Morry Loc: Palm Springs, CA

Is projecting 35mm slides on a quality screen and then photographing it with a quality camera considered an acceptable way of copying slides.

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

If it works for you then go for it.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Only if you don’t care about quality:

Sharpness and resolution
Color accuracy
Contrast
Plano-parallelism (keystoning)

If your standards are low, maybe you could accept it.

That said, a slide projector with empty slide mount can be a good light source to bounce off a white card, then diffuse for use in a slide macro photography rig.

Most people think an Epson Perfection V600 scanner ($230 or so) does an adequate job of scanning slides.

Morry Loc: Palm Springs, CA

I have a lenticular screen which long ago used to be considered the best type to buy. I could use a white card as suggested. I'm not sure which would be best!

Quixdraw Loc: x

You would be better served by getting a simple copy adapter, like the Nikon ES-1 or ES-2 if you have Nikon or any one of many others that might work with your camera. Scanning works quite well and there are some fairly affordable scanners. I even saw a set up where a camera was set up face to face with the projector - some sort of improvised fitting between the two. If you must photograph a projection - suggest you get a piece of smooth white mat board, set it up absolutely square and plumb, your camera on a tripod trued to match. Even the best projection screens will cause loss of sharpness as previously mentioned.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Lenticular screens have surface patterns that would show up in the reproduction.

Here's my copy setup for slides and negatives:

Mirrorless camera (any decent dSLR or MILC will do)
Macro Lens (a normal focal length range true 1:1 macro lens — 30mm on Micro 4/3, 40mm on APS-C, 55 to 60mm on full frame)
Black baffle between lens and slide or film holder
Film holder (old enlarger film holder or home brew slide holder made from cardboard)
Film holder support
3" air gap
Milk Plexiglas diffuser
Light Source (currently an iPhone 7 Plus with a "white JPEG", maximum brightness, screen set to never sleep, and power supply connected)
DARK work area (to prevent flare off film surface)

See below — These Kodachrome 64 slides from 1978 to 1983 were copied with that rig. View in Download mode at 100% to see the full quality.

(Download)


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BigDaddy Loc: Pittsburgh, PA

I thought of doing this but Burke photo talked me out of it. Instead, I built a simple camera platform and a holder for my slides and used an old cell phone for a light source. This worked quite well.

To do this, I used an extension tube on my lens to get close to the slide, I used a remote shutter release on the camera, I put a white translucent diffuser (got mine off an old single slide previewer), and lastly, I hooked my camera up to my PC, and used an app to preview and make adjustments to the pic before taking the pic. My app was free off the internet, but if you use lightroom, I believe it has this capability built in. I forget what they call it.

This was all pretty easy, took a few tries to perfect, but once done, it goes pretty darn fast. The hard part was editing all those slides. I took all mine in raw, and edited them with Affinity Photo. I key-worded every slide, placed each slide in a carousel that holds 140 slides, and recorded the position number of every slide in the carousel with the number of the carousel in the IPTC metadata using ACDSee catalog app. I figured if I ever needed the original slide I can find it in a jiffy.

Just for an idea, here is a pic of my setup.

(Download)

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

BebuLamar

I use the slide projector without lens and point my DSLR with an enlarging lens and bellow pointing at the slide. I replace the condenser lens of the projector with a piece of translucent plastic to diffuse the light. I wanted to diffuse the light further by putting a piece of white cardboard in front of the mirror that is in the light path from the bulb to the slide. Well after about a minute or so the cardboard is smoking. Oops. So I took it out. It works OK and I can change the slide by advancing the projector so it goes quick. I was afraid that the the slide may not sit exactly at the same place with every frame but it seems not a problem. Now I have to figure out how to reduce the light output. I can find lower wattage lamp (the original lamp is 300W) that fit in the socket but not the same voltage although I can get bulb that has higher color temp closer to 5000K. The bulb that is in the projector now put out about 3200K but when I switch to low power it goes down to about 2800K or so. I can supply the power externally but I still try to find out how to put a power supply inside the projector.

John N Loc: HP14 3QF Stokenchurch, UK

Worth looking at Plustek. I'm in the same situation. A local bloke wants 50p per slide to copy and I've got more than 500 so £250 buys me something I can sell on.

Or I might buy one that someone else is selling on. I've seen a few 2nd hand examplews - it's not the sort of kit you retain once your slides have been copied.

billnikon Loc: Pennsylvania/Ohio/Florida/Maui/Oregon/Vermont

Get a scanner. Easier, faster, better, sharper, nicer, quicker. You will thank me.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/647187-REG/Epson_B11B198011_Perfection_V600_Photo_Scanner.html

cameraf4 Loc: Delaware

For sharing smallish images of family snapshots on the web, Yes. That'll work. But for preserving high quality images, don't even think it.

gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

Get an Epson V600 scanner. Moderate price under $250, great quality.

taxslave

This is my setup. Remove the lens. Remove the reversing lens on the underside. Add 2 pieces of diffusing glass. Use a 100mm macro lens. I did 2000 slides like this with very adequate results. I don’t think I could get a museum quality enlargement from these but I wasn’t going to do that anyway.

BebuLamar

Do you put something in front of the mirror? I put a piece of cardboard there and it smokes after about 1 minutes or so.