[stevebrot]

Thanks for the pointer. The price looks reasonable. But it looks like they are only offering 10MP quality per slide, ie. 3000 dpi. That seems rather low. When he was alive, I remember my father using slide scanner and manually scanning a few slides at closer to 9600 dpi with his Epson scanner, which she still has, but she doesn't have time to scan at all.

I believe that higher resolutions are available at a different price point. Edit: Yes, they offer 4000 dpi (~21 Mpx) for an additional $0.14 per slide.

As for scan resolution, I have a fair amount of experience with slide and negative scanning and am fairly confident that few, if any, of the color slides in most photographer's collections would benefit from scans at higher than 4000 dpi (~21 Mpx). Drum and Flextight scans are available at up to 8000 dpi, but the price is prohibitive for bulk work. As for 9600 dpi on an Epson...that may be the claim on the box, but the real world limit for flat-bed scanners is about 2300 dpi.*

As noted above, availability of so-called Digital ICE for scratch/dust mitigation is a big thing. Even bigger might be the ability to accurately reproduce a Kodachrome slide. Most scanners have trouble there and the same is probably true of a dSLR. (Never actually tried since I lack the setup and have two film scanners.)

Interesting, I have two duplicators (with bellows) neither of which will scan the full picture when mounted on a APSC cam, on the K-1 however they will. Maybe it is a lens issue but I have used every lens I thought were suitable without success.

It is a bellows/duplicator issue. The full explanation is quite involved, but the problem with APS-C is the ability to manage 1:1.5 reproduction ratio with working distance appropriate for most slide duplicators.


Steve

* The matter of scanner resolution claims is the dirty secret of the scanner industry. Very few scanners are able to deliver the advertised numbers when scans are done using a standardized resolution target. While the detector may be up to the task, the optical path is generally not. I did a study a few years back (posted on this site) between my Epson V700 and Nikon 5000 ED and was able to demonstrate the limits of the Epson by comparison to the Nikon.

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Last edited by stevebrot; 02-13-2017 at 10:06 AM.

[gaweidert]

A friend of mine does it with an old Canon DSLR with a 6MP sensor. It tethers nicely to Lightroom and he can do hundreds in an hour. He has the camera on a small copy table with a light table. Works great.

[sibyrnes]

I have been doing some slide converting with my K1. I'm using a Vivitar Series 1 105mm Macro Lens with a Nikon ES-1 slide holder with 52mm extension tubes. Lighting is provided by a Vivitar 283 flash unit on a stand. Here's an example originally shot with my 400mm f5.6 on Fuji Velvia:

[arnold]

Yes, this. It depends both what lens you use and how far you stand the lens off from the slide/neg. I know I need to put a couple of 49mm filters into the path between my DA35/2.8 Limited Macro and the slide copier attachment, but I'll be ordering a couple of glassless rings soon that ought to solve that problem.

I just removed the glass from some old filters. Three were enough for correcting the distance distance to include just a bit of the cardboard, which I later cropped out, knowing I had the whole slide.

[lithedreamer]

Yes, this. It depends both what lens you use and how far you stand the lens off from the slide/neg. I know I need to put a couple of 49mm filters into the path between my DA35/2.8 Limited Macro and the slide copier attachment, but I'll be ordering a couple of glassless rings soon that ought to solve that problem.

You can also just buy a single spacer ring. That's what I did with my 31 Limited.

[peterh337]

I had 10,000 slides.
When I decided to scan them in, I went through them and ended up with 5,000
I then got commercial quotes, which ranged from 50p to £10 (or $10 if you like)!
So I bought a Nikon slide scanner for about £1500. This included a 50-slide bulk feeder and that makes a massive difference. You really do not want to manually feed in a few k slides.
Then, 2-3 years later and not having found any other use for it (e.g. scanning slides for the neighbourhood) I sold the scanner on Ebay for £500.

I scanned them to TIFFs, 5000dpi, each about 80MB in size, and then batch converted them in photoshop into jpegs of about 5MB. The scanner could do jpegs but photoshop does much better ones.

The process makes you realise how bad film was. On Kodachrome 64 you can see the grain easily



ISO 400 film was much worse. I finished my film days with Provia 100 which was hardly better

[stevebrot]

I had 10,000 slides.
When I decided to scan them in, I went through them and ended up with 5,000
I then got commercial quotes, which ranged from 50p to £10 (or $10 if you like)!
So I bought a Nikon slide scanner for about £1500. This included a 50-slide bulk feeder and that makes a massive difference. You really do not want to manually feed in a few k slides.
Then, 2-3 years later and not having found any other use for it (e.g. scanning slides for the neighbourhood) I sold the scanner on Ebay for £500.

I scanned them to TIFFs, 5000dpi, each about 80MB in size, and then batch converted them in photoshop into jpegs of about 5MB. The scanner could do jpegs but photoshop does much better ones.

The process makes you realise how bad film was. On Kodachrome 64 you can see the grain easily



ISO 400 film was much worse. I finished my film days with Provia 100 which was hardly better

Nikon quit making scanners a few years back and current demand is such that £500 with the stack-loader would be considered a bargain today.

Your comments regarding "how bad film was" are pertinent and worth further discussion. I am addicted to bullet points, mostly because they excuse me from crafting a series of well-made paragraphs, so here we go with another list:

• The image quality of most archived slides sort of sucks and it is not purely the fault of the medium
• Depending on how one slices the MTF numbers, emulsions such as Kodachrome are capable of impressively high resolution and image fidelity, though in actual practice that potential is almost never realized
• Even the best scans are not a faithful reproduction of the optical image projected from the negative or slide
• The "grain" recorded on a scan is not a reproduction of the film grain. This is a common misconception. The actual film grain (grain clumps) is usually much finer when viewed directly under magnification. What is recorded as grain is traceable to the actual grain, but is an artifact of sampling during the scan. The terminology varies, but what shows on the scan are actually interference/diffraction patterns. Welcome to Wonderland.
• Detail capture in a scan usually happens despite the recorded granularity. This is not particularly intuitive, but is easy enough to demonstrate when the scanned image is a resolution chart or a highly detailed subject. As an aside, direct digital captures at full resolution have "constructed" edges and smoothing. This is easily demonstrated by comparing a digital capture of a printed resolution test target to the target itself viewed under a microscope. Oops!
• Related to the point above, Kodachrome is virtually grainless when viewed under a microscope. Fineness of grain and ability to capture detail are quite separate things, but I figured I would just toss that observation in for kicks.
• As noted above, most archived slides suck when scanned. That is because most suffer from missed focus, camera motion, subject motion, and/or poor quality optics. Those faults are seldom noticed when projected or when doing moderate enlargements since neither challenges the medium to the same extent as even a 4000 dpi scan. That scan when viewed at full resolution is roughly equivalent to a 20"x30" print viewed closely with magnification.
• Time is not kind to some films, regardless of reputation. Degradation affects both color fidelity and sharpness.
• FWIW, I regularly see details in scans of my landscape slides that I never noticed when projected. Most surprising for me was a tent and several people walking around the edge of a glacier a mile and a half or so distant from the camera in one of my mountain shots.

BTW...Your note regarding 2-3 years to accomplish the task is a strong testament to the value of selective sampling from the archive and/or paying someone else to do the work!


Steve

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Last edited by stevebrot; 02-16-2017 at 08:19 PM.

[sibyrnes]

I have to say, I'm starting to realize that many of my slides were not as sharp as I thought they were!

[arnold]

I have to say, I'm starting to realize that many of my slides were not as sharp as I thought they were!

My experience is the opposite. How good a 56 year old slide still looks. Here is Kodachrome in 1961, scanned at 2400dpi on my Canon 9000F scanner. It depends on the original being good.
[IMG][/IMG]

[peterh337]

To clarify a couple of points:

1) it took me a week or so to scan all 5000 slides - because I was able to load 50 at a time and let it get on with it

2) Kodachrome 25 was virtually grainless, but I could not find any slide scans which I could be sure were of this film - because it is almost impossible to use without a tripod

[sibyrnes]

I thought we were talking about converting slides with the K1.

[bigdavephoto]

I thought we were talking about converting slides with the K1.

We are. Whenever the question of scanning comes up, the comparison of the different methods of how to scan and what would the best way to get it done must also be discussed.


I am in the camp of buying a flatbed scanner (make and model is your choice) and doing them yourself.

[Bengan]

I thought we were talking about converting slides with the K1.

I think that the previous posts indicate that the K-1 is more than adequate and that the K-30 will do just fine as a means to digitizing slides.

As noted above, most archived slides suck when scanned. That is because most suffer from missed focus, camera motion, subject motion, and/or poor quality optics. Those faults are seldom noticed when projected or when doing moderate enlargements since neither challenges the medium to the same extent as even a 4000 dpi scan. That scan when viewed at full resolution is roughly equivalent to a 20"x30" print viewed closely with magnification.

Agreed. I just recently scanned close to 2000 slides from way back when using 2500 dpi resolution (I tried 5000 and didn't find it to be worthwhile). The downside when doing this was that I found out I was not a very technically skilled photographer at the time, as most of the shots were (as stated) either out of focus, motion blurred or shot with an incorrect shutter speed or incorrect depth of field. All slides that were good came out just fine scanned. Grain introduced during scan was fairly easy to handle in post editing.


My next project is digitizing my fathers old 120-film slides and for that I'm going to use the K-1 set to 1:1 crop. Initial test indicate that this will work great.

[peterh337]

I would still like to see the OP

"a large collection of slides (thousands)"

actually scan thousands of slides with a DSLR. He will get sick of it pretty fast and will quickly either abandon the project or will throw most of them out before scanning.

[bigdavephoto]

I would still like to see the OP

"a large collection of slides (thousands)"

actually scan thousands of slides with a DSLR. He will get sick of it pretty fast and will quickly either abandon the project or will throw most of them out before scanning.

With the system he linked to, it looks like it would be fairly easy to do "thousands" of slides. The only drawback would be putting the slides into the carousals or using the stack loader. The other drawback is the cost. $400 to rent for a week plus the rent of a K1 and lens if you do not already own. If you want to buy, $4,000 plus the body and lens.