slides to digital

[Jeremy Marchant]

Spurred on by the quality of replies to my camera query, here's a related one.

The vast majority of my film work was on slides. I have gazillions of them, unviewed for years. Whilst mounting slide shows, complete with projector and screen, would be an amusingly retro entertainment to provide for my friends, I'd like to transfer some of the slides to digital.

How should I proceed?

[DaveK]

Spurred on by the quality of replies to my camera query, here's a related one.

The vast majority of my film work was on slides. I have gazillions of them, unviewed for years. Whilst mounting slide shows, complete with projector and screen, would be an amusingly retro entertainment to provide for my friends, I'd like to transfer some of the slides to digital.

How should I proceed?

Ditto to everything above from me - I'd also be very interested in advice/guidance/recommendations - I've been taking photos for over 50 years and digitising them, or some of them, is on my list of things to do sometime - please spur me into action so that I don't make too many expensive mistakes,
Cheers,

[Alex_UK]

Most cheap flatbed scanners have transparency adapters nowadays - very good they are too - I bought an epsom one, but sure others will do a great job.

[The Vinyl Adventure]

epson do a range of flat bed scanners ranging from £80 - £500 all of which will scan 35mm negative and positive(slides) to a very reasonable quality and resolution
(i scan to 3200 dpi using a epson v500 with great success.. and i know that shaun uses a v700 for his fine art photography and i belive he aslo scans to 3200dpi)
the v500 also scans medium format and the v700 scans up to 10" x 8"

alternatively plustek make a range of dedicated 35mm scanners that are very good, but more expensive than the basic epson flat bed - the v300 (that would more than likely do the job to a level that yo would be happy with)
if you are interested in going for a plustek, as far as i know it is worth going for the slightly higher models in the range as they scan beond the visible spectrum which will produce a better result (aparently)
if you want to know more about the plustek range then let me know/pm me and when im next at the shop you can give me a ring and i can help you ferther

this all said the epson v300 at £80 is more than adequate for most peoples needs

it should be noted though, whatever you go for expect a 1 minute-per-slide scanning time, so it can be time consuming

[Jeremy Marchant]

this all said the epson v300 at £80 is more than adequate for most peoples needs

it should be noted though, whatever you go for expect a 1 minute-per-slide scanning time, so it can be time consuming

Many thanks.
The Epson seems just the ticket (I don't have a need for mega high quality). Not bothered by the scanning time - I imagine I'll do this as a background task when working in the office.

[The Vinyl Adventure]

it has only just occured to me that both of these recent camera related threads were posted by you. good luck with both!

[StanleyB]

Try this:
SLIDE SCANNER

[The Vinyl Adventure]

... they arnt bad,the epson is def better though.. but it maybe worth a try if you cant justify the extra £30 for the epson v300
another option would be to go for a second hand v100 or v200 both of which scan slides

[Alex_UK]

As I eluded to, my scanner is an Epson (not an Epsom as I orginally posted!) - the v300 Dave is recommending too - it's a great machine, and the software worked really well to do 4 at a time, and would work really well Jeremy, having it as a background task which is what I did. Unfortunately, it worked too well - one of my wife's aunties has just this week turned up with 000's of slides that my wife has kindly volunteered me to scan for her!