scanning slides to the computer

I wish to scan a few slides into my computer. Is there a simple, it must be simple, method for doing this?
My printer scanner will not do this. What other option are there?

regards Thoramay.

I bought a slide scanner from Maplins. Not too expensive, about £30 I think. Very easy to use. The results are fine for the old slides I was scanning from 1970's holidays. Whether the quality would be good enough for anything more critical I don't know.

You will need a carrier for your scanner in order for it to scan slides. Since you say that your scanner cannot do this, the alternatives are:

1. take the slides to a photographic retailer, such as Jessops, and get them to scan them onto cd/dvd for you, or;

2. if you are talking about vast quantities, and top-notch quality is not too important to you, have a look at the Xennox Photo Scanner:

http://www.clifford-james.co.uk/online.cfm/electrical/zennox-digital-photo-scann...

The blurb doesn't specifically mention slides, but I'm sure their customer service team will be able to confirm one way or the other if it can. As a longer-term investment, you might want to hunt down something similar on Ebay and/or Amazon. I believe Nikon and Plustek are pretty good with this sort of equipment.

I have just invested in a Plustek 7600i running with Silverfast 8 software, but I do plan to scan many slides and negatives.

If you only want a few done, it is probably best to have them done professionally, rather than invest in equipment that won't be used again.

Needless to say that scans of slides taken on a Kodak Instamatic are somehwat different in quality to those taken on a Pentax SLR.

The scanning process cannot compensate for missing IQ

Something to keep in mind with transferring slides or negs to digital is the PP time.

My flatbed scanner (HP G2710) has a small slide carrier in the lid, but I've found that I can simply place them onto the glass, cover with a sheet of white paper and produce either a contact sheet or select each slide for individual scanning.

Limitation is the scanner has a 1200dpi maximum resolution


regards
Bernard

Further thought. I had many years ago a simple metal frame that fitted ito the filter thread and enable a slide to be mounted roughly 2-3inches from the front of the lens. As I recall a extention ring moved the lens forward enabling a photograph of the slide to be taken.

Dated technology, I know, but could be a way of getting them onto a digital camera

regards
Bernard

I have spent some time on the web and there are several models that claim to do a reasonable scan for slides that just need copying for memory purposes. Some scan negatives. Leaning towards taking film pictures again this seems inviting but some of the reviews are not the best. As always, looking at all angles but appreciate the input from you all.

As you only have a few slides to do, a cheaper, and probably better, alternative might be these people.

http://www.mr-scan.co.uk

We went through the same process a couple of years ago and decided that it wasn't worth investing in a scanner because it's a very slow process on any home scanner unless you spend lots and the quality won't be anywhere near as good as a professional job.

We sent some 1960's colour slides to them to test the service which were in pretty poor condition. They scanned them and repaired them before sending them back on CD. They did a very fine job and it only cost a few pounds for half a dozen as far as I remember.

We keep meaning to sort through the rest and send them off, but haven't got around to it.

I can certainly recommend them, but there are bound to be other companies as well.

I can let you have one of the scanned images if that would help, but that won't show the original for comparison.

This is expensive, but a valid alternative if you have a larger number of slides, and it is much more practical than normal scanners:

link

I am planning to rent one of these, as it will be much less expensive then having them scanned by a professional service.

I use a Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED. I scan mostly negatives - I'm about a third of the way through the 10,000 I took from 1984 to 2007.

I can do slides too - if they're 35mm, and it's really only a few you want doing, send em to me, I'll do them for you for nothing except the postage.

If it's more than a few, it would be nice to be able to recoup a little of the grand or so I invested in the kit.

PM me if you're interested.

Chris. What is so frustrating is that our photo club has the Coolscan V 500 ED and it is sitting in my processsing room. My computer has Windows 7 64 bit. Nikon will not support this platform from what I can gather from the Web pages. Can I ask what platform you are using with this scanner?
Thanks for your kind offer. I do have a number of slides that need sorting. Not all are of interest and need scanning.

regards thoramay.

Have you tried running this scanner in COMPATABILITY MODE? It appears to be a relatively old scanner that was suitable for use on computers up to XP. In compatability mode, it should (in theory anyway!) run with XP drivers on your WIN7 rig.

The Nikon scanners work just fine on 32 bit versions of Windows, but not on 64 bit versions. Compatibility Mode was the first thing I tried when I had the same problem, and it doesn't work.

However, it can be done.

One option is to install a virtual machine on your computer, and run 32 bit Windows on it, and install the Nikon software on that.

The other option is a hack that makes it work properly under Win 7 x64, and that's the way I went.

This solution worked very well for me.

However, it refers to the 5000, not the V ED.

However, in that thread there are links to an old Photo.net thread on the same topic, and someone there has achieved much the same thing with the V ED.

Go to page 4 on that thread, and note the post from William LaPree. He got it to work with the V ED with a minor additional hack.

The instructions in the link I used are clearer than the Photo.net ones, but I reckon William LaPree's solution will work for that too.

If you find it a bit overwhelming, I'll send you a hacked file with the relevant line added if you'd like to PM me your email address.

And just in case the suggestion from steven9761 does not work ...

1. I think the Coolscan V has a USB 2 connection. Plug it in, and see if the PC will recognise it as a USB equipment. Now open Photoshop (or the graphics package of your choice) and see if the scanner comes up as an option when you try to [Import] an image. This can get round a lot of compatibility problems.

2. As an alternative, follow this thread:
http://www.nikonians.org/forums/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=198&topic_id=222...
(yes, I know it's a long one), and see if that helps.
Geoff