Topic: TSKB: Digitizing old slides

[gewwang]

My dad has a couple thousand slides from the 60s/70s like these:



I am looking for the best way to digitize these so I can archive on HD and DVD as well as make my own hard copies as a 3rd backup using a photo printer. Since many of these are pictures of my family back when I was a kid, I want to do this once and do it right so I'm going to err on the side of quality as opposed to cost-effectiveness.

[neutrino]

Are you looking for suggestions for an online service to do this? Or are you looking for suggestions as to what equipment to buy to do it yourself?

[gewwang]

Definitely looking for suggestions on equipment to buy. I know there's services and equipment around but I'm hoping to see if anyone's got suggestions based on their experiences. Since I'm dealing with such a huge number of slides, it seems like equipment should be cheaper.

[Massive Dynamic]

I asked a similar question in this thread, but I am just now getting around to sorting through my slides. Doing a bit more research, it looks like most photographers recommend getting scans done @ 4,000 dpi and saved as TIFF files. This is approximately 65 MB per scan (though I've read some say their scans were about 105 MB). The going rate from respectable vendors ranges from $0.62-1.89 per slide. Here are a couple sites that I have not used but have seen recommended elsewhere. Do your homework.
http://www.slidescanning.com/
http://www.saugus.net/Photos/scanning.shtml

For the volume you have, buying a scanner and doing it yourself is the advice I've seen given most by other photographers. The Nikon Coolscan models are also the only recommendations I've seen. The Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED is the lowest cost Nikon model, and the 9000 the high end model. Unfortunately, the low-cost Coolscan V ED was recently discontinued. Not sure if ebay is a good place to find a used unit, but used units keep their value well. Buy a scanner new and sell it when your project is done and you'll likely not be out much cash.

Personally, I'm not finding that many slides that I need in a hi-rez format, so I will likely use a vendor for scanning some of my slides. I may settle for high quality jpegs for many of my photos simply to have them in a digital format that I can email to family or post on the web. However, if you only want to do it once and do it right, and have more time than money, learning to do it yourself ensures that you get the scans to look the way you want them to.

[Petrus]

Is worth remembering that the actual resolution of 35mm slides is around 6-12 MPix (with old slides over 8 MPix only with Kodachrome originlas), so there is no real need to go overboard with file sizes. Sharper scans give you only more grain detail, not picture detail. So getting 30 MB TIFFs is enough. Bigger files only eat disk space and are slower to process.

Make sure that the scanner (machine/person) does not sharpen the files, better you do it, as some printing houses use so much sharpening that the pictures look awfull on screen or projected.

[gewwang]

I asked a similar question in this thread, but I am just now getting around to sorting through my slides. Doing a bit more research, it looks like most photographers recommend getting scans done @ 4,000 dpi and saved as TIFF files. This is approximately 65 MB per scan (though I've read some say their scans were about 105 MB). The going rate from respectable vendors ranges from $0.62-1.89 per slide. Here are a couple sites that I have not used but have seen recommended elsewhere. Do your homework.
http://www.slidescanning.com/
http://www.saugus.net/Photos/scanning.shtml

For the volume you have, buying a scanner and doing it yourself is the advice I've seen given most by other photographers. The Nikon Coolscan models are also the only recommendations I've seen. The Nikon Super Coolscan 5000 ED is the lowest cost Nikon model, and the 9000 the high end model. Unfortunately, the low-cost Coolscan V ED was recently discontinued. Not sure if ebay is a good place to find a used unit, but used units keep their value well. Buy a scanner new and sell it when your project is done and you'll likely not be out much cash.

Personally, I'm not finding that many slides that I need in a hi-rez format, so I will likely use a vendor for scanning some of my slides. I may settle for high quality jpegs for many of my photos simply to have them in a digital format that I can email to family or post on the web. However, if you only want to do it once and do it right, and have more time than money, learning to do it yourself ensures that you get the scans to look the way you want them to.

Great advice, thanks for the info. I'll try to locate a used Coolscan and will report back.

Is worth remembering that the actual resolution of 35mm slides is around 6-12 MPix (with old slides over 8 MPix only with Kodachrome originlas), so there is no real need to go overboard with file sizes. Sharper scans give you only more grain detail, not picture detail. So getting 30 MB TIFFs is enough. Bigger files only eat disk space and are slower to process.

Make sure that the scanner (machine/person) does not sharpen the files, better you do it, as some printing houses use so much sharpening that the pictures look awfull on screen or projected.

Yeah, I do remember doing a project on this topic about 20 years ago in an image processing class. The slower process times with big files is a big consideration since I'm never home. I'm probably just going to set my dad up with a scanner and let him work on it on since he's got more free time than me.