convert slides to digital

sorry if been posted before - had a quick scan.........

OK - Dad, has god knows how many slides......... boxes and boxes full form late 60's onwards, so their honeymoon, me little, you name it, all on slides.......

I introduced him to computers last year at 70! and digital cameras - albeit a P&S! don't think I can convery him from his ME super to digital, though the E has been in the cupboard for years.........

anyway I digress,

What I am looking to do (without him knowing) is to somehow convert his slides to digital..... then for xmas give them a digiframe with card in and fully loaded of random slide pics (and some CD's / DVD's of them all)

It must be able to be done, but how?

ANy help / advice appreciated.

Ta


Lynton

Slides can be scanned to make digital files - as simple as that....

However, the process is very, very time consuming. Or very expensive if you get someone else to do it.

So you either buy a slide/negative scanner and spend many hours doing the job, or spend some monet getting someone to do it for you.

Of course before any of that you need to trawl through the slides to find the ones you want to copy....

I have never dared to look up how much is a slide/negative scanner.
JR, can you give some links, which ones might be nice qualiti as well as not a fortune ?

I let couple of old negatives to be scanned. And I surprisingly was not so pleased with the result. Looking close (cloning out the scratches) I found out that the pic was not totally in focus. I could see nicely some parts of the pic ok and some little bit out of focus. It gave me thought, that they couldnt get my film stright (as if it was "in waves")

? ? ?

Keeping film straight is a problem. Slides in a slide mount are always "bowed" so one part will be in focus whilst another is not. When being projected they would often "pop" into a different plane of focus as they warmed up, needing constant refocusing.

Film is also often not straight in the camera. Many designs mean the film is "kinked" where it goes over the guide rails, so the first shot after it has been in ther camera for a while will be less sharp as the "kink" arrives at the film gate. In fact, it took many years before 35mm film cassettes were redesigned to allow the film to exit tangentially - previously film would be kinked by the off axis exit from the cassette. Rollei TLR cameras have an optional glass plate back, where the film is pressed flat against a glass surface.

Film photography is not without its problems. Dust and scratches you are already aware of!

As for film scanners, there are cheap ones suck as the Plustech (is that right?) and the good ones from Minolta and Nikon. Searching the photographic websites will give you the available choices - try Calumet, Jessops, Jacons, Wildings, SRS, Park Cameras and others in the UK.

I have used an OHNAR slide duplicator on many cameras since buying it in the mid seventies, it uses a T2 mount. It works well on my K10d-quick and easy. I believe you can still buy them new and of I have seen them on ebay from time to time. Originally they were used to copy slides to print film, or to correct slight errors like straighten horizons etc.
Simple but effective.

Don't OHNAR slide duplicators result in a cropped image with APS-C sensor cameras?

There is an OHNAR on ebay at the moment with all the bits, just needs a different T2 mount. Currently 99p. Item ref: 170327481631

Virtually all slide copiers designed for 135 film will give a cropped image on a digital camera.

If you are going to copy slides using a scanner, get the best one you can afford, use Hamrick software, and set aside half a lifetime if you've got a lot of slides.

Alternatively, rig up a slide holder and an even light source (or use a copy stand over a light table), and copy the slides using a good macro lens on your DSLR. Cheaper and quicker.

Been there, given up doing that!

http://www.hamrick.com/

G

My way into digital was via a slide scanner. It was a steep learning curve. There's a lot more to do in terms of colour correction and dust and scratch removal. Each film will also have different characteristics and you will need to apply different techniques in whichever image processing software you use.

Although I'm pleased and satisified to see my slides come to life on the screen, the quality is far less than I imagined it would be, digital has come a long way. Still, if quality is not your primary aim, as suggested, there are other ways to copy them, such as flat bed scanners and macro lenses which may be far better for personal use.

I still get a thrill fromm seeing a slide or negative from years ago appear before me but it's going to take me quite a long time to work through my back catalogue and digitise the images I want.

I'm not doing a sales pitch for the BBC Radio Times, but in this weeks edition, there's an offer for a device to transfer 35mm film and slides to digital ( no pc needed ). Don't know if this might do the job , looks interesting, might do want you want.

Most medium to high end flatbed scanners have the option to scan slides and negs. My Epson V500 does a good job and will do 4 mounted slides or up to 12 frames of film strip at a time. If you don't need to tweak them too much that can be quite quick. I also have an older Monolta Dimage III film scanner back in the UK, and there is not much to choose between the two really.

It was my first trial to scan the negatives. I thought it is a MUST to press the film betbeen glasses to make it flat.
Now, before scaning enything I will ask, how they do it. As its not cheap.

But I have started to look at my negatives and old paperprints with totally different view. The quality really gets lost.

One of the reasons to scan some negatives, was the fact of having scratches there. My aim was to get rid of these. So I could make a new paperprint....