Quixdraw Loc: x

This is one of several methods, and the quickest and easiest one I have found. It is reasonably inexpensive.
These are slides from a decades old trip to England. The equipment -- Nikon DF, M2 Ring, Macro Nikkor P 55 /3.5 AI, and a current Nikon ES 1 slide copying adaptor. Light source an led desklamp. Because the setup is one piece, no tripod is need. Slides can be copied very quickly once you are set up, 90 seconds or so per slide. Perfect result here, no -- just a quick demo. Straight from the camera. There is no lock on the ES - 1, when doing a run, a piece of tape keeps things straight. It was actually designed for one of the current Nikon Macro lenses -- can't recall which one. Believe with the correct lens, you will get less / or no dark border. Can't speak to DX as I gave mine to my daughter.

Formal Garden


Dome of St.Pauls


Phonebooth Shelter


DF slide copy setup


A fast (Amature) edit


Edit 2


Edit 3

djb47 Loc: Lenoir, NC

Looks/Sounds good. Can you share a pix of your setup? Thanks.

Leitz Loc: Solms

The main problem here is the increased contrast, just as when copying onto film. How much shadow detail can be recovered in post processing?

Quixdraw Loc: x

As you know, I am no pp genius. Though I doubt they will equal the projected slide, at least I will have a digital image I can try to manipulate. I believe also, when I spend a bit of money and time getting a better light source, that may help as well. Early days!

Leitz Loc: Solms

If you want to know, on a scale of 1 to 10, my post processing prowess may be as high as -3!
A light box for viewing slides makes a good light source, without the heat of other types of light bulbs.

Quixdraw Loc: x

Don't know if you saw -- I posted 3 edits above -- one I didn't save the cropped version so it has the border. not too bad, I think.

The same lens with M2 $89 on Ebay $59 for the ES 1. I don't think you can get into slide copying any cheaper!

JohnFrim Loc: Somewhere in the Great White North.

I looked into slide copying several years ago, hoping to get my ~15,000 slides onto the computer.

I tried the cheap $100 consumer approach of a small box with <1 MP camera and was not impressed. There have been some improvements in this technology but it is still labor intensive.

I then read about the Nikon Coolscan scanners with all their wonderful features and digital ICE to clean up dust specs. Purists say the Nikon is the ONLY system that can properly handle Kodachromes. I also read that they are still a bit slow, even with the stack loader (that apparently jams up frequently), and they produce huge files. Availability and cost were a showstopper for me on this approach.

I am NOT going to buy yet-another-scanner (Epson V850) just to get slide copying capability… at least not just yet.

So I am leaning toward a similar home-rigged approach.

I have been toying with the idea of modifying my Kodak projector to automate the process of copying slides. I would replace its room heater (the halogen bulb) with a cool LED source and mount my camera where the projector lens goes. I would add a few bits of electronics to trip the shutter at the appropriate time and just set the system up to do a tray automatically. It may require a lot of slide-specific PP to get the best out of each photo, but at least I would get the slides out of their dust covered boxes and onto the computer fairly quickly.

As Voltaire said, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

Quixdraw Loc: x

John -- I don't even know how many slides I have -- quite a few moving boxes full. I purchased a Nikon Super Coolscan 4000ED this last summer used from a reputable local camera shop. I was confident that I would be able to get the proper software and manual on line -- both true. What I did not know was that none of our several computers could be fitted with the requisite firewire card. I paid a small fraction of the original cost of the device. It has both the film and slide adapters. If you are interested, PM me and we can talk about it. What I paid plus shipping.

blackest Loc: Ireland

The only issue i can see is variation in the light source a manual flash might be ideal so each capture is consistent with each other.

It's not so hard with a full frame camera but with a crop sensor older slide copiers will only capture the centre of the frame. I managed to do some adaption with a macro adapter to capture more.

Notorious T.O.D. Loc: Harrisburg, North Carolina

I still think the cheapest method is to project the slide and take a digital image of that projected image. If you don't have a projector then that becomes a bit of an issue though.

Best,
Todd Ferguson
Harrisburg, NC

Quixdraw Loc: x

You have a good eye -- the lamp I used is a three bulb led, and even though there is an translucent plastic shield on the ES - 1, some hot spots might occur. I am looking for some kind of color balanced light box to simply aim the rig at. One of the advantages of this system is the speed and simplicity. In any case, I will be retaining the best slides, so will be able to reprocess in future if desirable.
Thinking about DX -- projecting on a fine grain card, including the entire horizontal aspect of the slide in the photo, then cropping in pp -- should be virtually the whole image, small loss, but acceptable?

JohnFrim Loc: Somewhere in the Great White North.

There could be several downsides to this approach.

First, the "screen" will add grain to the image. Glass bead and lenticular screens would not be very good. Even a flat painted wall might be a problem wrt texture, color tint, uniformity of light intensity across the image, etc. You might need to set this all up in a controlled illumination environment for consistent lighting.

Second, you are relying on the optics of the projector to create the image on the screen… so how much did that projector lens cost? I think it would be better to copy the slide directly with quality macro optics on the camera.

Third, halogen projector bulbs have a relatively short life expectancy, and doing thousands of slides could be quite expensive just in bulbs. Also, if you are really a purist, the color of that light source will change as the bulb ages. LEDs would be better, but I don't know if there are LED bulbs for the old slide projectors.

For the occasional slide-to-digital I think your approach is fine, and it is absolutely cost effective if you already/still have the projector, but it has a few shortcomings for doing large slide collections.

louparker Loc: Scottsdale, AZ

I do the same thing to digitize my almost 50 yr. old Kodachrome slides (from when I was stationed in Europe) with my Pentax DSLR, a 35mm or 55mm Takumar screw mount (with k-mount adapter) prime lens, and a Pentax bellows/slide copier that I bought back in the 60's. For light I use a 13 wt., 6500K CFL bulb (5000K is a little too yellow, 9300K a little too blue) in a drafting light fixture that I can aim in any direction.

I have digitized hundreds of slides that way and, yes, they need a fair amount of tweaking in my editing software program (ACDSeePro), which can be done rather quickly and I have got really good results. I have had several 16x24 matte and canvas prints done from several and they look great, and are very sharp with accurate color -- and I am a perfectionist when it comes to prints, especially prints from color slides.

I haven't tried attaching the camera to my slide projector (a Leica twin lens model with European slide trays) yet but am anxious to see how that compares. As for just photographing a projected image on a screen, as one contributor says he does commented, I cannot believe the quality would come anywhere near close to the direct imaging methods discussed above or by others -- that would be like making a photocopy of a photocopy and you know how crappy that looks.

Carl Kunath

Is your Nikon Super Coolscan 4000 for sale?

Is it complete with the modules for scanning film strips and single cut frames?

What are you thinking for a price?

Thanks,
===Carl

RWR Loc: La Mesa, CA

Actually, what you are seeing is the inevitable increase of contrast when copying slides, whether onto film or a sensor. One can reduce contrast by making a fogging exposure for each slide with film, but I haven't tried this with digital, as it's about as time consuming as scanning.