Services to convert old slides to digital images

[jimr]

With the in-laws 50th wedding anniversary last summer I took about 10 boxes of slide they had accumulated and was going to scan the best ones in. What a process. The cost get them done was large... large enough that I could easily pay for a really high end slide/film scanner and a new computer! I did buy the slide/film scanner.... what a pain to use in a bulk fashion. I could see why it cost so much to hirer someone to do this.


As I looked at them through a slide projector on the screen I wonder if I could just snap photos with a DLSR. I set up the DLSR on a tripod and lined it up right beside the side projector. Set the camera to full manual mode and started to 'play' with the settings. With the help of a wireless remote I started taking photo's of the slides. The slide projector quickly focuses and with the only light the camera sees is the projected image on the screen ... presto less than 1/2 second later I have captured it digitally.


I ran through about 5000 slides in one evening and captured about 500 with the DSLR of them and the then narrowed that down to about 200. The end image quality was good and with some bulk tweaking of the photos they looked just as good as any result I got off the medium priced slide/film scanner I had bought. I returned the slide/film scanner and did the last 5000 the next evening. I found great time savings as I could go through one wheel of slides and just snap a photo of the images that where important and look good compared to stopping the process and pulling the slide out and setting it aside for later detailed scanning via the dedicated slide/film scanner.


I printed a bunch of the photos as 4X6's for family members and I felt my reproduction from slides looks better then the ones generated right from the slides. I think it had a lot to do with the age and condition of many of the slides. Digital post production work can do a lot to clean up. I am sure pictures produced Kodachrome slides and done professionally would be far superior.


For a small number of slide a service maybe good and reasonable prices, especially if you do not have a slide projector and screen (but you can rent these). Once you hit a 100 or so photos the cost start to really high and alternative solutions become cheaper - ie buy a film/slide scanner.

[barba]

Owing a good quality scanner and a nice SLR or rangefinder (or better yet a Holga) is a lot of fun. I would seriously investigate buying a nice flatbed. I use an Epson that does great slide and negative scans and doubles as a useful bit of home office kit.