35mm Slides: conversion to digital

T
Posted By
TonyReynes
Oct 6, 2003
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421
Replies
14
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Closed
I have about two thousand color slides that I would like to get on CD/DVD. I can send them out to a local shop who will charge me a buck a slide. I can also rent a medium good Elmo system for $75 per weekend…I think it projects the slide on to a tv camera sensor.

Any ideas on how I best attack this"project".

Tony

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B
BLUDVLZ
Oct 6, 2003
Well, for just $300-$500 you should be able to BUY a good slide scanner and then do the slides at your leisure… That’s the route I’d go.
MD
mike_daley
Oct 6, 2003
Hi Tony,

He’s right it would be cheaper for you to buy a scanner and scan each slide in. It will be time consuming though obviously.

We can do 2000 slides for $1000 with 1 week turnaround time.
RH
r_harvey
Oct 6, 2003
At 2 minutes per slide for a 3200 d.p.i. home scanner, you can do maybe 30 per hour. Let’s see, $30 per hour. Higher resolution is slower; lower is… faster.

The make or break issue would be resolution of the outsourced scans, and how much resolution you need. If they give you 2000×3000 compressed JPGs, they’ll be fine for snapshots, but not for big prints.
P
Primero
Oct 7, 2003
I had the same problem and researched many places and costs before I hit upon a solution. Don’t laugh. I went to Wal Mart. Yes, our friendly, local Wal Mart. For $.28 (or less, because I had such a large number) all of my deteriorating slides are now on CD. I made sure when I went in that their best technician would actually be doing the work. That was my only stipulation and it worked well. I have been having a lot of fun using these heretofore unavailable pictures in photoshop and creating CDs for family and work. I hope this helps.
G
gypman
Oct 7, 2003
At what resolution?
wrote in message
I had the same problem and researched many places and costs before I hit
upon a solution. Don’t laugh. I went to Wal Mart. Yes, our friendly, local Wal Mart. For $.28 (or less, because I had such a large number) all of my deteriorating slides are now on CD. I made sure when I went in that their best technician would actually be doing the work. That was my only stipulation and it worked well. I have been having a lot of fun using these heretofore unavailable pictures in photoshop and creating CDs for family and work. I hope this helps.
T
TonyReynes
Oct 8, 2003
Thanks for your responses. That gives me a lot to think about. BUT raises another question: what is the max dpi/file size I can get from a 35MM slide. I will blow up some…but I am saving them for posterity too
RH
r_harvey
Oct 8, 2003
At 3200, a slightly-cropped slide gives me about a 32MB uncompressed 24-bit TIF.
HP
Helen_Polson
Oct 8, 2003
The Minolta 5400 gives me 120MB tif files- but that might be overkill 🙂 I tend to resize to about 60MB for burning to cd.
KV
Klaas_Visser
Oct 8, 2003
I have a Canon CanoScan FS4000US (4000dpi) – using VueScan to capture raw data (48-bit plus 16 bit IR channel) gives me a 175MB TIFF.

After fiddling about, it usually ends up around 12MB for A4 size or 25MB for A3 size …
BO
Burton_Ogden
Oct 8, 2003
Tony,

BUT raises another question: what is the max dpi/file size I can get from a 35MM slide. I will blow up some…but I am saving them for posterity too…

If by "saving them for posterity" you mean capturing all possible detail, you will need to scan them at the maximum resolution you can. Helen’s Minolta 5400 (which I think scans at 5400 dpi) would be the way to go for that. You wouldn’t necessarily need to save those files as lossless 120MB TIF files though. A Photoshop plug-in like Genuine Fractals could reduce that file size down to maybe 24MB in a visually lossless mode.

One of the reasons I haven’t purchased a digital camera yet is that film is still capable of finer detail than any affordable digital camera. Just consider that film can have resolutions of 100 lines per millimeter or more and that each line pair corresponds roughly to two pixels and that there are 254 millimeters per inch and you see that 50,000 dpi would be what you would need to match the resolution capabilities of film. Not even the most expensive drum scanner can match that. But admittedly most photos have limitations from camera movement and subject movement and even the lens itself that blurs out some of that ultimate detail. Even so, I would like to scan my slides and negatives at Minolta’s 5400 dpi.

— Burton —
D
dpick
Oct 8, 2003
I did the exact same thing, but I had about 3,000 slides. The equipment I used was an Epson 1640su with a transparency adapter. Now, you can get the 3200. Each slide at 1600dpi is about 5 megs. It took about 10 minutes to do a batch of four. Therefore it took months of spare time to do all 3,000.

After that I bought a Minolta Scan Dual III for about $300USD. I love it. I get about a 29meg scan at 2880dpi, and this gives me high-resolution scans for prints. They make very nice 13×19 prints on my Epson 1280.

The point is if you do high-resolution for each one, it will take a long, long time. The way I did it is very organized (I had all the slides in carousels, so each received a carousel number and a slot number, and each carousel was stored in a separate folder). When you need a higher resolution scan, you can easily sort through the folder/slides with the File Browser, then easily find it and then make a high resolution scan. If you hire it out, you’ll pay a ton plus results may not be as good than if you do them yourself. Plus, you’ll save some cash for a couple more toys 🙂

One more thing, each scanned carousel burns to one cd which makes it easier for storage. One thing about high-resolution scans: all the dust and grain will receive high resolution treatment. If you have somewhat grainy film, or if they are old and not in the best condition, the higher the scan resolution the more apparent the problems will become.
CW
Colin_Walls
Oct 9, 2003
Tony:

You have 2000 slides that you want to scan. How many did you have to start with? If I get 1 picture in 10 that’s worth such processing, I’m having a great day. It’s not because I’m a bad photographer – that is a reasonable "run rate" for anyone who is competent.

So, if you have not done so already, I would suggest you go carefully through all those boxes of slides and weed out the best 100-200. Save yourself a load of money/time [and disk space!].
BO
Burton_Ogden
Oct 9, 2003
Colin,

From the standpoint of "good" photographs, your one-in-ten rule of thumb is about right. But among those 1800 to 1900 rejects there are pictures of people that will one day be keepsakes. A picture of great uncle John holding little baby Sarah in 1942 will one day be priceless regardless of whether there was a thumb showing at the side of the picture.

And if two different people were to go through that box of 2000 photos and weed out the best 100-200, chances are they would come up with completely different sets of "best" pictures. As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and the potential long-time value of a photograph is not necessarily determined by its technical perfection. That’s my viewpoint, and why I would not discard a large number of photos.

— Burton —
CW
Colin_Walls
Oct 10, 2003
Burton:

Point taken. I guess I am snobbish about "good photos" vs "valuable records", which is unreasonable/illogical. I withdraw my comments.

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