Conversion of 35mm Colour Slides to Digitals

There are plenty of color slide scanners available on the market today. There are also many companies that you can send your slides to for scanning. The latter link is a US company. I make no claim about this particular company.

check walmart

Google 35mm slide scanners and have your credit card ready. Simple.

'Several' sounds like you don't have very many. Look for a photo finishing shop in your area. They should be able to do a high resolution scan of your slides and give you a digital copy either on a DVD, a flash memory stick, or even possibly email them to you. It may not be worth it to you to buy a scanner if this is a one-time need.

You'll need high resolution, on the order of 1000 dots per inch (40 dots per mm) or better to get a decent amount of resolution from a slide. My scanner copies slides at 1200 dots per inch.

The photo finishing shop might also be able to correct any flaws in your old slides, like dust specs and scratches, and they might also be able to correct any color shift that may have occurred over the years.

Here in the US there are some business support companies like Kinkos that can do this work. You might check for a business like that in your area, too, if you can't find a photo finishing shop to do the work.

The cheapest way is to take them to your local photography store.

If you want higher resolution you can send your slides to a online service like ScanSafe and let them do it.

There are numerous scanners you can buy and there are even attachments for digital cameras to do the job.

All of those will cost you a lot more money than having another service company scan them for you and those devices will not do as good as job as a pro.

Lastly, self scanning is a learning process as you need to make adjustments to get rid of dust, color correction, etc., in a post processing session.

Unless you plan to do this on an ongoing basis, use a local or online professional.

I transfered more than 2000 slides on a full page scanner equipped with slides and film adapter with precision scanner in the cover. It can scan 4 slides (or 2 film strips with each 6 images) at a time with up to 9600 DPI. I used the Canon 9000F Mk II scanner, but other brand can be good to . Dont forget to blow your slides before processing.

I can see using a scanner to capture printed film, but how do you capture a slide that is designed to be backlit on a scanner?

Exact, there is two sensors on that kind of scanners, the usual one is a sensor coupled with a light under the glass, and the second one is located under the scanner cover. So when we scan a film / slide, we use the lignt source from the glass and capture the image with the sensor located Under the cover.

Did you try a regular desktop scanner?

Depending which one you have, the dpi can be cranked way up to get really good resolution.

Way back with my first computer, around 1998, I had a scanner that you typed in the dpi. Just for kicks the 1st day I had it, I typed in 32,000 and it did it! It took all day, locking up the computer, but when it finished you could see microscopic detail.

Hello Z man,

To scan transparencies (slides, films), the light must pass thru the media and capture by the sensor (located on the cover) to get images. Regular scanner just give opaque photo because the light reflect on the media and return to the sensor.

I thought that mite be a problem. I'm wondering if the scanner lite passing thru the slide to the cover & back thru to the scanner would work.

(odd. thought I replied already, but its not here)

About $55.00 on the internet!
Any more questions?

Unfortunately, you get what you pay for and maybe a little less.

However, it depends how picky you are about the results.

Walmart or or some drugstores can offer at least the same results at a cheaper overall cost - if this is a one-time thing.

I believe you can use a Digital camera with a lens adapter…ES-1, for Nikon. Go to the website : www.scantips.com , for better info.

I went through this process with over 100 slides that my wife wanted to put into scrapbooks (they were terrific, by the way).

I used an HP G4050 scanner which came with a slide scanner (I think 12 at a time).

Then I used PHOTOSHOP software to enhance them, because old slides deteriorate more than I expected. This was color, contrast, level, brightness mostly. Zoom and crop was essential. Many of them required "cloning" process to remove power lines, unwanted faces, etc.

A professional company that converts slides to .jpg will not do all this work for you.

Yes they will. Instead of paying the time of doing it yourself, one must pay them money.

Perhaps. The alterations I experienced were way too subjective and complex to possibly have communicated them to a third party (my wife being the 2nd party!).

For pretty simple changes, the pro 3rd parties would be the way to go, if time is the problem (I was retired when I did this work).

Correct.

And for someone that may not have the software and skills to use the "digital darkroom" these types of services are an excellent way to go.

Post processing files is not necessarily simple.

They make scanners you can buy as others have mentioned. There are also attachments to put on a digital camera. I don't have either, but have copied a fair number of slides.

I had a small light box with a milk glass top. The things made for sorting slides might do too, but the milk glass evens out the light coming thru. Made a mask to fit the slide to stop extraneous light from coming around. With my camera I needed a tripod; use the macro setting on the camera. Photo just a bit more than the film area of the slide, then you can crop more closely in an editing program--I use the free FastStone. You can also straighten if needed, and do other enhancements.

Use your iPod or iPhone in light mode and use it as background. You must adjust the intensity

Put your slide on and take a picture in Macro mode (abt. 10 cm), whit a small digital photo machine. Definition for pictures of 250Kb is more tan enough (you can do as you want). Do not use flash

You must fabricate devices for suport the iPod and the Canon powershoot 1000 (in my case), whith cardboard very very easily.

Use the shot delay of 2 sec. to avoid tremor and moved picture

I Recomend to cut the borders of diapo marks and turn the picture some angle (if neccesary) whit PhotoScape

As last step I pass the picture once in the blur filter of Photoshop . So you delete the images of the leds of the iPod or iPhone screen.

I did 1000 in three non complete days an my family is very happy.

As comercial interest bussines, is not good.

Please send me comments of your Jobs to jcirelli@

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I picked an HP scanner for free missing a power supply. A used power supply cost $5.00. Now all I need is time!

I have a HP scanner with slide adapter. Not used it much but it seems ok.

i.e. it will make acceptable images. I used this instead of outsourcing because:

1. You get what you are given from away, some good (maybe) and others.

2. You may not get back your originals. (or not as you would like them!)

A word of caution; I took my mother's 18c gold watch to a jewelers for cleaning
and repair - upon my collection he returned to me a vaguely similar looking gold
plated watch! He further adamantly insisted that was the actual watch I had
brought in to him, stating he had no other! With no actual picture of the original
watch, what could I do? He had returned "the" watch, only one worth a fraction
of mine, also with no sentimental value whatsoever. (crook)

My lesson: I would recommend you take a snapshot of anything you part with,
if you wish to have any chance of getting your original(s) back. (incl. slides etc.)

Hope this will be of help to all the members, because, when it happens.....

jt.

They complimented me upon my gold pocket watch and I said:
"On his death bed, my grandfather sold me this watch."