Scanning Thousands of Slides

"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.

"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.

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.

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

You sure it was Kodak that marketed that? I remember one company marketing
that type of film. The film was actually motion picture film spooled onto
35mm. I guess with that particular film you get negative and positive
images. I tried it once and it was okay, but I never stuck with it.

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.

Nikon 4000/5000 and V. You need to purchase the feeder seperately.

Automatic scanning of so many slides means accepting the scans as they
come. Usually one does a prescan to check the exposure slide by slide.
Most esp. if the films are of differnt kinds and have color shifted
over time.

And despite the scanning (automatic or otherwise) there will still be
cropping, sizing for screen display, thumbnails, etc. (which can be
automated in part in Photoshop).

Then you have to think of long term storage ... "gold" CD's / DVDs'.

Cheers,
Alan


--
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-- e-meil: Remove FreeLunch.

In article ,
Alan Browne wrote:


Then you have to think of long term storage ... "gold" CD's / DVDs'.

No, an external HD. IT is amazing how many times one will have "found"
slides or film strips that must be included in already scanned and
archived pictures. And, for many archived files of pictures, later
taken picts need to be included. I tried DVD's for about a year and had
a lot of gnashing of teeth because there was no room to enter new picts
that needed to be in certain files.

--
There are two ways to spell Ockham/Occam. Britannica prefers the former.

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.