I have nearly 10,000 35mm slides taken over the last 30 plus years which I hope to scan and burn onto CD's. I want reasonable quality but didn't want to make this my life's quest. I don't need professional quality but would like clear images that could viewed on a 19" full screen monitor for family presentation. I've read some reviews and would like to know what you think. If multiple slides are scanned on a flat scanner can they later be viewed singlely in full screen with reasonable clarity? Would a slide/negative scanner be better suited for this job. What is the fastest way to accomplish this with acceptable quality and affordability? Help! Thanks.

-- Bill Roseberry (ironwill@fast.net), August 12, 2000

Answers

Bill Unfortunately you will not find this to be a speedy task! Scanners are pretty uniformly slow, but you definately do not want to go the flat-bed route. You will never get even moderately acceptable results. Take a look at some of the more moderately priced dedicated 35mm film scanners. You will be much more pleased with these results.

http://home.hiwaay.net/~fdeaton

-- fred (fdeaton@hiwaay.net), August 12, 2000.

Hi Bill! I have an identical problem for my collection of about 15,000 slides and even some images in strip form, so welcome to the "frustrated slide preservers club"! I have been kicking this problem around for about 6 or 7 years and have still not found an easy and inexpensive solution. I have tried several times to do a home transfer to video tape, but I have not found a suitable method. Nor have I been satisfied with my results using a digital still camera to copy projected images,either. Even before one tackels the physical transfer--regardless of the method chosen-- the sheer task of sorting and organising the slides is a very intimidating project and requires a large amount of space to spread out the slides and group them. It is a little like film editing the old fashioned way (before digital)when you had to edit,cut,and put in numbered bins, and make a log of all the scenes--all the while wearing white cotton editing gloves!!!

You are probably not (hopefully not!) as disorganized as me; I have most of the slides in unmarked boxes, in no particular order, in office size file transfer boxes and I must,therefore, just start opening them up and laying them out on a light table. An alternative is to put them in my Ektagraphic projector and view/edit them tray by tray, ad infinitum- ad nausem! This will take several months and I just can't seem to get myself started on such a project at my advanced stage of life. I no longer shoot slide or print film; I travel a lot and now take all my images with a digital camera and download them to my hard drive when I get home, burn them on a CD without even editing or "fixing" them. Later, as the spirit moves me, I transfer them all in subject(usually chrnological)order groups to where I can "fix" them up, throw them out, regroup, or"whatever"! Photopoint is completely FREE and provides a great place to indefinitely store the images and to show them to others, although you don't have to share them if you prefer not to do so. Photopoint says "indefinite time limit" but who knows when that could change, thus I feel comfortable having them burned on a CD in case the "indefinite" status were to change. I hope I am not boring you with information you may already have, but I am surprised by the number of people I meet who use computers and cameras but have not been introduced to PhotoPoint or any of at least a dozen other similar free photo sharing sites.

However this still does not solve the problem of how to digitize the original slides. Another approach is to buy a Nikon Coolscan 2000 slide copier and the 50 slide attachment to automatically feed the slides through the process; I am told that it is a great system by some, and that it is not so great by others. What bothers me is that the 50 slide attachment costs about $500 alone and the copier costs about$1500 which is down from about $2000 a year ago. I don't understand why the 50 slide attachment has not also been reduced proportionately! If you belong to camera club where people are going digital, this is a system which could be shared among the members that were interested, and everyone would be ahead of the game. Using a slide copier without an automatic feeder of batches of slides would also be too time consuming; however, a grandchild or a high school kid might be hired to hand feed the slides one at a time; this would still be expensive, but there are good slide copiers that cost much less than the Nikon. Another approach is to send all your slides out to Kodak and have them put on a CD which holds a hundred( they used to have one that held 400, but I have heard that it is discontinued) at "buck" a slide! The quality is superb, but even with a bulk discount,it would cost a small fortune to digitize my collection even if I edited it down to a third of its size(which I probably will)! It would cost more than the complete Nikon system!

Another route which I am considering is to organise them and send them out to one of various places who will transfer them to video tape, which, of course means that you have a linear string of images with its inherent problem of having to do time consuming searches for "that picture of grandma on that old motorcycle at the race track"! Not a good solution, but it might at least save the images from further fading and deteriorating and would store them until there is a reasonably priced system for transfering them to CDs or DVDs, or who knows what in a year or so! I hope that if you come up with a better solution that you will share it with me, as my "teeth seem to be getting longer" each month! Oh how I wish that digital cameras had come along about 25 years sooner! Cheers! Bob

-- Robert Cox (kimcox@fidalgo.net), August 12, 2000.

You have had some thoughtful replies. Certainly a good slide scanner is the way to go to get the maximum resolution. However, if your intention is to view your images on a 19" monitor rather than print them, you don't need that kind of power. You might find a 600 dpi flatbed scanner satisfactory and a 1200 dpi unit such as the Acer 1240UT should be more than adequate. A flatbed scanner will cost much less than a slide scanner and can scan multiple slides. The images can be edited and filed separately using the software supplied.

-- Stan Munger (shmunger@att.net), August 13, 2000.

Having inherited thousands of slides from my grandfather, I was faced with the problem of getting them into my pc. After a fair amount of research (and many a shock at prices asked) I bought an Epson Photo 1200 scanner with the slide/negative backlighter included. It is a tedious job scanning the slides and cropping the frame from every image, but the result (for viewing on monitor only) is very satisfactory. Pictures are shown in thumbnail (passportphoto size), which you can increase to full page view. And with the Presto! software included, it is very easy to sort your pictures into different folders or photoalbums. What I really appreciate is the uncomplicated nature of it all. I will admit, that I have my problems printing the images,as they are not as sharp as I would like them to be. But I am confident to figure that out in the near future. I now look forward to images taken with my new Sony DSC-F505V.

--Mac Reiss

-- Mac Reiss (macattack61@hotmail.com), August 15, 2000.

Bill, there's no easy answer on this one. I bought a HP PhotoSmart scanner, and although it does a good job considering its price (under $500), I'll die of old age trying to get all my slide scanned in.

You might want to consider taking a dual approach. While you're sorting all those slides, take your most prized photos and have them scanned to PhotoCD (between $1 - $2 each), and go with the higher end flatbed scanner for the slides that aren't quite as important to you.

Another option (if you have a Nikon Coolpix 950 or 990 -- or would like to buy one is the Happenstance Slide Copier. It looks simple enough to get other members of your family to join in on the copying duties, and it gives you an excuse to buy a nice digital camera.

Take a look at these reviews:

http://www.dcresource.com/SlideCopier/index.html

http://www.steves-digicams.com/happenstance.html

Regards,

- Craig Cunningham

-- Craig Cunningham (craig.cunningham@excite.com), August 24, 2000.

Hi, I was faced with a similar situation (although a slightly less intimidating number of slides - 4500). I had a Kodak DC260, and had invented the Xtend-a-Lens(tm). A little out of the box thinking and the Xtend-a-Slide(tm)was born...You get a slide copy at nearly the full camera resolution (in the case of the DC260, 1000 dpi), and it takes about 8-10 seconds/slide. Five digital cameras later and a resolution doubling (3.1 Megapixels) on the latest two cameras (Epson 3000z and Kodak 4800) and the quality is getting even better. You can take a look at http://www.photosolve.com Best, Phil Williams http://www.photosolve.com "Xtend your possibilities!"

-- Phil Williams (phil@photosolve.com), August 25, 2000.