gvarner Loc: Central Oregon Coast

Epson V600 scanner. Cull the culls. Take your time.

Bison Bud

I get great results from my Epson scanner, but will admit that it is rather time consuming. It takes several minutes to scan 4 slides at a time (the higher the selected resolution the more time it takes) and an earlier poster's advice on cleaning them is great advice or you'll end up scanning them again. Anyway, if you have the time and are a do it yourself kind of guy, then getting a scanner is probably your best choice. If you don't want to spend the time needed, then send them out to someone that will do them for a price. However, if you have a lot of slides the cost of sending them out could far exceed the price of a new scanner. Good luck and good shooting to all.

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

With 20,000 slides using a company to do it would be very expensive. Unless you have deep pockets the best bet is to buy a scanner and do it yourself.

CameraDad Loc: Michigan

I had 10 to 12 trays of slides I wanted to digitize. The final files didn't have to be of the highest quality, just good enough to send to family members. I set up a large white board to project onto and then placed the projector and camera facing the board. I made sure the room was completely dark... learned this was quite important. Copying was fast and easy. For those pictures that were important I edited and was happy with the results. There were some slides that I wanted higher quality, so I simply scanned them in my scanner. Worked for me.

ColonelButler Loc: Niagara-on-the-Lake ON Canada

20000 slides, do the math at 2 minutes each. It would take half a year with the Epson scanner if you worked at it for 7 hrs a day 5 days a week.

Tote1940 Loc: Dallas

I have digitized over 250K slides and larger negatives over last 20 years; from 1920's negatives to slides
First point What do you want to do with scans?
If just a casual way to look at them not intending any enlargements larger than 4x6 any thing will do;If you want to get maximum picture out I think dedicated slide scanner are best at least 2000 dpi; also a good DSLR with macro lens or 50 mm lens and an slide (or negative) holder to copy 1:1 works very well.
Any faded slides (read anything except Kodachrome) Vuescan is fantastic in adjusting, works with most scanners and even with TIFF photos obtained by DSLR as above
If you plan any post processing use TIFF; even in B&W capture in color you have more data to post process
Whatever you do patience and cleaning are most important.
Some of my negatives had multiple fingerprints; with film cleaner and microfiber cloth much improvement.
A Few Kodachromes have fungus little I could do for them.
Names Major problem most of my slides and all negatives had no notes or dates, quite a problem remembering what they are
Scanners I think no flat bed equals a dedicated 35mm film scanner. Best ones I ran into a Minolta 5400 dpi and a canon both now dead
Flat Bed have a huge Microtek that holds slides or negatives below glass, much better than scanning through glass
It is boring, did most of mine on off time between patients; works well with film scanners that can be batch loaded
Tried multiple passes did not help.
Tried commercial all processed the same did not adjust to whether original was light or bright
One more advantage of doing scan yourself you can recrop = select area to scan also adjust light, fading
Some scanners have "dust removal" using infrared channel; works fair; it is not recommended for Kodachrome but in some it helps
Software Nothing beats Vuescan!!
Also have scanned 8mm and Super8 films using a great little frame by frame scanner that allows adjust brightness!!
Total like 4 Tb
Give it a try, doing it yourself also allows naming scans and remembering so many things

JimRPhoto Loc: Raleigh NC

Suggest you take a look at my post of August 28, 2020. You can get to it by tapping or clicking on my user name, which takes you to my sort of home page, and there you can tap on posts and easily find the August 28 post. It is on Lessons Learned copying slides. You are getting other very good advice today, to your question. JimR

JOEharbor

I bought a Epson V550 slide scanner it works Great. It has a plastic cover that you can put 4 slides in a time you can negatives in it too. I have 100ers of slides and negatives they came out Great. Joe Mller

cbtsam Loc: Monkton, MD

Have you got any results with this method you could share?

RKwasi

I have a Nikon Coolscan 5000ED
Excellent scanner, and you can get a multi slide adapter/holder for it.

I took a chance and bought the Pacific Image Powerslide 5000 one day
It's made for volume scanning.
The horizontal trays that it comes with are junk however.

I found a couple circular trays that work with it (had to buy them via eBay from London, they are no longer manufactured)

I'd load one circular tray up with about 100 slides and let it scan. Took about 6-7 hours to do hi res scans of the 100 at it's highest resolution, but it was left alone to its job. I could load up another tray while that 1st one was being scanned to pop in and make it work non-stop.

I bought VueScan software which works very well with either scanner.

I'm toying with the idea of selling the PowerSlide5000, since my large volume of scans is done, and the Nikon can do the smaller batches I still scan.

I had some samples of the highest resolution scans from both units showing the quality difference between the two. The Nikon was a smidge sharper, certainly a pixel peep kinda look-see. I did hear from some that the Pacific Image scanner was soft. I didn't really think so.

I'll try and find those two scans and post the comparison.

Lucian Loc: From Wales, living in Ohio

Does anyone have any experience with Digmypics.com as a scanning/digitizing company?

http://digmypics.com/

Lucian Loc: From Wales, living in Ohio

There are a number of very inexpensive copying companies out of India, which I have heard do good and very cheap work. However, you do of course have to send them to India. If you do send any slides I would not send them all in one shipment in case it got lost or damaged. Send them in multiple shipments.

RKwasi

I have both a Nikon Coolscan 500ED and a Pacific Image Powerslide 5000 scanner.

I use VueScan software on both.

The Nikon is fabulous for small batches.

I got the Pacific Image Powerslide scanner to scan nearly 8000 slides from the early 90's when I was shooting a particular genre and just wanted to archive all the images and get rid of all the actual slides. Worked great BUT the slide tray that comes with the Powerslide is basically junk.

I looked all over for the circular trays that would fit the Powerslide. Finally found some on eBay in London. Using those was fantastic. Once the scanning process started, I never had a single jam which even surprised me after reading all the complaints about jamming. All my slides were in plastic mounts.

At the highest res setting on the Powerslide. it took about 6-7 hours to scan about 100 slides. I would start one tray scanning, and load up the 2nd one so I could swap them out and scan nearly non-stop.


I did a comparison scan of the same image on the Nikon at 4000dpi and the Powerslide at 5000dpi. The Nikon was a smidge sharper in my opinion, but you had to really pixel peep in my opinion. The quality from the Powerslide was more than adequate. I had read people complaining abut it, but I liked the results.

I'll find those comparison scans and post them.

I'm all done with my high volume scanning, and the Nikon Coolscan is fine for my small batches, so I am thinking of selling the Powerslide perhaps...

Hedge neighbor

One thing I didn't see anyone mention is WHY you want to scan the slides. I stopped shooting slide film over 35 years ago but over Easter weekend I felt the urge to see family and since we could not actually be out because of the pandemic I pulled some old family slides. I realized then that some of my slides were deteriorating and that all of them fell into 2 groups. Some that were were of events that I literally don't even remember and have no use to save and others are precious family memories that I want to pass on to the next generation. I already had an Epson Scanner and started that very night and have probably spent an average of about an hour a day since then on my project and have finished maybe between 2,000 and 3,000 slides. Once I got the workflow down to what I wanted I really started enjoying it - a good thing to do in the evening while watching TV. I don't have a working projector so scanning and then viewing on the computer is a good way to actually see what is on the slide. It's easy then to decide which ones to keep and which ones to toss. But a lot of nights I don't even turn on the scanner. Some slides show evidence of color shifts or fading and some were just not the best exposure or composure and I can fix that in my photo editing program with a little color correction work and or cropping. BUT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING is to IDENTIFY the who and what is on the slide and make notes of it. I put that info right in the META data with the scan. I firmly believe that without that information the slides will be worthless to anyone else but hopefully taking the time to provide the life story that goes with the picture will make the scans valuable to the next generation. For me having the chance to re-live all of those memories has been well worth the time I have spent.

David in Dallas Loc: Dallas, Texas, USA

If you have any 127 Superslides (1.625" x 1.625") none of the usual slide scanners will work on them--you'd have to use a flatbed scanner. Some vendors can handle them, but you'd need to make sure first. DigMyPics did say they can scan them (but it costs a little more).

No, I've not sent any to DigMyPics yet.