I have about 1000 slides of family and events over the past 40 years. Can they be put on CD's? Is it practical to think of a CD as a future 'photo album'?

I see HP makes a photo/slide scanner. Will this and a CD-RW do the job?

Appreciate any help......Don

-- Don A. Willis (dawillis@juno.com), July 29, 2000

Answers

In answer to your questions: yes, yes and yes. Go to http://www.cix.co.uk/~tsphoto/tech/filmscan/index.htm for a review of film scanners.

-- George Ayer (grayer@home.com), July 29, 2000.

As above the answers are generally yes to all, but you may want to consider the following:

A dedicated film scanner may be a better investment than the HP when you take into account the large quantity of slides that you have, although more expensive the quality is definitely better.

You are likley to have a range of different film types, some of which may not scan particularly well, it would be worth investigating the suitablility of a particular scanner for your films. The reviews on this site are particularly good, or you could try Tony Sleep's site, the link for which was given in the above reply.

Depending on the time you have available you may also want to consider a scanner that has a batch slide feeder, this will then scan a series of slides saving you the time consuming process of manually setting up each scan (although that would give you the best results). I can tell you from first hand that the novelty of scanning a back-catalogue of slides individually soon wears off after the first few hundred.

Many film scanners now also come with "Digital ICE", a means of removing surface defects, dirt, some scratches etc from a scan. Although far from infalible, it will save time on all the post scanning manipulation.

Before buying a scanner i would take a couple of your older slides along with you (preferably an image with a lot of shadows as well as brighter areas - maybe even one that has a scratch or finger prints, as well as a more typical example) & get a sample scan done.

Another site to check out:

www.scantips.com (Wayne Fulton's excellent guide to scanning)

As far as CD's go, they will certainly 'archive' your images in the same way as a photo-album, but as yet they cannot replace the photo- album for the ease of use. (I can't get my older relatives to sit in front of a computer to look at the photos - but put an album in front of them that's a different story)

All the best

Martin

-- Martin Ellis (inca@globalnet.co.uk), July 30, 2000.

The Acer Scanwit is faster and better value than the HP S20. Check it out at:

My Scanwit review

I've no connection with Acer, I just think it's an excellent scanner and unbeatable VFM.

-- "Photoscientia" (photoscientia@photoscientia.co.uk), July 31, 2000.

The Acer looks good, got to find out if my laptop will take a SCSI card. If not, guess it's the S-20.

Thanks for all the help...Don

-- Don A. Willis (dawillis@juno.com), August 01, 2000.