Scanning Thousands of Slides

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.

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.


So, if by 1000's you mean - say - 3500 your target price
to beat/break even is 1700 quids worth of gear.

If that's the case, you're "ok".

Amazon's new "link" features
shows some helpful stuff, starting he

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...lance&n=172282

BugBear

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.

Your first thing to do is edit the slides, I to have thousands of
slides but probably only have hundreds that are really important. In
the US a Braun slide scanner, that takes a 100 slide tray, different
from Kodak trays BTW. Costs about $1400. A Nikon LS5000 with a slide
stacker costs about $1500. An Epson V700 takes 12 slides at a time and
costs $550. Each slide will take 2-5 minutes, for scanning including
Digital Ice, but not counting cleanup in an editing program, about US
$90 (Adobe Photoshop Elements). If you want to scan slides non stop
make sure you have 1.5-2gb of RAM in your computer, scanning is a
resource hungry proposition.
Jessops will probably do in a week what it will take you literally
years to do (scanning is immensly boring, even cutting the grass may
sound better the father you get into your slides).
I would pare the slides down and take them to Jessops and be done with
it.

Tom

In rec.photo.equipment.35mm tomm42 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.

: Your first thing to do is edit the slides, I to have thousands of
: slides but probably only have hundreds that are really important. In
: the US a Braun slide scanner, that takes a 100 slide tray, different
: from Kodak trays BTW. Costs about $1400. A Nikon LS5000 with a slide
: stacker costs about $1500. An Epson V700 takes 12 slides at a time and
: costs $550. Each slide will take 2-5 minutes, for scanning including
: Digital Ice, but not counting cleanup in an editing program, about US
: $90 (Adobe Photoshop Elements). If you want to scan slides non stop
: make sure you have 1.5-2gb of RAM in your computer, scanning is a
: resource hungry proposition.
: Jessops will probably do in a week what it will take you literally
: years to do (scanning is immensly boring, even cutting the grass may
: sound better the father you get into your slides).
: I would pare the slides down and take them to Jessops and be done with
: it.

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!
--




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

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

Andrey Tarasevich wrote:

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.

Nope. Doesn't work. They keep getting stuck in the slot.

You can maybe jam 'em in 3 at a time, but it's still real hard getting
'em out so you can put in the next batch.

no_name wrote:
Andrey Tarasevich wrote:

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.


Nope. Doesn't work. They keep getting stuck in the slot.

You can maybe jam 'em in 3 at a time, but it's still real hard getting
'em out so you can put in the next batch.

Sorta the same as those old 3.5 inch floppies. Time they got to
saying "insert disk 3" you needed a hammer to get it in there.

On Thu, 06 Jul 2006 11:52:59 +0100, 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.

Having recently moved to digital I too have slides to scan (15,000 - since
the early 70's)

I worked out the costs and bought a Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED and SF210
feeder. The SF210 was used off ebay with a 'modification' to be able to
scan plastic mounts without too many problems.

I figured the cost of this equipment was a lot cheaper than getting someon
else to do it.

It will take a LONG time to complete, but I'm starting with the 'need to
keep' slides first


Clive

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!
--




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

"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.