Slides to Digital.

Has anyone got any experience/opinions on the following two systems for getting slides into digital?

-SRB-Griturn.
-Ohnar Digital Slide Duplicator.

Or are there better alternatives I should be considering?

Thanks
Jason

A dedicated negative/slide scanner is the best method. Many flat beds also scan slides.

Every method is very time consuming.

I have an Ohnar Slide Copier, but it will only copy 1:1 on a full frame camera. I don't know if the latest ones have been re-designed to allow for the crop factor on most digital SLRs. IE 1.5 on Pentax.
I have used my Ohnar with my K10d and used the crop factor creatively. I have been pleased with the results. It does increase the contrast though.

The other obvious alternative is to use a Flatbed Scanner with a 35mm Transapency Hood. Most Epson Scanners that have this facility, seem to do a reasonable job. A dedicated Film Scanner is obviously the prefered method, although early ones didn't produce a full range of tones.

I must admit that in my opinion, slides copied to digital do not produce
as good an image as a DSLR.

I agree with that.

I get mine done by the lab at the time of processing and sent to me on CD. Not the cheapest method but I probably only use 4-5 rolls of film a year so cheaper than buying a scanner expressly for the purpose.

I agree that it is extremely difficult but it must be possible. I get "Outdoor Photography" magazine and I don't ever look at a picture and think "that is a scanned slide, it's awful". More often it is, "wow, look at the colours, oh it is Velvia...". I guess it is a combination of a good scanner and someone with masses of experience. I spent a couple of hours the other day trying to get some good scans of slides I took with the ES to post here and gave up in the end. The dynamic range of the slide was greater than the scanner could deal with!

Good scanners are expensive Kris, I'd be inclined to do what hefty does and have the processing lab copy the images to CD.

I've done it with negative film, but not slides, I don't use that medium.

I did get one of these to copy negs. It works with varied results, some OK others bloody awful. Still it was cheap at the time (my son got staff discount!) and has allowed me to copy some older shots from pre-digital days.

Yes it is possible, using medium format film or larger and high-end scanners. Or indeed the sort of drum scanning that (used to be?) done for magazines.

However, the very nature of the film structure from 35mm slides doesn't really give the quality of a top class digital file, but then it is different. Kodachrome is notoriuously difficult to scan well - not really suitable when it comes down to it.

Velvia looks pretty good though!

I have an Acer 'Scanwit' but it's an old thing with a SCSI input, and SCSI doesn't work on my Win XP PC, so I had to purloin the kids' old Dell Optiplex and stick Win ME on it - scanner works a treat, though; great images.

I have used an optical method which works well: Mount your light-box on its edge and make a cardboard mask to allow a slide to sit in it. Using a 12mm extension tube and my 50mm f1.7 lens, I merely slid the camera perpendicular to the lightbox back and forth on the worktop to 'fine-focus' it after setting the focus in the normal way. Use of the self-timer reduces the chance of jarring the camera when firing.

I've used it for copying 6x6 negs as well. Here is an example of one I did and then converted it to a positive in 'Photoshop'. I used a K100d behind the extension tube and 50mm f1.7 M lens.

Incidentally, I was always told never to copy film with the same make of film (don't use Agfa to copy Agfa, for example) if using a camera-mounted slide-copier, as the colour-casts are cumulative.

Another 'Heath-Robinson' method I have used successfully was to place the slide on a light-box, then, using a cut-down toilet-roll set on top of the slide (you'll have to experiment here), I sat my Pentax M 50mm f1.7 lens with the outermost element and skylight filter facing upwards on top of the cut-down toilet roll - a snuggish fit around the bayonet.

I then balanced a C*non Ixus 750 digital P&S set to 'macro' (well, 'Tulip') on top of this lot and used the zoom to frame the slide and the self-timer to fire. The results, I would say, were good.

I have experimented with several lenses, but settled on the 50mm f1.7 simply because other lenses tended to give chromatic aberrations around the fringes of the image. One of those little 'HAMA' slide-viewers that one holds up to the light was nearly as good, though!

This might well work with other digital P&Ss, but you may have to grasp the extended lens if the camera doesn't balance. Lumps of 'Blu-Tak' are handy here...

That's quite an impressive copy - I may well give that a go myself as I've been struggling to copy my 6x6 negs properly (I've got the slide adapter for 35mm on the bellows and it took me long enough to get that set up ).

I have a Plustek 7500i - I bought it to scan my old 35mm negs. It's actually very very good indeed. It cost just over £200

How did you find the experience of using this machine? I have boxes of my Grandads and Dads slides that could do with digitising.

I understand it's a slow process but how good is the image it produces in comparison to a good DSLR image and did you have to do considerable editing work within the computer post scanning?

Cheers!

What film did they use? Old E6 are subject to colour change which may take time in PP. Kodachrome should be fine.

I used to use a Minolta Scan Dual a lot. Results were good as long as the scanner's own image adjustments were not used. Also the resolution needed to be chosen with some care, 905 ppi produced poorer results than 720, 1440 or 2880. (I think those were the figures - some time since I used it). The actual sequence of scanning operations could also effect final quality. The scanning process of four slides or six negatives at a time was slow, especially at higher resolutions.

In general I found the amount of PP needed depended, as you would expect, on the quality of the original but did not take long unless there was a lot of dust to clone out. Dust might be an issue for you if the slides have not been carefully handled and especially if they're in cardboard mounts. In the end I found the most effective way to get rid of dust was to hold a slide by a corner and flick the opposite corner with my middle finger.

Michael

Well this is Kodachrome scanned with a Minolta Dual IV on default settings and no PP, or am I confusing it with a K20d shot?

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