Siena Loc: Rocky Hill, CT

Hi All,

I have a lot of slides that I want to convert to digital images. I'm turning to you friends for recommendations as there are so many places that offer this service. You can understand that I'm nervous about shipping irreplaceable slides off to an unknown company. I'd like to do it as reasonably as possible, but of course reputation and quality are primo.

Thanks in advance!

revhen Loc: By the beautiful Hudson

I use Wolverine. Does good job.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Siena,
Tempe Imaging Center
They are part of Tempe Camera
http://www.tempecamera.biz click on the LAB link at the top of the page.
--Bob

missinglinq

Is there reasonably priced equipment out there for purchase/hire for doing this yourself, rather than shipping out those precious slides?

louparker Loc: Scottsdale, AZ

If you had bothered to search UHH, you would see that this question has been discussed and answered many, many times before.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Unfortunately, the bare bones search function here requires members to ask questions over and over again.

louparker Loc: Scottsdale, AZ

Not true! While the search engine may not be as comprehensive as Google's, Yahoo's and others, I just ran a search using the single word, "Slides" and came up with at least 4 previous strings on the topic of digitizing and scanning slides.

robertjerl Loc: Corona, California

Get one of these: http://www.toptenreviews.com/computers/peripherals/best-slide-to-digital-image-converters/ (or any other that is good, if $ is not a problem than get a commercial grade)

Get an e-reader and load a few books you want to read on it (how many and how long depends on how many slides and negatives you have to copy).

Set it all up, load slides or negatives and start process, read while they are scanning, name and file when done, put in next batch, read some more - repeat as often as necessary to finish the job. If you get good enough you can maybe start a business doing it for your friends. Then you can kill a lot more time by going through them all and doing PP on them if you like (I would just wait until I wanted/needed one of them.). Or you could then put them together into slide shows or something.

picsman Loc: Scotland

I bought the Epsom v600 and only tested it so far. I think it is a bit slow but has a scratch correction option. I imagine I will not convert all slides but select the better ones only.

LFingar Loc: Claverack, NY

I previously checked with several companies that scan slides. Sorry, I don't remember who they were, but I did learn a few things:
1. Ask them if they ship the slides overseas or if they do the work in-house. One company had two different base prices per slide. A higher price if done in-house and a lower price if shipped to India to be scanned.
2. Find out what type of equipment they use. A good commercial scanner will produce a sharper image then a typical flatbed home scanner.
3. Any restoration work, dismounting and remounting, etc, will add to the price. Be sure to find out all the details.
I have an Epson V600 scanner with which I have scanned about 800 slides. It has done a good job but I have some that I want to get done professionally. Let us know how you make out.

steve49 Loc: massachusetts

I thk everybody's definition of many is different.
5,000? 500? Best 150 slides?
As many here know it is not hard to accumulate many thousands of photos over many years.
What is hard is to thin them down and do something with them!

I just got a $200 epsom scanner that makes much better digital copies than the one I used to use.
I'm pretty impressed with the results.
Winter project is to copy the best couple of hundred slides from 45 years of travel.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Right. And we could shut down discussions completely. I have fifty-five pages of links that I've accumulated, and there is also Google available. Why do I bother with UHH at all? For the discussions - the back and forth. For strictly informational purposes, UHH is unnecessary since everything is available somewhere on the Web. This is a social forum, not a wikiphoto site.

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

How big a rush are you in? If not a big rush, you might consider doing it yourself...

One of the reasons I bought my scanner was because I too, hesitated to hand my old family photos to someone else...
My scanner is an Epson V700 (now discontinued by Epson), and not once have I regretted this purchase.
Yes, scanning at home is slow. Therefore every time I go near the scanner, I will load new slides or negatives, start the scanning process and walk away to do something else.

Yes, old photos, negatives and slides have scratches, dust, etc., even if we can't see them with the naked eye. I keep two anti-static cloths right beside my scanner: One I use to wipe off the glass plate and the inside of the lid just before every scan. The other one I use to very lightly wipe off the images I will be scanning, also just before doing so. I emphasize "very lightly" because if there is gritty dust on the images, wiping can cause more damage than it will do good. You may be better off keeping a bulb blower handy instead of an anti-static cloth.

Depending on the quality of the images, there may be very little or a lot of PP to do.

Once you have your images digitized, make a second copy ASAP and keep it off-site. (I have mostly negatives, and for most of the negatives, a printed photo as well. My photo albums and negatives were never kept together).

hj Loc: Florida

A pertinent question is: Do you want pixel-peeping quality or just good quality for the computer screen and possibly sending to friends for instance in an email? If the latter then you can do it yourself on a wolverine in less than 5 seconds per slide. If you use a traditional scanner it takes minutes per slide. I was very satisfied with my conversion and then sold the converter on eBay when finished. Just google Wolverine slides to digital. The F2D model is $130.

Architect1776 Loc: In my mind

Ditto, my experience with them has been great and their lab is excellent.