Slide Conversion

[Charles Nicol]

Could anyone recommend a slide conversion company ? I have 100+ Canon slides from the 1960s which i would like to put on CD or DVD.

Thanks in advance

Charles

[Lee Hurrell]

Thanks for reminding me Charles!!

I have boxes (and I mean boxes) of my Dad's and his Dad's that I inherited when my Dad moved to Spain. I said to him once I'd get them transferred to CD for him so he doesn't lose the memories.

I did ask in one of those high street shops (it was just inside Shepherd's Bush shopping centre - not far from the infamous Bus Stop 'C' Pete...) and I was looking at around 50p per slide and the price did reduce the more you had.

Even so, with the quantity I have I'd be looking at a fair whack so it has been on the backburner since then.

I'd estimate I have around 1000.

Anyway, in essence, I'd like to second the request from Captain Charles!

Thanks

Lee

[Zonda]

I scanned my own fungi slides on my Epson flat bed (around 200), using the slide scanning attachment. About 150 were of good enough quality to keep after scanning. It took a while, but i'm glad i did it. The scanner really showed up the quality of those old slides, some that had looked great under a loupe were not very good when viewed on the monitor. I was pleased that i had saved what i did, and have improved some of them digitally since. The thing about this problem is,,, you don't really want to be paying someone to convert the rubbish, as well as the good ones.

[Charles Nicol]

You always seemed like a fun guy Zonda

Charles

[JKT]

The scanner really showed up the quality of those old slides, some that had looked great under a loupe were not very good when viewed on the monitor.

Are you quite sure it was the slides and not the scanner/scanning? I have a bunch of boxes as well and I was not too happy with results from "Minolta DiMage Scan Dual III". If the grain is soft, it shouldn't be the slides, should it?

[Zonda]

JKT wrote:

Are you quite sure it was the slides and not the scanner/scanning? I have a bunch of boxes as well and I was not too happy with results from "Minolta DiMage Scan Dual III". If the grain is soft, it shouldn't be the slides, should it?

I was quite happy with the 75% keeper rate, and pleasantly surprised at the scan quality. In those days my only method of checking whether or not a slide was sharp involved peering through a loupe on a lightbox. In my case most of the rejects were focusing errors, with a few camera shakes. I grew out of my projector quite quickly, and was shooting with selling in mind. Here is an example of one of the better ones.

[JKT]

O.K. In that case I need a better scanner. I don't recall having anything really sharp. I also tried to stitch a slide from 9 shots with MPE-65. The results were nice, but it was a bit too much work.

[Charles Nicol]

That is a very sharp Boletus picture Zonda. I would be very happy with that quality of transfer.

On the internet the going rate seems to start at 40p per slide which is quite a lot.

C

[Rogerdodge]

Guys
You can buy a specialist slide scanner for about £80, a good one for £150, and an excellent one for £200.
Why not buy one, use it one long, wet weekend, lend it to the other person, and then flog it on e-bay.

Just a thought.

[Charles Nicol]

Thanks for the suggestion Rogerdodge

Are there any particular models to seek out or avoid ?

Charles

[Gruditch]

My getting very old, Epson Stylus Photo RX620, has a slide thingy, never used it.

Regards Gruditch

[Rogerdodge]

Thanks for the suggestion Rogerdodge

Are there any particular models to seek out or avoid ?

I must confess that this is nowhere near any of my spheres of expertise!
Anyone else help out here?

[Zonda]

Grud said:

My getting very old, Epson Stylus Photo RX620, have a slide thingy, never used it.

My Boletus pic above was scanned on an Epson Photo RX520, so if you have some old slides try it. If the slides are of good quality i bet it'll do a good job set to 24 bit colour. Gotta make sure you put the slides in right,,, might need a little trial run.
Another useful thing with these models is they scan 35mm b&w negs, which come out positive,,,, very useful.

[Charles Nicol]

Well i finally got round to buying a scanner... epson v330 off amazon for £78.
It is working fine... each slide takes about 1 minute including dust removal & colour enhancement.

here is one of the pics of a budding lepidopterist aged about 10...

Charles

[JohnR]

I bought myself a CanoScan 9000F with a view to using it for slides on a wet weekend. We haven't had any rain in the past few months. I just opened the "film guide" packet and it seem to cater for 35mm - 120 negatives. As a scanner it's fast, none of the hanging about whilst it calibrates itself at some setting of its own choice. I think it came with a copy of Photoshop Elements 8.
I like it as a scanner but can't comment on its slide abilities yet.

[MikeOxon]

If you have a macro lens, you can use that to re-photograph the slides with your digital camera - much quicker than scanning and good results! I show my own setup on my website at http://home.btconnect.com/mike.flemming/technic2.htm
Mike

[Charles Nicol]

That is very ingenious Mike !! Does the viewer bit at the end have a light inside or do you have to shine a light into it ?

Charles

[MikeOxon]

Thank you, Charles. It certainly works for me! The slide holder is simply a diffuser screen, which I point at the window for natural light. It also works with a halogen desklamp, and I'm sure flash would also be ok, though I haven't tried it. I set an aperture of f/8 in Aperture Priority mode, turn off AF, and use a remote release. It all works very rapidly.

Mine is a home-made setup but Nikon (and probably others) make copying attachments, at a price! (eg Nikon Es-1 Slide Copying Adapter)

The very basic Canon compact/Jessops viewer (discontinued, I think - cost £1.99) combination, shown on my website, works better than my expectations, though chromatic aberration and loss of edge resolution are obvious. It's great for making a quick digital catalogue of your slides - as fast as you can feed 'em through!

Mike

[chris JP]

I have a similar attachment made from a Nikon ES-1 and an extension tube which fits on the front of my 60mm macro lens - it gives better results than my Minolta Dimage scanner and , unlike that, doesn't become inoperable when the Windows version changes! Another good feature is that you can use the extended dynamic range option in the camera to produce more "slide-like" results than a flatbed usually does. For lighting, I use the built-in camera flash, mounting the camera about 2 feet from a white wall to give even illumination (there is a diffuser in the ES-1). I copied 60 slides this way recently in about 5 mins.

Chris