Bigmike1 Loc: I am from Gaffney, S.C. but live in Utah.

I agree that an Epson V600 scanner would suit your needs perfectly. I am quite happy with mine. However if you have money to burn you can have a company do it for you. I'm sure they would do a good job.

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

As I've said before, I have the "V-700 Photo" scanner. It does allow for focusing. The scanner has two lenses: one is aimed at the top of the glass plate, where a photo would touch it. The other one is aimed a little bit higher to allow for the thickness of the slide frame.
I have also scanned many negatives with it. Some of these negatives being very old, most of them are curled. One is a picture of my husband when he was about 18 months old (he's almost 86 yrs old now!). To allow for the curling, I stopped at a picture framing shop, and bought a piece of non-glare glass, about 6 x 6 inches. I put a strip of packing tape over the edges, the kind of tape that looks like there are threads caught in it. I let the ends on two corners stick out about an inch or so, to have little handles to pick up the glass. It works beautifully when scanning negatives.

John Hicks Loc: Sible Hedinham North Essex England

You can scan in two ways, first is to buy a plustek scanner which comes with the appropriate softwar, second buy a flat bed scanner that has the facility to scan transparencies and negatives with the flatbed scanner you will need to scan at least 2300 dpi or higher.

wenrin Loc: Northern Virginia

On scanners, the more expensive ones usually have the capability of scanning more dots per inch than cheaper ones. Think Megapixels, the more the finer detail captured. On a given scanner, the higher resolution you use, the longer the scan will take. Also if you are attempting to scan slides you need to make sure the scanner is a photo scanner. A 'regular' scanner has the light source next to the scanning element. A photo scanner for negatives or slides will have a light source that shines through the slide or negative to the scanning element. The Epson scanners mentioned have a lid with a pad to flatten the object being scanned, but to scan slides or negatives, the pad is removed and a light source in the lid is used.

Also based on my experience with older Epson scanning software and hardware, you have a guide you place on the scanner to position a carrier that holds four slides. You can either scan the slides one by one (preview scan then masking the slide you want copied and copy it) then you can move the mask to the next slide and copy or else if the software provides an automatic mode, you can let the system scan all four slides and save them in individual files.

suterjo Loc: Delaplane, VA

Years ago I bought a Nikon scanner that scans at 4K pixel/inch. It's slow but turns out very high quality images. It has a cartridge that holds about 50 slides that feed automatically. The data feeds into my laptop and I then use PS to do the image maniputation. Works great. I inherited thousands of Kodachrome slides from my mother that I'm still converting to digits but there's a lot of history there that I don't want to lose. 35mm slides convert to about 64Mpixel but with storage so cheap these days, who cares.

suterjo Loc: Delaplane, VA

Just to follow up--the scanner is a Supercoolscan 5000ED. Probably superseded by something of higher quality by now but I'm happy with this one.

Reuss Griffiths Loc: Ravenna, Ohio

I took the easy way out to convert ~ 400 slides to jpeg. I used a company in Texas, www.digmypics.com and was very satisfied with the results. They offer several different levels of scanning (dpi) ranging in price from approx $0.30 to $0.60 per slide. They offer many services including cleaning and color adjusting of your images. I specifically asked them to NOT alter the original images. I never alter original images so I can always go back and rework them. I ended up selecting slides converted for approx $0.35 and was happy with the end results. They were very easy to work with. I would suggest you try a couple of slides at all of the dpi rates and check them out before you commit to the whole batch. I would use them again but am not producing slides these days.

SteveFranz Loc: Durham, NC

Morning Star, my wife has low vision, and also has trouble reading knitting patterns. I did the same thing you did - making scans & reprinting them larger. It was a solution, but with less than ideal results. What I ended up doing was making PDF scans & converting them to text. Then I could highlight "all" and choose a larger font size. My wife now has several 3 ring binders full of large print (24-26 point) knitting patterns.

therwol Loc: USA

I have the Epson V800. It also has two lenses, one for scanning material on the glass bed and one for scanning negatives and slides in the holders that you put on the glass. There are manual focusing adjustments in the holders. You have to do a little trial and error to get the best results. Yes, you can see focus errors. The down side to this scanner is that it will set you back a grand if you buy it new. I've scanned thousands of slides and negatives with the thing, including medium and large format negatives. The ability to scan large format is a plus for anyone who needs it.

But if the OP has only a few hundred slides to do, it might be better to just have them done by someone else unless they actually need a flatbed scanner for general scanning.

David Taylor

Only 400 - pay for the service.

flip1948 Loc: Hamden, CT

Someone just listed a mint condition V600 in the member classifieds for $165 plus shipping with all accessories and software.

rb99 Loc: Ohio

Anybody have any experience with the H & S "Large Screen Slide & Negative Converter" ? With the bulk attachment it is about $225 and with their Guaranteed for Life feature you can send it back for a nominal fee if you don't like it. I had the small screen model, but sent it back.
https://www.hammacher.com/product/large-screen-slide-and-negative-converter?promo=ourfavorites#

suterjo Loc: Delaplane, VA

Years ago, I bought a Nikon Coolscan V. With the cassette that holds about 50 slides and scans at 4K pixels/inch, it does a nice job of converting slides to digital images. Files are large (64MB) per slide. With the storage media costs being as cheap as they are these days, storage costs are a non issue. It takes time but the results are worth it to me. I have produced 16x20 prints from the scanned images and you don't see pixilation. It pays to be selective about the images you scan but if you're careful, it's worth the time.

SteveFranz Loc: Durham, NC

I have been doing exactly the same thing for my wife. We are now getting to the point where I am finding that I have previously downloaded a pattern for her. PDF to text conversions are great! (I'm using Libre Office)