CameraDad Loc: Michigan

I took a different approach to digitizing my vast quantity of slides. I set up my slide projector next to my camera on a tripod. I used a remote control with the camera. Used a white board for the projection screen. Don't remember which lens I used but it was close to capturing the projected area of the slide. The room was completely dark. The quality wasn't equal to a scanner; however, it was good enough to view the captured slides and with post processing for some of the better ones, I was happy enough. It was easy enough that I didn't worry about similar or poor quality slides, just captured them all! I completed twelve to fourteen trays in a few days.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I did that 8mm film. I had to buy a projector from eBay.

Steved3604

Basically two choices -- DIY or job out. Then choice of equipment or choice of outsource company. In choice of equipment you can use a flatbed scanner, a dedicated slide scanner (Nikon, etc), a digital camera with correct lens and light source, a digital camera and a slide projector (shoot into projector/easy if slides in trays), and other jury rigged devices. I use a Nikon dedicated slide scanner model 5000 with slide feeder and Vuescan. Another DIY option is to purchase the equipment (usually used/eBay/other) do the job and re-sell the equipment -- with some luck it might be close to a wash on equipment costs and now just your (valuable/not valuable) time. My Nikon IIRC would do about 40-80 slides per hour with the "cleaner IR" on -- or about one per minute -- automated. I just -- once per hour (maybe twice) blew off the slides and stacked into the feeder and removed the finished ones. Sure beats one at a time. The scanner would wait for me if I was late getting the next slides ready. Then I went through and color/density corrected in PS and put in dedicated folders according to subject if not already sorted. Worked well -- any DIY is going to be time consuming.

OldCADuser Loc: Irvine, CA

I use both a Canon CanoScan FS4000US film scanner and an Epson V550 flatbed scanner. The CanoScan is 23 years old and while Canon stopped supporting it years ago, Hamrick Software makes a product called 'VueScan' which supports this as well as many other scanners.

Note that my archive contains over 54,000 images, 4,751 of them were scanned from slides, 5,024 frames of APS and 7,642 from B&W and/or color negatives, most of which were scanned using either the CanoScan or a flatbed scanner (I've had several over the years).

Note that the CanoScan cost me just under a grand in 2000, but it's worked fine over the years despite several changes in my computer platform and having to find software to support it when Canon dropped support about 10 years ago.

plumbbob1

I have a Epson scanner that is great.
But I would never consider scanning more that a few at a time.
ScanCafe has done a better than expected job for me. At a good price.

OldCADuser Loc: Irvine, CA

For those not familiar with the CanoScan or for that matter, any dedicated film scanner, here's what my unit looks like:

317tman Loc: Indianapolis, In

I built a rig that used my camera and a 100mm macro lens. I think the rig was shown by someone on this site. Utube also had examples plus some ideas on a light source. I compared the results with that from a epson 600 flatbed. The camera results were much better and considerably faster.

jldodge

I had many more 35mm slides to scan (both my dad and I were hobbyists in the film era). I purchased a Nikon scanner and started doing the scans on my time. After a while, I realized that the time consumed was pretty enormous due to the "slow" time frame for scanning the photos to a TIF format. I then decided to use a scanning service which I was very happy with as they were the only service that would scan to TIF. Scanners seem to be a thing of the past so I am not sure of the quality of their output. Scanning services, IMHO are the way to go.

ebercovici

I have digitized many slides using my Sony A7R4 with a Nikon adapter, Nikon bellows, Nikon 55mm Micro Nikkor, and Nikon slide copier. With this setup I can control color balance, cropping, and other issues and save it to RAW and JPEG files. This allows for any editing that I wish to do and does not compromise quality control. It is a little more effort.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Please see the attached white paper. It might be more than you need, but will give you an alternative.

Attached file:
(Download)

rleonetti Loc: Portland, Oregon

Thank you to everyone who replied: I will follow up the suggestions.

akamerica

In 2009 I took up the chore of digitizing several bins of 35mm slides. As memory serves I found a slide batch feeder at B&H that stacked ?100 slides. Set the slide scanner for best quality and some recovery processing and had desktop and the scanner run all night. Great success, excess on several mornings a cardboard slide frame jammed the feeder and that was all for that night.

After all sanned, I sold the scanner on-line for something less that I paid for it brand new. Kept the box and all parts and pieces for the best price.

akamerica

In 2009 I took up the chore of digitizing several bins of 35mm slides. As memory serves I found a slide batch feeder at B&H that stacked ?100 slides. Set the slide scanner for best quality and some recovery processing and had desktop and the scanner run all night. Great success, excess on several mornings a cardboard slide frame jammed the feeder and that was all for that night.

After all sanned, I sold the scanner on-line for something less that I paid for it brand new. Kept the box and all parts and pieces for the best price.

Brennon

I used Vuescan to digitize my pictures several years ago, but i had only a couple hundred slides. Most of my pictures were/are on negatives or prints (10,000+). I used Vuescan or the flatbed scanner on my HP printer to scan them. I set up an old laptop, organized my scanning devices and scanned during my spare time. It took months, but since my pictures date back to the 1970's, I figured a few more days would not matter.
I saved them on two separate cloud based archives as well as an external hd locally and several DVDs.

OldCADuser Loc: Irvine, CA

I have three local copies of my archive, plus the cloud. Two of the local copies are on external hard drives, one that goes with me when I travel and one that stays home (and in a safe when we're on the road). The third copy is on a couple of 512 GB memory sticks which never leave the fireproof safe. I also have an old DVD version of the archive, which is now about six month out-of-date, that my son is holding for me in Texas. As I noted earlier, the archive, which contains basically every photo that my wife and I have taken since the mid-60's, now numbers something over 54,000 images.

That doesn't count another couple thousand images in a separate archive, scanned from old family photos and negatives, some going back to the early 1920's, when my father was just a young boy. For example...

This was taken in 1923. That's my grandfather holding my aunt and that's my father, sitting on the running board.