slide scanner for Lion X 10.7.3

Im looking for a scanner for my collection of old slides to convert to digital images and I would like some advice about a device that works fine with Lion X 10.7.3
Thanks

josefcarel said:

Im looking for a scanner for my collection of old slides to convert to digital images and I would like some advice about a device that works fine with Lion X 10.7.3
Thanks

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Something you may want to consider instead is having your slides commercially scanned. We somehow misplaced the photos from our wedding, but I still had the negatives, so I went to our local photography shop and had them scanned as high resoloution (6 MB) images. I think the cost for the hi-res scan was about $0.20 each, so unless you contemplate transferring several thousand slides to digital it may be cheaper (and a lot less hassle) to contract the work out.

I just ordered a Epson Perfection V600 over the weekend. I still have a Nikon 35mm SLR camera that I use from time to time. There are a lot better and more expensive scanners out there but they really were not worth the price to me. Once I get it set up I'll let you know what I think.

Here is the link too
Epson Perfection V600 Photo Scanner - Product Information - Epson America, Inc.

Razormac said:

Something you may want to consider instead is having your slides commercially scanned. We somehow misplaced the photos from our wedding, but I still had the negatives, so I went to our local photography shop and had them scanned as high resoloution (6 MB) images. I think the cost for the hi-res scan was about $0.20 each, so unless you contemplate transferring several thousand slides to digital it may be cheaper (and a lot less hassle) to contract the work out.

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I agree, a good slide/film scanner isn't cheap.

Go the Optical Way

I also had a very large collection of slides and tried a range of cheaper scanners with very poor results. Low resolution and VERY contrasty and dark pictures. Not being prepared to spend a fortune for something with a limited lifespan I tried using a projector and photographing the screen. This almost worked once I got the parallax problems sorted but was very slow so I tried a slide copier on my camera.

The first cheapy I bought (Opteka) also copied the slide frame which meant every slide had to be cropped in Photoshop and resolution was lost. Then I tried an OHNAR copier with pretty good results.

On My Nikon D7000 this copier will not copy the edges of the slides (it's DX format, full frame camera would be OK) but that is not big deal as 35 mm film always recorded more than shown in viewfinder anyway but I could move the slide holder around to get the best framing. This produced a much higher resolution picture than any of the computer type copiers which also meant the copier could be used to zoom in if needed without losing quality.

It was easy to put the camera on a tripod facing a good light source and click away but then found an even better way. I installed Nikon Camera Control on my iMac. With this I could connect my camera via USB and do everything from the iMac screen. View the shot, change camera settings, light balance etc. and record directly into an iMac folder.

I guess that once I got everything set up I could copy at about one slide per minute. The results are not as good as it used to be, showing slides with a projector but I think this is partly due to the slides having deteriorated in storage. They are good enough that family have had fun viewing some very old pics that would never have seen the light of day otherwise.