Archiving 35mm negatives/slides to Computer?

[JazzBones]

Help, can someone recommend decent hardware to enable me to archive my SLR 35mm coloured slides and negatives to my PC, Microsoft Windows 7. It would have infrequent use thereby connection via USB is required? Also, a rough idea of cost? My old flat bed scanner had the facility to scan slides and negatives but I never took advantage of this facility and now this particular bit of hardware is not compatible with my new PC :steam:

I have noticed in The Radio Times that there is a 'gadget' that can do this costing about £50., but I don't know if its worth it or any good?

By the way, I do have a digital camera ;) but theres something magical about my 35mm roll film Petri Penta SLR (a weighty piece) bought many years ago whilst visiting Japan... what an Aladdin's cave for cameras that was :)!

Thanks for advice and recommendations

Ron

[Mark Grant]

? My old flat bed scanner had the facility to scan slides and negatives but I never took advantage of this facility and now this particular bit of hardware is not compatible with my new PC :steam:
Ron

If it is an old scanner that does not have windows 7 drivers or scanning software then try vuescan http://www.hamrick.com/

It supports many old scanners and try the free trial before you buy anything new :)
http://www.hamrick.com/vuescan/vuescan.htm#supported

I use it with an old Nikon slide scanner and vuescan is quicker and easier to use than the Nikon software ( in my opinion)

Mark.

[JazzBones]

Thanks Mark for the info, its appreciated mate

Ron :)

[Jac Hawk]

Hmmm i tried to do the same thing as you are wanting to do a while back, but found that most flatbed scanners didn't have a dpi setting high enough to get good results, you see the problem is that 35mm slides are small and to enable you to use the scans for anything more than thumbnails you would need a piece of kit a little more specialised, what i did was spoke to a local photography studio who had a scanner that was designed to do what your talking about, i paid em about £30 if i remember correctly and they put the photos onto cd's for me.

[The Vinyl Adventure]

I use an Epson v500 flatbed...
Just set it to pro mode, 3200 dpi, and save to tiff

[JazzBones]

Thanks Mike and Hamish. My Epson flat bed lives in exile in the loft so will dig it out and try the soft ware download suggested.

Thanks again,

Ron

[The Vinyl Adventure]

Not all flat beds can scan slides ... The ones that do have backlights in the lids

[radio]

iv,e got lots of slides from far away shores,before digital came out,i will have to check this out cheers maria:cool:

[zanash]

you can ....for slides get a device that fits to your camera [assuming a detachable lens] called a slide duplicater ..I think ...it also alows you to zoom in and manovoeur the slide too

I picked one up off ebay to fit a pentax k ...

I used this to transfere all my old slides to digital ...

the down side is that you need a strong back light ...or a sunny day !

my epson will scan negatives ...and doesn't have a back light ..it will also convert them to a positive ....

I have this delight to come ...sitting on the floor with several hundred sets of film negatives !

[JazzBones]

...

"I have this delight to come ...sitting on the floor with several hundred sets of film negatives" ! .....

Would you believe that my wife junked years and years of 35mm negatives when we got our digital camera :stalks::steam: Her reasoning (suspect) was that we had the photos in albums and that the negs were just lying around doing doodly squat! With as much calm and fortitude as I could manage I asked her, 'what if we lose the albums or the house burns down'? With an equal calmness and resigination she replied, 'that won't happen'! I just accepted what had happened and thanked myself for stashing older negs, 'before wife vintage', in the loft that as yet she does not know about :eyebrows: this is why men are secretive?

In the readers' offers, Radio Times, back page of the supplement is a gadget which, quote, Transfer old 35 mm slides and negatives digitally to your computer it looks an interesting, easy to use, gadget for £49.99p reduced from £79.99p. Tempted I am, now I've got to figure how to sneak it past the missus 'coz I don't want her to know that little 35mm negs are hiding, out of harms way, in the loft ;)

Hope this isn't my last post?:rolleyes:

Ron