I have a lot of old slides with photos of trains that I would like to put on disc. Does anyone know who can do this , or where can I find hardware to make the conversion?

Brian Hebert

As with all things out there in photography and computers, it depends what you're willing to pay for.

Your options include an adapter that lets you shoot a photo of a slide with a digital SLR camera, a flatbed scanner with the resolution and light top necessary to scan slides (I've used an Epson Perfection 4870 with decent results), or a dedicated 35mm slide/negative scanner such as a Nikon Coolpix, PrimeFilm 1800u, and others. Plus the requisite computer.

It's pretty much a case of you get what you pay for. The lower-cost scanners will get your photos up on the web for sharing or preview, but it'll take a higher-quality scanner or lens adapter to get publication-quality acceptable for magazines and the like.

I have thousands of slides that I have produced over the years and no slide projector. However, I do have them all in digital format on my hard drive thanks to Scan Café. You send them the slides and they do high resolution, high quality scans and put them on disks. I stand by their work because I tired doing it myself and what a waste of time and money. Those consumer slide scanners are just no good if you are looking for high quality. I also took my slides to Walmart and they will convert them into digital but again its not as good as Scan Café. I don’t want this to sound like spam but they work well for me and the thousands of slides I have sent them. Scan Café uses scanners that run into the $200,000 range so you the results are going to be better than those $100 consumer types. One word of advice make sure you clean the slides really well before sending them.

I hope this helps and good luck with scanning your collection. I love looking at my old slides on the computer screen now. It is so much easier and I don’t have to touch the slides. The more you handle slides and the more they are exposed to light the shorter their lifespan and the faster they degrade.

Regards,
Pennsy Power

I may have mentioned this before, but if you have a lot of slides to scan check out the Pacific Image PowerSlide 3650 Automated 35mm Slide Scanner $720.

It uses Braun 50 slide Trays and 100 slide reels, so you can load a batch and walk away.

It also will scan landscape and portrait formats.

<http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/430671-REG/Pacific_Image_PS3650_PowerSlide_3650_3600dpi_Automated.html>

I have had mine for almost a year now and have scanned 1000s of slides with most of the problems being the operator (Me).

You need to do some planning before you start.

What are you going to use the scans for?

I scan my slides at 900 dpi, which I convert to a 1024 x ??? x 72 dpi jpg which makes a great video projector image and are about 3 meg. If I need higher quality image I can rescan.

I am also currently scanning a collection for a Historical Society which are 1960s Superslides (35mm x 35mm) at 3600 dpi which is a 80 meg file, these can then be used for print production, but they will end up with lots and lots of DVDs

-Hudson

Thanks for the help. My slides are mostly of the Grand Trunk and B&M. They are just my private collection, but would like to see them on my laptop. I could also show them in a powerpoint slideshow if anyone wanted to see them.

Brian

You might also want to read up on the proper storage of slides - darkness. moderate temperature, controlled humidity, etc. Be sure to save them and properly store them after you make the transfers. There are a number of horror stories of people who converted their 8 mm movies to VHS and threw away the originals - a big mistake. Kodachrome slides that have been properly stored will probably be very viewable more than 50 years from now. Your disks may not be readable then.

-John

You might want to check out this thread as well...

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=31233&hilit=slides