Transferring 35mm slides to digital

I have a lot of slides in 35mm, not to mention I am in possession of my late father's collection of slides, probably numbering in the thousands.

It would sure be nice to see slides I haven't seen in 40 years, and share them with the fam.

What device would give good results?

I'm not going to go into equipment, as a web search will get you some answers, but I don't know how much time you have available but scanning and digitizing those old slide yourself can be a formidable time consuming task, and doing any repairs and color correcting adds to that time.

With that in mind, I'd strongly suggest looking into some of the slide scanning services available to you.

It may sound expensive at first but so is your time, and some of those photos are probably close to being priceless.

Just saying…and a suggestion…

In addition, the slide-scanning services will be able to better preserve older slides, and have access to higher-quality scanners and cleanup equipment than you do. If you can find a service that will do it for less than $1/slide, IMO that's the tipping point for having them do it.

A few years ago I wanted to reduce the space that the boxes of slides took up. Some of them were curling badly in their cardboard mounts.
I set up the old projector and the screen in the small bedroom with the curtains drawn. The two were only about 7 feet apart but I got a nice bright, sharp image on the screen after waiting for the slide to 'pop'. I set up my everyday digital camera on a solid stand,more or less in line with the beam i.e. square with the screen, then I took a photo every time my wife brought up a fresh slide up.
We had to pause when the camera battery needed charging. I guess that we copied about 20 x 36-slide cartridges at a sitting before we got tired of it.
The colours in the slides had faded badly particularly in the Perutz film that I used occasionally in the 1960s. I think Kodachrome survived unchanged but Ilford ones didn't.
Anyway, whether the colours are now good or bad, it is good to get them into a better storage system.
Good luck.

pm-r is right about how time consuming this can be. I had an HP slide scanner years ago because when I first started teaching I took a ton of slide pictures. As the years went on and we entered the digital world, I decided to have my students start scanning them into the computer. I had plenty of free labor and it took hours to do over 1,000 slides. But if you want to you can get a scanner that will do the job:

Pacific Image ImageBox 9MP Standalone Scanner IMAGEBOX 9MP ST

This is just an idea of what I am talking about but it is nothing fancy.

Lisa

dotdotdot said:

I have a lot of slides in 35mm, not to mention I am in possession of my late father's collection of slides, probably numbering in the thousands.

It would sure be nice to see slides I haven't seen in 40 years, and share them with the fam.

What device would give good results?

Click to expand...

Hello - I've not read through the other posts closely, but had the same challenge several years ago when deciding what to do w/ thousands of 35 mm slides (and a lot of family photos) - I bought a good Canon scanner w/ a transparency adapter for the slides (this is a must) - BUT my first suggestion is to try to preview the slides before scanning and really be brutal in throwing away what you feel is not needed - I probably discarded 80% of my slides & photos - just how many of these old (and often lousy slides) images does one or family need to see - many few than you will suspect?

ONCE you have 'down sized' your collection, then the job will be much easier - depending on your scanner, many options will likely exist to alter how the slides/photos are scanned (e.g. elimination of defects, etc.) - good luck! Dave