Papa j Loc: Cary NC

Over the weekend the family emptied my in-laws attic we found hundreds of slides and 16 mm reels of film and a projector. What is the best suggestion to convert these to cds or dvds. Can anyone recommend a process and a company that does that

Thanks
Joe

Floyd Loc: Misplaced Texan in Florence, Alabama

There are a couple that have been on the internet for at least 5 years. They are a bit pricey but to do the transfer takes special equipment. No, I havenot sed them-yet due to the expense.

Papa j Loc: Cary NC

Thanks Floyd I was afraid it would be a costly proposition

Joe

Shellback Loc: North of Cheyenne Bottoms Wetlands - Kansas

My choice is Scan Café - (best price)
A lot of folks use Costco -
and DpsDave is very good...

MDI Mainer

Had the same experience about 2 years ago, with my late father-in-law's collection. When the estimate for digitizing everything came back in five figures, we decided to go thru the original media and select a reasonable sample to preserve in digital form.

While film photographers might not have been quite as profligate as we are today, given the costs of film and processing, there's no escaping from the fact that many images are just not worth the effort of preserving.

Plus we figured that time spent now would actually result in more enjoyment and appreciation of the edited collection in the future.

Papa j Loc: Cary NC

Thanks Dave

Bipod

Be sure to safely store the original slides and reels (in a cool, dry, safe place).
Digital copies are likely to get lost or become unreadable within 5-10 years.

As yourself: how old is the oldest still-readable computer file now in your possession?
And how old is the oldest photograph in your family album?

I've been using computers since the 1970s, and my oldest file is probalby from the
1990s. Most of media I used to store files (1/2 inch tape, 5.25" floppies, VHS tapes,
QIC tapes, Zip drives, Syquest removable hard drives, 3.5" floppies, diigtal linear
cartridge tape, etc) are now unreadable or you can't buy a drive for them.

Magnetic regions on spooled tape bleed through layers (if the tape isn't rewound
regularly), and somtimes the rubber rollers in cartridge tapes turn to goo.

One shouldn't expect that TIFF, GIF, JPEG, PNG etc. image file formats will always be
readable. New vesions may introduce incompatability.

I have data stored inside of tar and cpio and tar archives, and compressed with compress,
zip, pkzip, gzip, etc.

Trying to read old media is real Tower of Babel -- even if the media is still readable and you
can obtain a drive that will read it.

I assume you want these photos to stay in your family for future generations. Digital = disposable.

Photocraig

My first reaction for the still slides is to EDIT first. Most of even the best photographers' work is discardable. Even a well composed bracketed sequence has one BEST photo.

For family photos, try to keep a single event or occasion down to a manageable (think short attention span) number of photos. All the misses in exposure and chopped off heads are easy to identify and discard. Then look for the closed eyes, branches growing from the heads, etc., Out!

Key questions to ask:
Is this the ONLY photo of Aunt Matilda? Then no matter what (if anyone even KNOWS who Aunt Matilda IS) it becomes a keeper.

Is this one worth the 75 Cents (Or whatever the per image) scanning cost?

What will we do with the resulting files? Make a slideshow? Catalog by which criteria?

It is a hard job. BTW: from personal experience, do it sooner than later while there is SOMEBODY who knows or remembers Aunt Matilda, Uncle Harry, etc. I'm now 75 and for most of my old family pictures, if I don't know who those people are, and I don't, nobody knows.

Also, I suggest another experiment. At your next family gathering, break out those slide and gauge the interest in the images. Then propose the scanning and digital preservation of them, with the costs associated. Is there really a difference between a big box full of unviewed prints, slides and movies, and a Terabyte of digital image and video files that go unwatched forever, too.

I think you may find that there are a precious few photos that capture the essence of your family history that will make the project worthwhile. That's my experience. Test yours before you're neck deep in a year long project that, in the end, contributes little to the collective family memory or satisfaction. I sincerely hope that it is different from mine and everybody is really excited so see an actual picture of Aunt Myrtle and Uncle Aloysius sitting in their brand new '57 Chevy BelAir convertible.
C

Papa j Loc: Cary NC

Thank you

J

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I have a dozen or so boxes of slides from my grandparents. I do not plan to convert all of them to digital. While there are certainly family photos that will get converted, their trip to Europe or wherever will probably get disposed of. Most of them have nothing written on the slide and, not having been to all the places they went, I won't know where those places are. And the family didn't go with them so aside from a couple photos of my grandmother taken by my grandfather or vice versa, I don't know any of the people in the photos. The only thing I could do is to digitize those that appear to have value to me or other family members, then offer the rest to the other living members of the family to see if they want them. I would doubt that I would get any takers.

It does mean that I have to run through all the slides to see what they are, but I estimate only a couple percent max will be keepers.

Dbl00buk Loc: Orlando

I recently inherited a box of family photos, after my older brothers' passing. After research for gettng them digitized, I decided to purchase an epson scanner and start doing it myself. Yea, it's going to take awhile but these photos go back as far as WWII and both sides of my family are just about 90% gone. I almost feel somewhat obligated to preserve these shots for my kids and grandkids. I have Mdisc so hopefully I can keep the digitized files for sometime. I guess it all depends on the value you place on old photos.

larryepage Loc: North Texas area

Life seems to run in cycles. While the current generation seems to have no interest in things like old photographs, I'm betting that a future one is going to be much different and be very disappointed in the gaps in their family histories...

mas24 Loc: Southern CA

Actually, it would be too expensive for future interest in them. Your interest in them today, will not be the same for your children/grandchildren. I would do it the least expensive way.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

The best solution would be ScanCafe, provided they are 35mm slides. Large slides cost a lot more to convert. I had over 1,000 slides converted by ScanCafe, and they did an excellent job.

As soon as they scan the slides, you can view them online and eliminate the ones you don't want (up to a certain limit). Eventually, they will send you a CD or a DVD with all your pictures, but first, they will let you download all of them.

Of course, you can do the work yourself, but it is "work," and it can be overly tedious. I doubt you would be able to duplicate the quality of ScanCafe.

GrandmaG Loc: Flat Rock, MI

Twice I’ve been in your shoes. The first time was when my ex-husband passed away, I inherited all his pictures. Since he had pictures of our kids, I knew they would be as important to them as they were to me. I’m a scrapbooker, so I combined his pictures with mine and those my mom had, scanned the best ones, and made scrapbooks out of the original pictures. It took me a year to finish this project. These are the most treasured items in my home.

In addition, I got all the old pictures of his family and slides from Europe when he was stationed in Germany and I was with him. For the slides, I took the best ones to Walgreens and they made some beautiful pictures for me.

I scanned the old pictures and put them on discs for his brother and sister and returned the photos to them. Now his sister is moving from Michigan to California and she has asked me if I can “do something” with her pictures.

I have no idea what a project this will be because I don’t know the size of her collection. I had planned to create a digital scrapbook of the old pictures I previously scanned and I may do that with her pictures as well if a traditional scrapbook is too daunting.

For me and my family, we LIKE the physical display of our pictures. It’s a lot of work; but so rewarding. It’s not for everyone, but that’s what I would do.

I’ve read all the responses and you got some good answers. Good luck in this quest!!

EDIT: I just reread your question and this doesn’t really answer you.