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Scanning slides for Powerpoint?

OldTaffy
Posted 20/01/2013 - 14:58 Link
I know nothing about Powerpoint; I don't even know what resolution, in pixels, is usual for a good projector, so I can't guess what spec a 35mm slide scanner would need in order to produce optimum sharpness in a digital image.

What quality of scanner would I need? I know that the pros use slide scanners costing ca £2000. What price should I be looking at?

My wife has a huge library of 35mm transparencies, mostly Kodachrome, which she used to use when lecturing on maritime arts and crafts. She has been booked to lecture at a major maritime museum that is so modern that they don't think that a 35mm slide projector can be made available. All illustrations will have to come via a Powerpoint projector. We know that she could have slides scanned by commercial organisations, but given her habit of changing her mind at the last minute, and deciding that she needs another image by tomorrow, it is tempting to think of buying a suitable scanner, if it would not be too expensive.

Any advice, please?

Martin
A few of my photographs in flickr.
Lizars 1910 "Challenge" quarter-plate camera; and some more recent stuff.
johnriley
Posted 20/01/2013 - 15:10 Link
For the purposes of Powerpoint then images of a modest 1000 pixels on the longest side will be quite big enough.

There are some quite cheap 35mm slide scanners on the market for £60 - £100 that will do the job well enough for this. Look on eBay and you'll find lots of similar scanners under different names. They do 110 and 35mm film and the better model has a small flip up LCD screen as well.
Best regards, John
Terry1100
Posted 20/01/2013 - 15:12 Link
The easiest (and certainly cheapest) way to get slides into a digital format is to use a slide copier attachment.

Either:

link
I have this one and it works well

or

http://www.srb-griturn.com/slide-copier-1575-p.asp

If you look at SRB's website, there are a couple of other choices including one that can be used on (some) compacts
Terry
London, England
K-30, Optio Z10, Optio S5i, LS465, Nikon P7100
grahamwalton
Posted 20/01/2013 - 18:48 Link
Be aware that many Slide Copying attachments where made for Full Frame 35 mm Film Cameras. These will produce a cropped image on an APSC Digital Camera.

Some of the cheap, so called Film Scanners, are in fact cheap Digital Cameras. A version I bought from Aldi produces terrible copies.

Quite a few Flatbed Scanners have Film Scanning hoods built into them. I have had Epson Flatbed Scanners that have done a good scanning, on sldes and negatives.
Friendly Regards
Graham
Gamka
Posted 21/01/2013 - 10:11 - Helpful Comment Link
Use a real scanner and the best resolution you can obtain from it, hopefully 2400dpi in both X & Y directions.

Convert it to a High/Max quality JPG whilst retaining the resolution.

I have seen presentations where the resolution was too low, 600 and 1200 dpi and when projected they look awful and unreadable.
OldTaffy
Posted 21/01/2013 - 14:15 Link
johnriley wrote:
For the purposes of Powerpoint then images of a modest 1000 pixels on the longest side will be quite big enough.

That is pretty dismal, compared to a good Kodachrome transparency taken with our old Spotmatics. No wonder that most of the Powerpoint presentations that I have seen have looked so fuzzy! My wife used to like to have me in charge of the slide projector when she was lecturing and showing maritime art slides. I sat there with binoculars, so that I could trim the focus a bit when she wanted to draw attention to some little detail on the picture.

Thanks to all of you for your helpful comments. What a nice forum! At present I am looking at the Plustek OpticFilm scanners. A new 8200i SE seems more than adequate, but is rather pricey at about £244 new. A slightly older version that will run on Windows XP, but not Windows 7/8, is likely to be adequate and quite affordable on TheBay.

A colleague recently grumbled that his very expensive Nikon scanner will no longer work on Windows 7, and he has had to buy back, secondhand, an older computer with XP, just to be able to go on scanning a large collection of medical slides.

Martin
A few of my photographs in flickr.
Lizars 1910 "Challenge" quarter-plate camera; and some more recent stuff.
johnriley
Posted 21/01/2013 - 14:28 Link
Actually it isn't so bad - images used on ePHOTOzine at 1000 pixels look absolutely fine when projected by a digital projector. I suspect that the Powerpoints you have seen have just not been prepared properly.

If you are used to using Powerpoint, fair enough, but if not you might consider using Pictures2Exe instead. This program makes slide shows. So what I do is make my images in Photoshop and if text is needed then that can be made in Photoshop as well. If you are copying 35mm slides then the JPEG scans can be dragged and dropped into P2E. You might tweak them first for the best results.

There's no reason though why you can't use 2000 pixel images if you want to, although make them too large and it just slows the computer and can make the slide transitions a bit rough.
Best regards, John
OldTaffy
Posted 21/01/2013 - 14:43 Link
Thanks, John. That's worth knowing.

Martin
A few of my photographs in flickr.
Lizars 1910 "Challenge" quarter-plate camera; and some more recent stuff.
DpsDave
Posted 23/01/2013 - 18:37 Link
Unfortunately, getting good digital image quality from a slide involves much more than scanning. For more information, I've written this article:
link

link

Regards,
Dave Orr
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