Jigsaw Loc: New Jersey now living in FL

My ex found a box with some of my stuff in it. There was a box containing slides from when I was a young <sigh> 18 year old Marine. Most of them weathered some fifty years of storage. I new I had to copy most them to pass on to my grandchildren.

I looked at several slide/negative copiers, ranging in price to almosta affordable to Dont-even-bother-to-look-at-the-price. I also talked to several people.

I finally settled for a low-tech Opteka 35mm slide and negative copier.

It attacches to the camera lens on one end. The other end has a portal for a slide/negative carrier.

The result was just short of outstanding.

The negative side of it was that the slide carrier could process only three slides at a time. (This turned out not to be a significant problem.)

So depending on your budget, I would recommed this slide copier. It costs around $55-60 on Amazon.

If you are interested in this one (All slides have been copied so I no longer need it. Contact me at Jigsaw1695@aol.com. The price is highly is $25 plus shipping costs (about $5.00)

Thanks in advance

Phil Bruzzichesi
AKA: Jigsaw1695
Jigsaw1695@aol.com

Papa Joe Loc: Midwest U.S.

I have the Wolverine and am totally satisfied with the results. I scanned over 1,500 slides with it. Good value for the cost.

Unclewiggley Loc: Winter Haven, FL

I bought the Epson V600 refurb and it is great. Got mine for $99 and no tax or shipping charge.

selmslie Loc: Fernandina Beach, FL, USA

That is a much better option than one of the "bargain" scanners that are mostly the same cheap Chinese internals under different covers and which all produce too much contrast.

You can get a refurbished V500 directly from Epson for about the same price and you get a legitimate warranty even though it may not be as long as the new warranty.

DebAnn Loc: Toronto

I bought an Epson Perfection V550 Photo scanner when my old Canon wouldn't work with Windows 8. It did a fine job with negatives and slides.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

Looks like this: http://opteka.com/slidecopier.aspx

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

The scanners from Plustek combined with SilverFast HDR software, are pretty much the best you can buy. For 35mm, the Plustek 8600i and for 35mm and Medium Format, the Plustek 120 are above the rest! Some Flat-bed-scanners are ok, but don't give you near the results of a dedicated film-scanner.

n64uw

I am happy with the Epson Perfection V500 Photo.

KTJohnson Loc: Northern Michigan

As many have suggested, I'd go with an Epson. I have a Perfection V600 and get good results.

Dust on your slides is the biggest problem. Get a good lens cleaning brush & maybe a 1/2 inch, soft art/painter's brush & a bulb air blower to clean them. Use a loupe to inspect them carefully before scanning.

The scanner is also great for scanning all old photos/documents.

This is from a slide taken in 1975, scanned on the V600 & processed in LR5

(Download)

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

I've been using an Epson Perfection 3200 for the last 10-12 years. I'd recommend any Epson scanner that meets your requirements for size of original negative, etc.
--Bob

Racmanaz Loc: Sunny Tucson!

Jerry, the online Epson store has a refurbished V600 on sale for $145 with free ground shipping. I have one of these and it works nicely.

http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/jsp/Product.do?sku=B11B198011-N&ref=sem_us-cse-google-shopping&wm_ctID=475&wm_kwID=58407985&wm_mtID=234&wm_kw=Google+Shopping&utm_source=googleshopping&utm_medium=shopping+portal&utm_term=google+shopping&utm_campaign=us+-+cse+-+google+shopping&zmam=71433176&zmas=1&zmac=1&zmap=B11B198011-N&gclid=CPf8_aT66r4CFY0WMgodQX8AoA&gclsrc=aw.ds

Erik_H Loc: Denham Springs, Louisiana

I just got the Epson Perfection V600 the other day and so far, I'm very happy with the results.

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

I was unable to get Virtual Box to work on Win7 64 bit. I was able to set up a dual boot with Win7 and Fedora Linux, but couldn't get any type of virtual XP machine or XP mode working on Win7 64 bit.

blackest Loc: Ireland

What were you using for the install medium? the answer should be a windows xp cd or a windows xp iso image.

with virtualbox to set up a new machine you run through the "wizard" first it asks you what operating system you will be installing this would be windows xp (probably 32bit) how much ram i think the recommendation is 512meg but you should go up to 1 or 2 gb as long as that is less than half of your actual ram you should be fine. If its a 32 bit version of xp then don't go more than 3gb it can't see it.

next you will be asked what size hard drive you can choose almost any size (its an upper limit) but 20gb is fine for xp just allow it to assign it dynamically. This way it physically is never bigger than it needs to be.
Theres a choice of controller for the hard drive for xp ide/pata is the way to go XP probably won't recognise a sata drive. Thats enough for now you can finish the wizard. You will want to attach a cd drive this can be real or virtual. If you have an iso image of xp use the virtual version if you have an xp install CD tell it to use your physical cd/dvd drive.

now start the machine and it should say press f12 to select boot device. At this point the only bootable disk is your cd so it should boot that automatically after a while the XP installer should start up follow the directions and tell it to install to the blank hard drive.

I guess theres 2 possible problems you might have with XP its an upgrade disk and it wants to see an earlier version of windows or its an oem disk that wants to see particular hardware. You need a full install disk. If you need further help i'll need to know more about where it is going wrong (bare in mind its about 4 am for me and i need some sleep before i go to work).

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

Thanks for the info. I only had an old oem xp disk, so that must have been the problem. I still have a laptop running xp sp2 for some applications. I took the easy way out and replaced whatever hardware/software was needed for my new desktop with win 7 64 bit. I noticed a lot of my previous software wouldn't run on the 64 bit OS. The win7 xp compatibility mode was basically useless. After installing the 64 bit fedora linux on a separate boot partition I found I never really used it, although it had a surprising amount of decent open software to run on it. In the end, chrome and win 7 64 bit applications like the Adobe cs6 pro suite were the way I went, for ease of use and to take advantage of the i7 intel processor and the 10 GB of ram.

Bob