Need Advice on Digitizing Slides

That's a lot of work. See if you can get a bulk price and maybe only
scan the best images.

Mirsky wrote:

Hi. I apologize if this question has been covered here before. My
mother has over 5000 slides, taken by my father over a forty-year
period. My mom wants to digitize the slides. However, she is unsure if
she should buy a scanner to do the job herself or bring the slides to a
photography store and have them do it for her. My mom isn't that savvy
about computers so I'm tending to think that she should let a
professional do the job. However, it might be too expensive to do that.
In any case, I'd appreciate any advice on slide scanners and companies
that will scan the slides. Which do you recommend?

Thanks,

Mirsky


Greetings,

Sounds like your Mom has quite a project planned. A quick review of some
service sites shows that the cost would be somewhere in the 4000 - 50000
range. Quite a bit of money. You can get some nice equipment for that
kind of cash.

Although your Mom is not proficient at scanning and computers, etc., I
suspect she would be upon completing this project. She would likely gain
a great deal of knowledge in terms of computing, use of the internet,
imaging, and creative applications in the doing, not to mention some
nice equipment. If she has any interest at all, that may be the way to
go. If she is a busy woman, then maybe not. Most people would enjoy the
task and take pride in it.

I would consult with your Mom on the prospects of the task, and of
course, if she has the 4-5 thousand dollars if she wants someone else to
do it.

Talk to you soon,

Ron Baird

My
mother has over 5000 slides, My mom wants to digitize the slides.
************************************************** ****************
If mom doesn't want to do it herself, I would suggest another option is to
get a kid that knows his/her way around computers and will come over and
scan them for her. She could provide a snack and give the kid a few bucks
an hour. Some 14 year old that does baby sitting for a few bucks per hour
would jump at a chance to read a book while the computer is scanning, and
not have to deal with a crying baby. It sounds like a nice summer job. Ric
in Wisconsin.

I'd get a scanner and either do it yourself or pay someone to do it.
http://digitalartphotographyfordummies.blogspot.com/

Per Mirsky:
advice on slide scanners and companies
that will scan the slides. Which do you recommend?

I went through the same thing for myself and a couple thousand slides.

Tried taking a box or two of slides to the local photo store and having them do
it. They gave me back a set of CDs, but the formatting wasn't what I wanted.
Especially the file names....

I'd think their quality was probably better than mine just because they're
probably using a very expensive scanner - but I didn't care for it.

Also, there was the anxiety of some minimum wage worker handling my slides and
maybe losing/damaging them.

In the end I bought a Nikon CoolScan 4000 and did it myself.

Some benefits:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1) As you handle the slides, memories come back.

2) You can assign file names right then and there.
e.g. 1981 04-04 Ange Steff John Adrian Steve Easter Film44 0023

I name my slides starting with year month-day so that if I do a search
the results can come back sorted in chronological order.

I suffix them with the source. i.e. if I wanted to re-scan that
slide or negative, where would I go to physically find it.

3) You can touch up the scans as needed. For me this was mainly
lightening too-dark shots, the occasional crop, and some red eye
removal.
------------------------------------------------------------------------



Some additional costs (over and above the cost of the scanner)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Some kind of editing program. It should support lightening,
darkening, cropping, saving in different formats/resolutions,
and red eye removal. I splurged on PhotoShop because I wanted
whatever skills I acquired to be transferable to more outside
situations. PhotoShop seemed tb the lingua franca at the time.

- Plenty of hand holding. It may take some significant time just
to get the person doing the scanning to understand something as
obvious (to you and me....) as directories/subdirectories - not
to mention JPEG quality....

- A storage/retrieval program. Once you have 5,000 scans you need
to be able to look at them, print selected images, sort them,
search them and so-on and so-forth. Once again, I splurged
and chose ThumbsPlus. Does it all. *Might* even perform all
of the abovementioned editing functions - i.e. maybe I could
have saved the money spent on PhotoShop.
------------------------------------------------------------------------


I scanned everything at max scanner rez and saved as max quality JPEG.

I think that scanning at anything less is penny-wise and pound-foolish.
Even though you can get a decent 4x6 from lower resolution scans, there's
still the issues of cropping, larger prints, and zooming.

Purists will save as .TIFF - but the difference in disk space used and
load times when browsing is so huge that I decided to forgo that.
If I want to do more extensive editing, I can always re-scan the image
as .TIFF.
--
PeteCresswell

On 2006-04-24 17:18:22 -0400, Mirsky said:

Hi. I apologize if this question has been covered here before. My
mother has over 5000 slides, taken by my father over a forty-year
period. My mom wants to digitize the slides. However, she is unsure
if she should buy a scanner to do the job herself or bring the slides
to a photography store and have them do it for her. My mom isn't that
savvy about computers so I'm tending to think that she should let a
professional do the job. However, it might be too expensive to do
that. In any case, I'd appreciate any advice on slide scanners and
companies that will scan the slides. Which do you recommend?

Thanks,

Mirsky

How old is your mother? 5000 slides done right might not leave her a
lot of years to enjoy the scans.
--
Michael | "You're going to need a bigger boat."