Need Advice on Digitizing Slides

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mirsky
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Mirsky

Hi. I apologize if this question has been covered here before. My
mother has over 5000 slides, taken by my father over a forty-year
period. My mom wants to digitize the slides. However, she is unsure if
she should buy a scanner to do the job herself or bring the slides to a
photography store and have them do it for her. My mom isn't that savvy
about computers so I'm tending to think that she should let a
professional do the job. However, it might be too expensive to do that.
In any case, I'd appreciate any advice on slide scanners and companies
that will scan the slides. Which do you recommend?

Thanks,

Mirsky
 
Hi. I apologize if this question has been covered here before. My
mother has over 5000 slides, taken by my father over a forty-year
period. My mom wants to digitize the slides. However, she is unsure if
she should buy a scanner to do the job herself or bring the slides to a
photography store and have them do it for her. My mom isn't that savvy
about computers so I'm tending to think that she should let a
professional do the job. However, it might be too expensive to do that.
In any case, I'd appreciate any advice on slide scanners and companies
that will scan the slides. Which do you recommend?
Click to expand...


For starters I'd recommend editing down the slides to
a smaller and more manageable number.

The very least you'll pay anywhere to have these slides
scanned is $1 - $2 apiece, and that's for a cursory scan
with no manual intervention whatsoever.

Start by talking to your local photo lab.

There are scanners for bulk-scanning 35mm slides that
you can buy for under $1000. They work well but they
aren't fast and requre some learning and some attention.

It will take a long time to scan 5000 slides on one of these.

The best of these (or at least, the best-known) is the
Nikon LS-5000, with the optional bulk feeder for
slides.

You also need to consider the memory space and
storage requirements for all those slides - and that
may influence the scan resolution you want to use
for this project.


rafe b
www.terrapinphoto.com
 
I'd appreciate any advice on slide scanners and companies that will scan
the slides. Which do you recommend?
The "which" refers to companies, yes? The online outfit I used for a
couple of batches stopped accepting packages; I feel fortunate I did not
have any product in trust to them at the time. Nevertheless, investigate
the offers in the phone book and online. Scanning is a solitary
monotonous tedious task gazing/glazing in front of the monitor, which when
complete you awaken to the next big steps of: attaching the 5 W's, sorting
into searchable categories, image manipulation for color corrections; all
tasks requiring human memory and human judgment.
Whether D-I-Y or give it to the pro, cull the stacks with a critical eye
for images to carry the story. Five pix of the same Christmas tree may
have been for just bracketing exposures; the kid under the tree struggling
with the tinsel is the human interest shot.
If the slides are in trays they will have to be removed in any event, so
culling the slides is a good reason to run marathon slide shows. Good
luck in finding replacement projector bulbs.
There are few current choices for scanners with batch feeders of the
30-50-100 slide capacities at the naive consumer price point. Nikon is
still supporting its LS-5000 (?) / SF-210 (?) combination. Another brand
model is Braun MultiMag 4000 and 3600, offered thru Adorama and its
importer HPMarketing. Two decades ago I used Braun equipment (not the
coffeemaker people) while I was stationed in Europe, and hope the legacy
endures. The rebadged 3600 for the U.S. market, thru PIE (scanace.com)
does not have the hardware correction options of D-ICE, ROC, GEM that the
German 4000 has, and is priced $750 versus $1250. The concensus in these
threads is tho' several years of Kodachrome have problems with ICE, get it
for all the other emulsions your father may have used.
Regards,
Theo
=======
Pessimists remain morose precisely because they are so right too often.
 
Let me second the advice contained above. Beg, borrow or rent a slide
projector and spend a few evenings culling the 5000 slide collection.
If it is anything like my own, only one in ten shots (max.) are worth
archiving.

Next, and most important of all, when your mother goes throurgh this
collection she should make notes of the who, what, when and where of
each important image. This information should then be attached (by
various means) to the scanned images. This will make the collection
immeasurably more meaningful to any who come to view it later.
 
As everyone else has said, you have to edit the slides. If your mother
is anything like my mother, she will say that it is too much trouble.
There goes a lot of family history. So you will probably have to sit
with her on numerous occasions to get through this. Just remember that
even with bulk loaders etc you are looking at 5+ minutes per slide to
do this job. One in ten is probably a safe number after editing, one in
5 if your mother is really attached. At that point if you are sane you
would pay a pro lab (Imagers in Atlanta will do slides at $.90 each for
multi res scans). These scans are unaided so you do another editing
routine and clean up the ones that mean the most to you.
The Nikon LS5000 is probably the best CCD scanner price performance
wise. The bulk loader doesnt do well with old cardboard slide mounts.
With you can do up to 50 slides, but your computer will have to have a
lot of horse power to do that many. You want to work at 2000-2400ppi so
the scans don't get too big. The other option is an Epson flat bed 4990
or the V700. The latter being newer and a little better, these will do
12 slides at a time. You have to load each slide, instead of stacking
them. So you don't have the slide jamming problems. The quality of the
Nikon will be better, but the Epsons will come close.
Your call

Tom
 
Hi. I apologize if this question has been covered here before. My
mother has over 5000 slides, taken by my father over a forty-year
period. My mom wants to digitize the slides. However, she is unsure if
she should buy a scanner to do the job herself or bring the slides to a
photography store and have them do it for her. My mom isn't that savvy
about computers so I'm tending to think that she should let a
professional do the job. However, it might be too expensive to do that.
In any case, I'd appreciate any advice on slide scanners and companies
that will scan the slides. Which do you recommend?
Click to expand...
There are a number of things to take into consideration when you are
talking about 5000 slides.

http://www.rogerhalstead.com/scanning.htm Should help with a lot of
these questions.

As to the others recommending editing the slides, that becomes on of
those "it all depends".

Few people scanning in the Old Family Slides want to edit anything.
That often makes the chore of scanning those slides a lot more time
consuming. When it comes to a family history I don't edit any slides
out except the ones that are bad. IE, so out of focus you can't
identify who and what's in it, or the obvious misfires of the ground
of someone's shoes.

Every thing is relative. A good slide and film scanner with a bulk
feeder will probably run between $1000 to $1500. Good feeders are
still not fool proof and really do need some one present for the
occasional jam.

Some one said scanning is slow. Scanners such as the Nikon LS 5000ED
will scan an image every 20 seconds IF no other features are used.
Taking advantage of the Infrared cleaning feature will increase that
time to between 30 and 40 seconds. If you add additional stemps it is
easy to put the scan time up to a couple of minutes. I can put 50
slides in the feeder and do other things here in the den while it's
working. I just keep adding slides while the thing is running. I scan
at 4000 dpi with the IR cleaning turned on.

As a side note, Kodachrome slides can sometimes be a real pain in the
back side, particularly if they are in cardboard mounts.

When doing your own rather than sending them in to be scanned gives
more leeway as to editing and rescanning as necessary.

Scanning slides doesn't really require a lot of computer savy, but it
does require learning how to use the scanning hardware and software.
Then comes the image editing and cataloging.

Good Luck,


Thanks,

Mirsky
Click to expand...
Roger
 
Hi. I apologize if this question has been covered here before. My
mother has over 5000 slides, taken by my father over a forty-year
period. My mom wants to digitize the slides. However, she is unsure if
she should buy a scanner to do the job herself or bring the slides to a
photography store and have them do it for her. My mom isn't that savvy
about computers so I'm tending to think that she should let a
professional do the job. However, it might be too expensive to do that.
In any case, I'd appreciate any advice on slide scanners and companies
that will scan the slides. Which do you recommend?
Click to expand...


To add to the task, you're going to need to build a database
to go with the scans. What good are pictures that you can't
find when you want to look at them?
 
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