Slides & Negatives to Digital

[Ed Grella]

Hello,
I have many, many slides and negatives that I would like to convert over to digital. What procedure works the best for you? What brands, model# do you recommend?

Thanks, Ed

[John Chardine]

Ed- This is a very time-consuming process and can be "contracted out" but if you have the time, I believe that Nikon Coolscans are the best out there. One problem you will face is with dynamic range- from film to a digital scan you will lose some. We have a Coolscan 9000 ED at work and it functions quite well. It has a batch mode that does 6 slides at once but I find one gets the best results if each scan is customised. This takes time! I would recommend being ruthless about what you actually scan. This will reduce your up-front investment.

[Alfred Forns]

Fully agree with John. Would get one of the Coolscans, I used to have one with a 50 slide try but best to take your time. Never did well with multiple scans.

John's recommendation on being ruthless is about as good as it gets. Have you unit calibrated ...btw depending on how many you are taking about sending them out is an option.

[Ed Cordes]

I have thought about this as well. However, the time and cost seems overwhelming for the return. Some day I will scan only the best. and see what happens.

[Michael Pancier]

I read about this service, I'll see if I can find it, you mail them all your slides, they post the scans online. You buy the ones you like and they return everything back to you.

[Ed Grella]

Thanks for all of your input. I will look into sending out the best of my slides and negatives. Instead of investing into a scanner, my more urgent need is a quality lens or two.

[Roger Williams]

Perhaps the answer depends on the intended use of the digitized images and the desired quality. I have well over a thousand slides of family memories - births, deaths, vacations and the like that I wish to digitize for my children. Went on line this past week and googled "digitizing 35mm slides" and found a thread entitled, "Tim's Home Page" for digitizing images or something like that. This site is only for those wanting to memorialize images without being obsessed about quality, but does present a number of interesting techniques. On about page 5 or 6 of the site, there is a PDF file of a gizmo developed by a Clive Wright which I might try. Depending on your needs, you might want to give it a look.

roger

[Joseph Martines]

One of the problems with the Nikon automated scanner is that some slides have rounded corners and some have square corners. Other slides may be slightly warped. These conditions pose a problem for the automator. The automator becomes jammed.

Be judicious about what you really want to keep and pay a service to do the work.