[Stewart Minnis]

My father took alot of slide photos many years ago (mainly family shots) and I am wondering if any one knows of a cheap but good method of converting these to a digital format ?

Stewart

[bluespearbone]

Never tried it myself, but you may be able to find a second-hand set of bellows with slide attachment to do the job at a very reasonable price.

[Arpe]

Stewart - have a look at these. They are available here and get good reviews. Some guy also sells them on Trademe.

[Stewart Minnis]

This looks like what I would need to do the conversion only I dont want to spend that much. I see there is some bellows for sale on Trade-Me at the moment-have you had any -thing to do with these -are they likely to do the job?

Stew

[Arpe]

Sorry, never tried them and know nothing about them!

My father also has hundreds of slides. I hope to one day buy one of the Plustek things, then when finished, sell it!

[Ole]

I guess it depends on what cheap means. Copying slides one by one will be very tedious and time consumong, it might be the better deal to purchase a slide scanner
(Pacific Image | PowerSlide 3650, 3600dpi, Automated, | PS3650)
or use a service like scan cafe
(Photo Scanning, Negative Scanning, Slide Scanning, Photo Restoration - ScanCafe).

I have gone the first way. The quality is good, and best is that it scans 50 slides at a time without intervention.

[Nepal]

Hello,

Before my digital days I used to take slides to.
With an Epson 1640 Photo scanner I have digitalised them.
It's an ordinary flatrbedscanner with a attachable light source in the hood.
Simple, good quality scans, a little bit time consuming but not expensive.

Gtz,

[clawhammer]

I had a pacific image 3650u and I am not all that impressed by the results- doesn't inspire much trust in the rest of their products. Didn't do very good with blacks, colors weren't all that great, etc etc (and these were 'new' slides, not 30 year old faded kodachromes). For better quality, I got the epson 4990 (the v700 is the latest of this line, I think). Honestly, your best option is to pay someone else to do it. I worked at a photolab, and our Frontier 570 could scan an image at ~ 20 Megapixel resolution (we told the machine to scan it so it would gives a file we could print at 300 dpi at 12x18 inches) that gives an image quality better than the pacific image but worse than the epson (had an issue with it giving a slight magenta cast to most slides).

[JCSullivan]

I've had the Hewlett Packard PhotoSmart S20 Film Scanner which I used on negatives a few times. It's time-consuming so it sits there doing nothing.

I have absolutely no patience to change slides individually. I guess Ole has the right idea IF you have the mula to invest.

[flyer]

I have a HP scanner modelG 4050. It can accept up to 20 slides in their mount, so I set it with the slides before going to bed and let it do it's thing during the night. Setting it up takes about an hour (adjust cropping, color balance and so on) then it can scan till morning if needs be.

[AlanR]

Here is a link to a positive review for ScanCafe. The magazine's editor sent 360 slides and had them scanned. The cost was about $100 for "pro-quality" 4000 dpi TIFFs. I plan to send off some of my 2000 + slides to see how it goes. The 24-Cent Scan - - PopPhotoDecember 2007

[Stewart Minnis]

Thanks to all that replyed.A mates sister-inlaw has a scanner that scans negatives that she offered free use of so I will give that a try.I dont know the make but I will keep you you posted on how well it works.

Stew