converting slides to digital

disneyworldsk

DIS Veteran
Joined
Jul 10, 2014
sending very very old slides 35 mm out to a place to have them convert to digital. they are the span of a lifetime of FIL's photo hobby including wdw ones. If anyone has advice on what to ask the company, or anything, we just picked a local place online and will bring them 3,000 slides some are sixty years old to convert to a flash drive. Is that good? Should I know anything else?
 
Ask what sort of resolution and format you'll be getting them in, and be prepared for normal flash drives not to always be big enough. You should also ask about restoration if any are in poor shape, and how the slides will be returned to you (boxes/sleeves/etc).

Generally, most slides are fine at 10-12 MP of resolution, though Ektachrome can resolve more detail to about 40+ MP. And higher resolution TIFF is better than JPEG in case you want to edit the slides afterwards, since once they're digital they can go into a normal digital workflow, and JPEG does clip some even on slide film. If any of the film is negative or panchromatic, you'll 100% want the higher resolution and preferably raw files to adjust afterwards.

Or of course, if you have gobs of time, you can pick up a used Coolscan with a slide magazine and do it all yourself more cheaply and usually with better results. Or pick up that new Nikon slide copying adapter and connect to a copy stand Macro/Micro lens (ES-1/ES-2 adapters, 40-60 mm macro lens), which might be useful to have anyway in case any more turn up and you don't want to go through the process of going to a third party company for a few dozen.
 
I counted the slides this weekend. 6000. yikes. mostly 35 mm. Can anyone recommend if I chose to do this project myself at home slide conversion to digital how would I do this (as in what machine should I purchase to help with this project)? Thank you.
 
Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED with a slide feeder adapter … but it's going to take a looonnnngggg time to get through 6000 slides.
 


the converters and flat bed scanners are all tedious. and will take forever. idk what to do! hiring someone will be very expensive, thousands.
 
the converters and flat bed scanners are all tedious. and will take forever. idk what to do! hiring someone will be very expensive, thousands.
Maybe have a viewing party and pull out a smaller number of ones you want to digitize.
 
There are at least two, if not more, services that will do this where you pay per box. Kodak is one Legacy Box is another. Costco also offers a service at .32 cents per slide.

I totally agree with @mom2rtk though, go through the slides first and only scan the ones you really want. I had about 2,000 I've whittled that down to about 200 that I really want to transfer.
 


i agree, however, the problem is there are five siblings and mil. they each come with their own separate interests and needs. Example: i noticed tons of six flag ride pics from one trip they went on in the 70's. personally, i thought oh how dumb to keep these. nope, one of the sibs was so excited to see every single pic from that trip because it was a meaningful trip for her with her father. just won't be possible to satisfy all of their needs. they are different ages with a wide range, steps/halves/blends. too complex to say who wants this one digitilized. thank you for a very good thought though. i posted also on the photography and the community threads boards on this topic too. both boards have such nice people giving ideas.
 
One thing to think about it that unless you really care about the quality implications of doing it all yourself, something like a used Coolscan 5000 with SA-210 slide feeder to take 50 slides at once is still $2000 to buy and a one trick pony - film scanning only (though you could resell it afterwards).

Don't try and do this on a flatbed or cheap scanner though as you'll spend more time fighting with the scanner than actually scanning (learned from experience).

Flatbed are nice for medium and large format, but can't focus on multiple slides with different curves and mount thicknesses so some always come out blurry, and very few can handle Kodachrome, while the cheaper newer slide scanners just don't have the big robust mechanics to high quality scanning the older ones did and so jam all the time.
 
update: i'm doing very well in my project. i puchased a manual feeder, the kodak one and i had to first go thru the slides to organize them. now i'm hand feeding them into this machine and they get saved onto a memory card and we download them onto the computer. then i put them in albums. i am very ahead timeline wise and i am going very fast . staying organized helps. the slides go back to 1950's. 6000. i am happy with this machine and how things are coming out.
 
update: i'm doing very well in my project. i puchased a manual feeder, the kodak one and i had to first go thru the slides to organize them. now i'm hand feeding them into this machine and they get saved onto a memory card and we download them onto the computer. then i put them in albums. i am very ahead timeline wise and i am going very fast . staying organized helps. the slides go back to 1950's. 6000. i am happy with this machine and how things are coming out.

So good to hear you found a working solution!

I did a similar project several months back and it was amazing how well the black and white slides came out; even better than the color ones. I presented my siblings/relatives with photo thumb drives last Christmas containing relevant photos.
 
I did a similar project several months back and it was amazing how well the black and white slides came out; even better than the color ones. I presented my siblings/relatives with photo thumb drives last Christmas containing relevant photos.
B&W images are always like that. Panchromatic (which means sensitive to all wavelengths) slides have higher resolution, and because you're otherwise throwing out color data it can instead be used to clean up the grain. All else being equal an ISO400 B&W film will have about the same resolution as an ISO100 Color film - with of course some notable exceptions. The result is that because the grains are sensitive to all wavelengths, you don't lose most of the light and so the grains can be smaller.

Also, because they use silver halide they don't degrade nearly as badly over time as the dyes used in color slides. With the possible exception of Kodachrome, all B&W images will hold up better long term than color ones.

True panchromatic film even today has better resolution than color digital - same with the one digital camera (the Leica M Monochrom) that doesn't handle color.
 
yes, putting them into folders in the computer and will present the siblings with their own usb stick thingy. says my husband. that's his part in this!
 
yes, putting them into folders in the computer and will present the siblings with their own usb stick thingy. says my husband. that's his part in this!
LOL! He's getting off easy!

You'll probably want to quickly crop some of them too, once he gets them. The Kodak one is very easy, but it can end up grabbing a bit of the slide carrier as well. My Coolscan grabs quite a bit of it, but the quality is worth it to me (Ektachrome comes out about as good as digital, for instance).
 
update: i'm doing very well in my project. i puchased a manual feeder, the kodak one and i had to first go thru the slides to organize them. now i'm hand feeding them into this machine and they get saved onto a memory card and we download them onto the computer. then i put them in albums. i am very ahead timeline wise and i am going very fast . staying organized helps. the slides go back to 1950's. 6000. i am happy with this machine and how things are coming out.

Have just finished a similar project with over a 1000 slides - I used an ION Slides Forever scanner - did the job perfectly with unmounted and cardboard and plastic mounted slides.
 

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