Viewing 35mm Slides

I am just wondering what everyone does about viewing 35mm slides (for those of you who have them) :

I spent part of the afternoon recovering some of my 35mm slide collection from long term storage, with a view to scanning some of them.

My slide projector died many years ago and I just have a basic Agfa slide viewer, so I thought I would look online at the modern versions of projectors and viewers.

I was really surprised to find that hardly anybody makes projectors and the slide viewers are incredibly basic.

I thought that somebody must by now be making projectors and slide viewers with an LED light source and other upgraded features, but no

Try a copier to SD card device. It`s also possible to view negatives as well with an adaptor. I bought a used one from LCE for £50 and it`s quite good. Show them on the PC monitor or TV, easier than a projector and screen.

Thanks for the suggestion.

However I am not looking to 'copy' them, I just want to view them using something slightly more modern than my existing slide viewer and will then decide which are worthy of being scanned

I could use a lightbox, but you don't get any magnification.

For quick viewing, a hand held viewer that magnifies the image, using any light source it is pointed at.

I gave up looking at slides a long time ago, there are just too many....

However, I may revisit them at some point and they may be in better viewing condition than my archived digital files on CD.

You could well be right.

I had a look at some of mine taken on my KX all those years ago and they are still in perfect condition, regardless of whther they are in their original cardboard / plastic mounts or are glass mounted

I still have my old rollei projector, and it is really nice to see large kodachrome images.
Why not buy a replacement projector from ebay? They go for fairly low prices...

Just before I went digital I bought a Braun Novomat with a pop up screen, the image is displayed on the screen via a mirror which you pop up in front of the lens (a bit like back projection) it gives a really bright image about 8inches across IIRC.

Saves messing about with a projector screen and you can use the projectors single slide facility or simply run through a magazine full.

I would imagine the biggest problem with any slide projector now would be obtaining spare bulbs, I made sure I got a spare for mine

EDIT: typo

Thanks for the suggestions - alun and fatspider.

Reflecta still make projectors and one of their models has a screen + mirror as fatspider describes, although the screen is portrait, so landscape format slides would appear quite a bit smaller than portrait format ones.

I might look on ebay, although I am allergic to it

How would that be, John?

There is a point that scanners continue to get better whereas the slides remain at the same quality.

What I mean is if you used the very best scanner you could find 10 years ago the quality would probably not be that good so the slide would always be much higher quality.

If you were to re-scan now using a high quality scanner the improvement would be very significant.

I have just checked and you can still buy this model, so I shall give that some serious consideration.

Have you considered a second hand projector. They pop up in 2nd hand shops ocasionally, as do std 8 and super 8 projectors. I think the lamps are still available

Bernard

Because CDs deteriorate and I don't have the inclination to keep re-archiving old forgotten images. And because even file types and formats move on, so sourcing the means to read them may be hard to come by say 50 years from now. For someone else, presumably not me by then.

Remember Philips Video tape formats, betamax, 5.25" floppy disks, 3.5" floppy disks, LaserDisc.......

You could always load the landscape format slides into the magazine on their sides so they display in portrait, it would give your neck some exercise if you mixed them with portrait format too too

I use a Summit Photofix copier. Ok, I know it's not as quick as a viewer, but it saves double handling.

I load the slides (only three at a time/slide carrier) then quickly scan them - around 5 secs per slide, before reviewing in Photoshop. Those I don't want to keep go in the bin and the corresponding file is deleted.

The reason I do this is simply because I've found that the slide viewer just doesnt have the inherent quality to allow me to 'vet' the slide properly, and although this might seem a longer process overall I find there is a time saving through only handling the slides once.