Texukdoc

I have a large collection of Kodachrome slides taken in the Sudan by my father, who was a surgeon, in the 1950s and 1960s. He shot them with a Leica IIIf & IIIg and loaded the cassettes from a bulk loader. He had to store the film in a refrigerator until he returned to England for his annual leave, when they were all developed and mounted. Some years later when he was back in England, and working as a surgeon, he had the hospital photographer remount many of the slides in glass mounts which were considerably thicker than the original cardboard mounts. I have tried to view these in a Kodak Carousel projector and they just will not fit. My question is: does anyone know of a slide scanner [available in USA] that will be able to take these thicker slides? I would like to digitize them. Of note is that he used a Braun Paximat projector which had slide trays which could easily accommodate the thicker slides. The projector has been given away and I believe I may still have access to some of the slide trays. Since the number of slides is large I would prefer to obtain a scanner which will automatically scan a tray full of slides without having to place each slide individually in the scanner. Incidentally, I believe he had either an f0.9 or 1.0 lens!

Stardust Loc: Central Illinois

Gave way more info than needed - I realize people use this forum to tell their stories as much as ask questions - but there is a Braun Paximat projector (and trays if needed) on Amazon for $109. That is where I would start.

Then just project them, shoot a digital shot and do with as you wish. With PP you can increase saturation, sharpen, etc. I did this with Kodak protector and key shots are now better than originals. Beats individual scans.

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

The Epson V600 Photo scanner will easily accept your glass mount slides, and do a wonderful job of digitizing them.

Bobspez Loc: Southern NJ, USA

I second the suggestion of projecting the slides with a used Paximat projector and screen and shooting them with a camera on a tripod. I would also use a remote shutter release on the camera. Most flatbed scanners would only scan 4 slides at a time and it would probably take at least a half minute to a minute per slide slide depending on the resolution you set. With a projector and camera with a remote shutter release you could probably shoot 30 slides a minute.

Corsica fox

Can someone help an old codger understand the setup for digitalizing slides with a camera. If you're projecting them on a screen where's the camera not going to cast a shadow. At this age (80+) it's enough that I can get the newspaper.

rmm0605 Loc: Atlanta GA

The better Epson 700-800 series scanners can do the job.

JimKing Loc: Salisbury, Maryland USA

Kodak Carousel projectors have two different slide trays. One version holds 80 slides and the other 120. If you tried the 120 version you may be successful with the 80 which has thicker slots.

Stardust Loc: Central Illinois

When I did it I set my camera on a tripod right behind & barely above the projector - no shadows. I projected image relatively close, maybe 2 ft wide versus filling my 5' wide screen - sharper that way. (a matt poster board probably would work if necessary) I used an 80 or 120mm lens the first time - don't remember - but my good zoom lens the last time I did it. Hope this helps.

Did not use at time but someone else suggested a remote trigger in another post. With that you could duplicate a tray in minutes versus 1-2 minutes per slide in a scanner. An old cougar in-training.

DaveyDitzer Loc: Western PA

I have successfully used an 80 slide tray on a Kodak carousel projector for glass slides.

Corsica fox

Thanks for the camera set up idea, sounds good and I really appreciate it.

rcl285

If you go with projection onto a screen and photographing the with your camera, don’t use your old projection screen. Use a piece of foamcore instead, which is a 1/4 inch piece of foam covered with a white paper. It os available in sheets about 2 by 3 foot sheets. No texture was evident in the results. The camera, a Canon T6i with a 18-135 zoom, was on a tripod with a remote release and the projector was along side to minimize any parallax distortion. I tried using my old glass beaded screen and a newer solver screen and the texture of the screen was very evident in the photos. The only problem I had was that I used to take slides with both landscape and portrait orientations. My solution was to go through a cartridge of 150 slides and photograph the landscape versions first and then reorient the camera and catch all the portrait versions. My projector is a LaBelle that handled the slides stacked in a vertical tube. To do a 150 slide tube took less than 5 minutes. The worst part of the “two pass” process was that the resulting images were out of order, with all the landscape shots first and then the portrait ones next. I did a number of test shots and found that the bear results were in manual mode at f-11

aquadiver Loc: Planet Earth

One solution to to landscape/portrait orientation would be to put all the slides in the carousel with the same orientation. It will be easier, I think, to rotate the image back to proper orientation in LR or PS or whatever you're using. Since I have slide shows in carousels in the order I made decades ago, I'd want to keep that order.

Corsica fox

Thanks, rcl285, I like the foam board idea. Appreciate your thoughts.

rcl285

Yes, it would be preferable to maintain the original order, but the downside is that you will have to set the field of view in the camera large enough to cover both formats. When your camera is in the landscape orientation, a portrait slide will only use 44% of the available camera pixels. At the same field of view, a landscape slide also uses the same 44%,unless you are willing to change the camera zoom. If you have pixels to burn, it might be a reasonable compromise. I think that you are only going to view the results on a computer screen it might be ok.

Paladin48 Loc: Orlando