the image afterwards in Photoshop Elements. This has a filter which is supposed to remove dust specks but I found it softened the image too much and the only way was to use the clone stamp and manually zap each speck. I would also then use PSE to sharpen and brighten up the image. It took around twenty minutes for each slide so you can guess I didn't do all that many of them - for example, I did all the slides from the trip my brother and I made to the Pyrenees in 1976 and a few other memorable holidays but the majority of the general family shots I have just stored unedited as they were copied because to be honest I doubt I am really ever going to look at them again but I was loathe to throw away so much family history, and if I do need an image I can put it through PSE.

A before and after shot of Tony and I on the summit of the Petit Vignamale is shown below. Note Tony's 70's hairstyle, my Karrimor rucksack, thick plus fours etc. My hair had just been chopped off as I had a date with the Regular Commissions Board at Westbury the week after we got back, so this was the last shot of me as a civilian for the next 30 years. Happy days.

And a couple more before and after, here the Port de Marcadau. (And yes I missed something in the top right hand corner!)