Digitizing Slides

On Mon, 02 Aug 2010 09:57:54 -0500, Ryan McGinnis wrote:

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On 8/2/2010 2:04 AM, Skylamar Jones wrote:

She isn't that computer savvy but she told me that Costco charges 29
cents per slide for digitizing them. For 3000 slides that's $870 which
is more than my mom wants to spend.

That price is a steal; my lab charges $1.00 each. It takes forever to
scan a slide in a lab; at least with the Frontier system you have to
manually change out the carrier from 35mm to the slide carrier, and then
manually insert each slide and scan. If any other film comes along
while you're doing this, you have to pop out the slide carrier and
insert the 35 again. 3000 slides would probably take a typical lab at
least a month to get through, assuming they weren't that busy.

It'd take even longer if you had to do it at home with a Nikon Coolscan
or somesuch. (They produce marginally better scans, but take around a
minute or two per scanned image at the best settings.) It takes me the
better part of two hours to scan in a roll of 36 slides on my slide
scanner at home, and then I have to process the files. Unless your time
isn't worth much or the endproduct of the slides is commercial
licensing, it's better to hire someone else to do it.

I'm with the other repliers here -- have her pick out her favorites and
let the lab scan them.

Yeah - but if she limits it to her 'favorites' there are likely to only
be about 2950 vice 3000.



- --
- -Ryan McGinnis
The BIG Storm Picture -- http://bigstormpicture.com Vortex-2 image
licensing at http://vortex-2.com Getty:
http://www.gettyimages.com/search/se...=Ryan+McGinnis

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Per Skylamar Jones:
She isn't that computer savvy but she told me that Costco charges 29
cents per slide for digitizing them. For 3000 slides that's $870 which
is more than my mom wants to spend.

I'm just wondering if anyone has any suggestions for other ideas for
digitizing slides such as using a company that's cheaper/better than
Costco or a buying/renting good scanner that my mom can use at home.

Devil's Advocate Position: Have them printed (commercially, so
the prints last), put the prints into albums, and move the slides
to your place.

Yes, now they're taking up even more space.... But the idea is
for somebody to actually see them and my experience has been that
once they get scanned to disc they effectively disappear for
non-technophiles.
--
PeteCresswell

Ofnuts wrote:
On 02/08/2010 09:04, Skylamar Jones wrote:
Hi. I'm new to this group so I don't know if someone posted a similar
question recently.

My mom has 3000 slides taken by my dad, who has passed away. Because of
the space the slides take up in her home, my mom is weeding through
them, looking at them manually using a slide projector.

She isn't that computer savvy but she told me that Costco charges 29
cents per slide for digitizing them. For 3000 slides that's $870 which
is more than my mom wants to spend.

I'm just wondering if anyone has any suggestions for other ideas for
digitizing slides such as using a company that's cheaper/better than
Costco or a buying/renting good scanner that my mom can use at home.

Digitizing slides at home is extremely labor intensive, unless you have
one of these very expensive Nikon scanners with all their expensive
options that make it just plain labor intensive.

I'm facing the very same problem (except I'd be the one doing the
scanning) but I'm taking another route: reduce my Dad's 3000 slides to a
set of 100-200 worth passing to the next generations.

My first experience with this was 17 years ago, when I realized that
almost all the pictures of my two children were slides. I rigged a
gadget to hold my camera and a slide, and also, thanks to some adapters
I had around the house, exopy cement and a bellows unit I decided that I
would copy a hundred slides to print film and make up two books as
Christmas presents for them. A hundred? Hah? I couldn't stop until I had
copied 360. To be on the the safe side, I used daylight as a light
source and bracketed each with three exposures, then selected the best
of each and had 1,080 prints made (I also kept a copy for myself). This
was a slow, tedious and expensive process. (Note that digital was hardly
a good approach 17 years ago--no decent cameras, no decent color
printers, no decent imaging software) About 5 or 6 years ago I decided
to do something about all the slides I had, going back to 1946. This
time I used my Canon 8400F scanner. I scanned at least 3,000 slides, to
be printed as needed. Slow, yes--but so was the film approach, and
scanning was much cheaper and the quality was better. Incidentally, that
29 cents at Costco is a very cheap price; I wonder what the resolution is?
Allen

"tony cooper" wrote in message
...

I think most of us of a certain age have gone through this with either
their own slides or slides taken by a parent. I did, and I culled the
slides down to about 10% "keepers" and scanned them myself.

The process of weeding them out is quite enjoyable. Going through the
slides brings back a lot of memories. The process of scanning is less
enjoyable, but can be done over a period of time.

I agree, logically. However, I am too much of a photo hoarder to do any
meaningful cull. I temporarily solved the problem by simply putting the
culls back in a box, which I have trouble throwing out.
The major issue was solved unhappily when we moved. The moving people lost a
file cabinet containing shots from our wedding, slides of the kids growing
up and lots of fond vacation memories.

--
Peter

"(PeteCresswell)" wrote
...

................................................. ......
Devil's Advocate Position: Have them printed (commercially, so
the prints last), put the prints into albums, and move the slides
to your place.

Yes, now they're taking up even more space.... But the idea is
for somebody to actually see them and my experience has been that
once they get scanned to disc they effectively disappear for
non-technophiles.
--
PeteCresswell

Good point.

Skylamar Jones schreef:
Hi. I'm new to this group so I don't know if someone posted a similar
question recently.

My mom has 3000 slides taken by my dad, who has passed away. Because of
the space the slides take up in her home, my mom is weeding through
them, looking at them manually using a slide projector.

She isn't that computer savvy but she told me that Costco charges 29
cents per slide for digitizing them. For 3000 slides that's $870 which
is more than my mom wants to spend.

I'm just wondering if anyone has any suggestions for other ideas for
digitizing slides such as using a company that's cheaper/better than
Costco or a buying/renting good scanner that my mom can use at home.

Thanks,

Sky

I did get /acceptable/ results (certainly for family purposes) by using
a dia duplicator onto an EOS400D. Shooting goes extremely fast (say 10
per minute or so) while the only parameter I monitored was the histogram
(now and then compensating up to +/-1 stop).

Afterwards I ran the *raws* through a program to process with :
- automatic whitebalance
- autoleveling
That was done of course fully automatic.

I just want to thank everyone who provided me with advice in this
thread. I'm going to look at the web sites that were suggested. It
sounds like, though, that my mom should take the most important slides
to Costco. However, I hope that doesn't mean she won't keep the other
slides. I would take the slides from her but apartment is much smaller
than her house.

Thanks again.

Sky

Jon Smid wrote:
Skylamar Jones schreef:
Hi. I'm new to this group so I don't know if someone posted a
similar question recently.

My mom has 3000 slides taken by my dad, who has passed away.
Because of the space the slides take up in her home, my mom is
weeding through them, looking at them manually using a slide
projector. She isn't that computer savvy but she told me that
Costco charges
29 cents per slide for digitizing them. For 3000 slides that's
$870 which is more than my mom wants to spend.

I'm just wondering if anyone has any suggestions for other ideas
for digitizing slides such as using a company that's
cheaper/better than Costco or a buying/renting good scanner that
my mom can use at home. Thanks,

Sky

I did get /acceptable/ results (certainly for family purposes) by
using a dia duplicator onto an EOS400D. Shooting goes extremely
fast (say 10 per minute or so) while the only parameter I monitored
was the histogram (now and then compensating up to +/-1 stop).

Afterwards I ran the *raws* through a program to process with :
- automatic whitebalance
- autoleveling
That was done of course fully automatic.

Chances are the flatbed scanners or the duplicator on a camera will
produce satisfactory results if they are for family archives and print
albums. The viewing by subsequent generations will likely require
prints, at any rate, as mentioned by others.

My slides are mostly junk, but the scenes are of a nature where
pixel-peeping can pay off, so I do some pretty big scans on some of
them. If you like that alternative, the dedicated slide scanner is
likely a must. I got burned out on sorting and scanning both, a couple
of years ago (OK, more like five), but the slides keep well, and if my
interest is ever rejuvenated, I'm equipped to take care of it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/fyougit...in/set-826244/

I have said, and repeated, the best solution is to spend a few hours
training a volunteer intern, and turn him/her loose on the archive.
Just have those big DVDs and/or external drives ready.

--
Frank ess

On 2010-08-02 03:46:34 -0400, Paul Heslop said:

Skylamar Jones wrote:

Hi. I'm new to this group so I don't know if someone posted a similar
question recently.

My mom has 3000 slides taken by my dad, who has passed away. Because of
the space the slides take up in her home, my mom is weeding through
them, looking at them manually using a slide projector.

She isn't that computer savvy but she told me that Costco charges 29
cents per slide for digitizing them. For 3000 slides that's $870 which
is more than my mom wants to spend.

I'm just wondering if anyone has any suggestions for other ideas for
digitizing slides such as using a company that's cheaper/better than
Costco or a buying/renting good scanner that my mom can use at home.

Thanks,

Sky

does your mom have a computer etc? or is it feasible to put them onto
dvd discs or something like that for her? I don't know about prices
in america but I am sure the cost of slide scanners is coming down.
certainly you should be able to get a reasonable one for a lot cheaper
than the money you mentioned it would cost to have it done
professionally. having sid that many of the reviews I have read don't
make them sound exactly great. another option is the scanner with
slide facility, this one seems to have a good standing
Canoscan 5600F Film and Slide Scanner

Sadly, the price of slide scanners is only going up, for the good ones.
I picked up a midrange Pacific Imaging scanner on ebay for well under
$100 but if you want the GOOD scanners: the Nikon V, Nikon 5000 or
Nikon 9000 you will pay well over a thousand dollars. The 9000 sells
new for about $2200 WHEN you can get one and I've seen them for 50%
MORE than that used on ebay. If you want quality you have to use a good
dedicated film scanner. Drum scanners are best but many thousands so
for "consumer prices" the Nikons are your best alternative. Remember,
once you scan them, that's the image you keep. The super hi res that
was the slide will presumably be retired forever. The upside is, you
can invest $2K in a 9000, do your scanning, and sell it for about what
you paid for it on ebay.
--
Michael

Per Ryan McGinnis:
If you do go the Coolscan route, BTW, I'd reccomend a slide hopper
attachment that Nikon sells. Should cut down on the labor a bit, since
the slides will auto-load in batches and not require manually swapping
each one out.

I've got the hopper (I think it was about two hundred bucks
extra) and mine jams so often that it's easier to just hand-feed
the slides.

I suspect it's at least partially a matter of the slide mounts. A
lot of mine aren't that wonderful.
--
PeteCresswell