Scanning Thousands of Slides

I think you have posted in other groups, but you can always use
PhotoMax to archive your slides on their site or put to CD with Photo
Saver. They will also save your old prints.

Go to dvoris.myphotomax.com and set up an FREE account and get 20 4x6
and 1 8x10 prints.

If you have any other questions, let me know.

Debi
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.

You could always use PhotoMax's Photo Saver. They scan old photos and
slides and put them on CD.

Go to dvoris.myphotomax.com to set up a FREE account and receive 20 4x6
and 1 8x10 prints FREE.

Debi
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.

On 6 Jul 2006 05:27:53 -0700, 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.

Slides generally don't have negatives. It's color reversal film.

Ockham's Razor wrote:
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.

An external hard drive is a short term backup. I would not trust one to
last more than 10 years. A very minor failure and the data is most
likely irretrievably lost.

Gold CD's/ DVD's will last 100+ year if kept in ordinarily benign
conditions. It is very cheap to burn a new disc if an image needs to be
added to a collection.

Cheers,
Alan



--
-- r.p.e.35mm user resource: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpe35mmur.htm
-- r.p.d.slr-systems: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpdslrsysur.htm
-- [SI] gallery & rulz: http://www.pbase.com/shootin
-- e-meil: Remove FreeLunch.

"Debi" wrote in message
oups.com...
You could always use PhotoMax's Photo Saver. They scan old photos and
slides and put them on CD.

Go to dvoris.myphotomax.com to set up a FREE account and receive 20 4x6
and 1 8x10 prints FREE.

Debi

I don't think they would have the kind of resolution that these guys want,
Debi......I know that I would be unhappy with anything less than about 1300
bits per linear inch, which is why I do all my own scanning now......

Alan Browne wrote:
Ockham's Razor wrote:
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.

An external hard drive is a short term backup. I would not trust one to
last more than 10 years. A very minor failure and the data is most
likely irretrievably lost.

Gold CD's/ DVD's will last 100+ year if kept in ordinarily benign
conditions. It is very cheap to burn a new disc if an image needs to be
added to a collection.

Cheers,
Alan



HDs are so cheap these days ($.33/Gigabyte) that having more than one is
not expensive, given the convenience. My pictures are duplicated on 3
or 4 drives. Calculating the probability of failure of all of them at
the same time gives VERY small numbers. Then there are the pictures I
send to Webshots, which really aren't a great backup, given that they
are compressed from the originals, but they would serve as some backup,
in a disaster situation. Surely moving the files to a new HD
periodically isn't a big problem, and certainly easier than burning
10,000 pictures to CD/DVD!

DD wrote:
In article op.tb9sb9jej9nxpm@clive,
says...

I see many very big hard drives in your future.

With 500Gb drives down to the price of a 20Gb only 5 years ago ...
Hard drives are cheap.

What's the point of scanning them all in anyway? Are you going to be
looking at them again anytime soon? Are you running an image library?

Backup.
Second copy.
Distribution so each family member can have a copy on DVD/CDs
Capturing them before further damage - colours fading etc.
Showing a DVD slide show is "better" than getting out the projector
setting up a darkened room and then burning out the bulb ...

I think as photographers we get these silly notions in our heads about
keeping our past current with technology. If you really feel the urge to
scan all your old film, ask yourself why first.

If is impossible to know if it is worth while to yourself or your
family. You may find no current family member interested at all, but
then one of the next generation will love you to bits for preserving
the family history.

I've also recently invested in a film scanner and after spending hours
scanning a few selected images into the hard drive (each resulting in
monster size TIFFs), I have no desire to digitise the archive. Let 'em
be archived the way they were shot - as film...

TIFFs are claimed to be better for archives as there is no compression.
I have scanned to JPG which has compression but little loss if any of
the image detail. There is a huge difference in the storage needs and
processing (load and save times).

A well index archive can bring back new interest in the photographs and
the reason why they where taken in the first place.

DVDs/CDs/hard drives all have their own problems. I find that one hard
drive used for mastering CD-ROMs gets corrupted for no apparent reason.
I change the images and some HTML files frequently and these are
updated weekly. The corruption is often with files that have not been
touched. I have also traced back damaged images which have been damaged
on several copies but the master - first made image is still okay. The
images have lighten areas, usually at the top. Some are not readable at
all. I have also found the copies made on CD-ROM and DVD to have
faults, but the master and subsequent CD-ROM copies are okay.

The scanning and worked needed on each image afterwards is a slow
process. A lab is not going to care if the images are "usable" and will
not scan at the highest resolution. To view on screen much more than
1280 horizontally is not much point and I have found it hard to create
slide shows using 5400dpi scanned images (runs out of memory to
convert). But if your scanner does 4000dpi or 5400dpi, like the Minolta
Elite 5400 then scanning at the highest resolution preserves the best
you can do.

I scanned /stored 150 photographs from a wedding, along with 13 minutes
of DVC video on a DVD making a 4.2Gb disc. The slide show and MPG video
where under 500Mb and I stored on a separate DVD. It took a long time
to sort 35mm negatives, APS prints and digital images into the right
order.

For the amount of effort involved if I charged for the time it would
run into hundreds. I must have spend more than 4 working days on the
project. I may be quicker next time around. Much of the time taken was
to scan each image to its best advantage. I could not set up for one
film (9 strips of 4 negatives) and scan every image the same way as an
automatic process; not if I wanted to be satisfied with the result.

Gerald

Ron Hunter wrote:

HDs are so cheap these days ($.33/Gigabyte) that having more than one is
not expensive, given the convenience. My pictures are duplicated on 3
or 4 drives. Calculating the probability of failure of all of them at
the same time gives VERY small numbers. Then there are the pictures I
send to Webshots, which really aren't a great backup, given that they
are compressed from the originals, but they would serve as some backup,
in a disaster situation. Surely moving the files to a new HD
periodically isn't a big problem, and certainly easier than burning
10,000 pictures to CD/DVD!

It comes down to your notion of a backup. To me a backup remains a
static device that can be stored conveniently. Gold CD's don't need to
be copied periodically to referesh them. As I said, in benign
conditions they will outlast us all.

A static CD/DVD sitting in a drawer is not vulnerable to operator error.

Ultimately, of course, we should not store precious backups at home.
Fires do happen.

I don't find burning CD's or DVD's to be onerous, just set it up before
I go to bed and it's done before I fall asleeep.

To each his own.

--
-- r.p.e.35mm user resource: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpe35mmur.htm
-- r.p.d.slr-systems: http://www.aliasimages.com/rpdslrsysur.htm
-- [SI] gallery & rulz: http://www.pbase.com/shootin
-- e-meil: Remove FreeLunch.

"Ron Hunter" wrote in message
...


HDs are so cheap these days ($.33/Gigabyte) that having more than one
is not expensive, given the convenience. My pictures are duplicated
on 3 or 4 drives. Calculating the probability of failure of all of
them at the same time gives VERY small numbers. Then there are the
pictures I send to Webshots, which really aren't a great backup, given
that they are compressed from the originals, but they would serve as
some backup, in a disaster situation. Surely moving the files to a
new HD periodically isn't a big problem, and certainly easier than
burning 10,000 pictures to CD/DVD!

Just make sure that (a) all those hard drives are not on the
same computer - a power supply failure can take them all
out at the same time and (b) they are not all in the same
physical location - fires, theft etc do happen and while the
pictures may not mean anything to anyone else, they are
important to you if they are gone.

I have my pix on several drives, but also periodically will
make an image to dvd of the last year or two so I end up
with a number of DVD's that back up the data and overlap
each other.

mikey

I believe I wrote to you on another site, but you could use PhotoMax
Photo Saver. They scan slides and old photos.

Go to dvoris.myphotomax.com and sign up for a FREE account. You will
get 20 4x6 and 1 8x10 prints free.

Debi
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.