Scanning Thousands of Slides

In rec.photo.equipment.35mm no_name wrote:
: wrote:

: CJB wrote:
:
: Currently I have thousands of slides from the 1960/1970s which I want
: to scan onto CDs. The quote from Jessops - never the cheapest - is 50p
: per slide - OUCH!! I don't want to have to rig up a projector and
: screen and take photos one at a time. So is there a slide scanning
: device - with automated feed - that I can connect to a USB2 port of a
: PC - for scanning batches of slides say 100 at a time? Many thanks -
: CJB.
:
:
: as an aside it would be easier to scan the negatives if you still have
: them? film scanners have been on the market longer so are cheaper.
:

: You know, now that you mention it ... they've never given me my
: negatives back when I took film in to have it processed for slides.

You should raise hell with you lab. Next time you get slides processed
you need to demand that they give you back your negative!!!! :-)
--




-------------------
Keep working millions on welfare depend on you

"no_name" wrote in message
. ..
wrote:

CJB wrote:

Currently I have thousands of slides from the 1960/1970s which I want
to scan onto CDs. The quote from Jessops - never the cheapest - is 50p
per slide - OUCH!! I don't want to have to rig up a projector and
screen and take photos one at a time. So is there a slide scanning
device - with automated feed - that I can connect to a USB2 port of a
PC - for scanning batches of slides say 100 at a time? Many thanks -
CJB.


as an aside it would be easier to scan the negatives if you still have
them? film scanners have been on the market longer so are cheaper.


You know, now that you mention it ... they've never given me my negatives
back when I took film in to have it processed for slides.

I too, have thousands of slides. I have found that it's a waste of time to
try to scan them all.....I usually eliminate more than half of them. There
is no reason to scan them all, when they will keep in slide form for years
and years....Wait until you really need to send them to someone else, and
then scan them....Otherwise, you are just wasting hard drive space....Also,
as time goes on, the hard drive space becomes cheaper and cheaper. My film
scanner won't auto feed them, so I have to load the holder with four slides,
and then scan them by hand. But that's just the beginning of what seems to
be a long, drawn out process. I almost always want to crop out part of the
image, and clean up spots and specks and tissues and pop bottles on the
grass and etc, so it's really not something that an auto feeding machine
would be able to do. My scanner (a KM 5400 II) has more than enough
resolution for the job, but is not a very fast machine when you are talking
about thousands of slides. The best way is to get a good light box and a
viewer, number all of them, and catalog them, and decide which ones to scan
then. Set those aside, and store the rest.

"Thomas T. Veldhouse" wrote in message
...
In rec.photo.digital wrote:
as an aside it would be easier to scan the negatives if you still have
them? film scanners have been on the market longer so are cheaper.


There are no negatives when you shoot slide (color reversal film). In
fact,
they are called positives and the slides ARE the film that was in your
camera.

Kodak used to make a "professional" film that would give you both slides and
negatives back I don't remember how it worked....Obviously the film in the
camera was either one or the other, and they had to make the, "other" in the
lab. In those days they designated their film types with a number. Today,
they give them some Mickey Mouse name, and so you don't know what you are
really using.....It's all part of the "dumbing down" of the society that has
taken place during my lifetime.

"Mark Roberts" wrote in message
...
CJB wrote:

Currently I have thousands of slides from the 1960/1970s which I want
to scan onto CDs. The quote from Jessops - never the cheapest - is 50p
per slide - OUCH!! I don't want to have to rig up a projector and
screen and take photos one at a time. So is there a slide scanning
device - with automated feed - that I can connect to a USB2 port of a
PC - for scanning batches of slides say 100 at a time? Many thanks -

Nikon has made some good scanners with batch capability. I've used the
Coolscan LS-4000, which is one of them. The bulk feeder for slides
holds about 50 slides , IIRC, and it's a fairly pricey accessory.
Several hundred dollars in addition to the price of the scanner
itself. Of course, you may be able to find both the scanner and bulk
feeder for much less money second hand now. The cheapest you can
probably get into new equipment for this job is the Pacific Image
PowerSlide 3600, which is around $900 US
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...t &sku=430671
I have no experience with this unit.

I'm currently using a Minolta Scan Multi II, which also has a 50-slide
feeder, for any bulk scanning jobs I have to do (which is blessedly
few these days!)

I'd note that you probably ought to consider some automatic dust and
scratch removal, like Nikon's Digital ICE, mandatory for the number of
slides you are planning to scan. Manual clean up could take years! My
Minolta doesn't have this kind of feature but as I rarely do much
slide scanning these days, I can live with this limitation rather than
go to the expense of replacing this scanner.

Much valuable time can be saved by cleaning your film well before loading it
into the scanner......I use a very fine artist's brush and a rubber bulb air
blower. the more crap you can brush off of the film, the less time it will
take you to clean up the scanned image in Photoshop.....

"Frank ess" wrote in message
...
CJB wrote:
Very many thanks for the ideas and info. Many of the slides are boxed
new and probably not even looked at!!

Unfortunately there any many more than 3,000.

Its nice to see that there are bulk slide feeders - but only 50 at a
time. But I hadn't thought of the dust and cleaning issue.


"Only 50 at a time" does't take into account the possibility of refilling
the hopper during the process.

In any case the decision is: how much of your life and/or money is this
project going to claim? If you do it yourself, no matter how much you have
edited the pool and streamlined your process and made efficient your
technique, it is likely to eat you alive; if you pay to have it done, you
will _pay_, and aside from losing control of the adjustments, you are
vulnerable to inadvertant or purposeful loss of slides.

I still think the best solution is to buy the equipment and train an
intelligent "intern" who can work nearby for easy supervision, and at a
reasonable rate.

This is a good idea, and one that I have been considering too.....Perhaps I
can find some student looking for a Summer job. You could also give them
instruction on how to use Photoshop to remove spots and scratches....The
right person could make a living doing this kind of work.

"CJB" wrote in message
ups.com...
Currently I have thousands of slides from the 1960/1970s which I want
to scan onto CDs. The quote from Jessops - never the cheapest - is 50p
per slide - OUCH!! I don't want to have to rig up a projector and
screen and take photos one at a time. So is there a slide scanning
device - with automated feed - that I can connect to a USB2 port of a
PC - for scanning batches of slides say 100 at a time? Many thanks -
CJB.

Check out dedicated film scanners.
Jim

Frank Pittel wrote:
...
I was finding that sitting and watching the grass grow was more
interesting then scanning slides! I disagree with starting with the
"important" slides first. After those are done there will be little
to motivate you to keep scanning the unimportant ones!
...

You can always try scanning several slides at the same time! Meaning
that you just stack two or, say, five of them on top of each other and
scan all at once as a single frame. It has obvious benefits: 1) by
scanning five slides per stack you get through the while pile five times
faster, 2) the results are always unpredictable and can be hilarious
(which keeps it fun). The drawbacks that come to mind include: 1)
stacked slides can be too dense for the scanner, 2) slides have to be
unmounted 3) in the end the whole thing is completely useless. But who
cares?

--
Best regards,
Andrey Tarasevich

"Frank Pittel" wrote in message
...
In rec.photo.equipment.35mm CJB wrote:
: Currently I have thousands of slides from the 1960/1970s which I want
: to scan onto CDs. The quote from Jessops - never the cheapest - is 50p
: per slide - OUCH!! I don't want to have to rig up a projector and
: screen and take photos one at a time. So is there a slide scanning
: device - with automated feed - that I can connect to a USB2 port of a
: PC - for scanning batches of slides say 100 at a time? Many thanks -
: CJB.


I just finished scanning a huge number of slides and found that I was
adjusting the scan settings for each slide. To make a long story short
it was a slow painful process that I never want to repeat!
--
Ideally, if you had infinite patience, you would scan them all in with the
same scanner settings, and save them on a hard disk "raw" and unretouched
and/or cropped in any way. Then, you would retouch and crop the images at
some later date as you needed them, for whatever purpose that happened to
be. I don't do this because I don't have the auto feed equipment, and doing
it by hand would bore me to death. So I scan them in one at a time and work
on the image right on the spot, which keeps me sane, at least.

CJB wrote:
Currently I have thousands of slides from the 1960/1970s which I want
to scan onto CDs. The quote from Jessops - never the cheapest - is 50p
per slide - OUCH!! I don't want to have to rig up a projector and
screen and take photos one at a time. So is there a slide scanning
device - with automated feed - that I can connect to a USB2 port of a
PC - for scanning batches of slides say 100 at a time? Many thanks -
CJB.

I work in a large Digital Lab, and have worked with a various amount of
scanners, the one I think would help you is the Nikon Coolscan it has a
slide holder that you can put 4 to 6 slides in, and the results were
very impressive, It will take you quite a long time to scan them all
in, but I think you would be very happy with the result.
Good luck.

William Graham wrote:


"Mark Roberts" wrote

I'd note that you probably ought to consider some automatic dust and
scratch removal, like Nikon's Digital ICE, mandatory for the number of
slides you are planning to scan. Manual clean up could take years! My
Minolta doesn't have this kind of feature but as I rarely do much
slide scanning these days, I can live with this limitation rather than
go to the expense of replacing this scanner.

Much valuable time can be saved by cleaning your film well before loading it
into the scanner......I use a very fine artist's brush and a rubber bulb air
blower. the more crap you can brush off of the film, the less time it will
take you to clean up the scanned image in Photoshop.....

Well yes, that's what I do, in fact. My Scan Multi II doesn't have ICE
or any equivalent, so I have no choice But it's a bit impractical
when scanning three thousand slides.

--
Mark Roberts Photography & Multimedia
www.robertstech.com
412-687-2835