DMF

I suspect all older photographers have thousands of 35mm slides in boxes around the house. Any suggestions on copying to digital? Recently purchased a Nikon copier, takes a picture of the slide. My first experience leaves me hoping to find a service that produces a better digital copy for a reasonable price.
Doug

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

You could give ScanCafe a try, their prices are very reasonable!

DMF

Customers appear to be satisfied with there service and indeed their prices are good compared with other services. Does anyone have experience with their quality?

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

I find there quality very reasonable too, they make very decent scans! Here is one from SCanCafe, it was shot on Fuji Velvia and scanned by them

Curmudgeon Loc: SE Arizona

Really depends on what you want to do. If you want to just scan a select few I would us a commercial provider. If you are talking about 100s to 1000s like I was, I bought an Epson V600 and have been working on the project on and off for over a year now. I was surprised with the number of slides that looked good projected on a screen that were not worth scanning. In the end it is a cost vs time decision. Good Luck.

DMF

Looks good, better than my experience. Of course, my slide is not the best, made approximately 20yrs ago.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

What Nikon scanner did you get?

I originally got a LS-30, which did a mediocre job on some of them, then I went a generation older to a LS-2000 - and it did a great job {although I had to maintain a Win XP computer}. I also have a Plustek scanner, which is between the two scanners in quality.

Retired CPO Loc: Travel full time in an RV

Build a mini light box and photograph them with a good macro lens. Preferably with a full frame camera.

DMF

Currently doing this with a macro lens. Thought a scanner designed for this purpose would do a better job.

rehess Loc: South Bend, Indiana, USA

it will do a better job with imperfect images, because a camera will perfectly copy all issues.

therwol Loc: USA

I've done it both ways, camera/macro lens and scanner. I've copied color slides and both color and black and white negatives. My camera is a Nikon D810, and I used a 55mm f/2.8 Micro lens at 1:1 when I was doing this. The camera and lens could produce a bit more detail than my Epson V800 scanner It was a lot more work to set it up. I hung my camera from an old enlarger over a light box and had to focus on each slide or negative. Alignment was critical. I also tethered the camera to a computer. The computer activated the shutter to minimize vibration.. Even so, I could see the effects of vibration in some of the results.

Having said all of that, if you simply want to mass scan slides with decent results, buy an Epson V550, V600, V800 or V850. The last two are a bit expensive but can scan more slides at once. If you have only a few slides you want to scan, pay to have the work done or buy a dedicated film scanner for better results than you can get with the flatbed scanners.

Last choice I can think of is using a film copying device on the end of a macro lens, such as Nikon's ES-2 coupled with a 60mm Micro lens.

DMF

The "last choice" does this refer to the quality of the final image having poor quality compared to the previous methods listed?

therwol Loc: USA

No, last on my list but not last in quality. I think that a flatbed scanner would win that award, though I have to say that my Epson V800 is quite good for mass scanning. Also, if you don't know what you're doing with a camera, the results will probably look crappy.

Options I see. 1. Scanner, either flatbed with film capability or dedicated to film (better). 2. Camera/Macro. Setup can be complicated except for #4 here. 3. Pay someone to do it. 4. Dedicated slide/film holder attached to a macro lens, and one example was given. The same ES-2 adapter can be used on a Nikon DX camera with a 40mm Micro lens. The ES-2 adapter was designed with the D850 in mind but can be used on any Nikon camera with the proper lens. (But taking photos of color negatives can cause headaches in post processing. I won't go into that. The OP is talking about slides.)

cascoly Loc: seattle

I've used scancafe for several thousand images - I use the 4000 dpi service which also includes dust & scratch removal, and would highly recommend them.

DMF

This may answer my question if you believe the Nikon ES-2 is the preferred method for scanning slides, better than paying someone. This is the issue we are dealing with. We have looked at the Nikon ES-2 plus purchasing a Nikor 60mm macro lens, not cheap. However, we are looking at sorting around 2000 - 2500 slides (my guess) for scanning. At 20 cents a slide, this can add up. But, buying the scanner and lens is not cheap but may be the best way to go, particularly if the expected quality is equal or better. The primary time consuming activity with either method is sorting and selecting the slides.