So I find a box of old slides from the 60s and 70's. I bet there are 2000 of them. Other than the commercial companies to digitized them are there any copiers a guy can buy or use to digitize them? The biggest problem is I have no way to look at them before I convert them. How should I approach this? Any advice from someone who has done this? Slide projectors seem to be a thing of the past too.. Advice??
I think you could make a light board to use for viewing them quickly and then select the ones you want. Build a simple box to hold a light bulb and use a piece of frosted plexiglass on top. Quick and dirty you could even just use a cardboard box. Place a bunch of slides on the box and you can quickly see which ones are of interest to you, and it will be much quicker than holding them up to a light one by one. I don’t have any help on digitizing, but if only 10-15% are of interest then evaluating at home will at least save some money.
check a camera shop or maybe walmart or target for a slide viewer.It just a small plastic viewer that had a light in it.
I know it's not much help but as I recall that Humbacher-Schlepper catalog always has some gizmo to digitize 35mm slides to a laptop. I've got thousands to go through from relatives. "Someday".
I see slide viewers all the time at antique shops. I use a basic flat plate scanner to scan my old negatives. It had an adapter that holds slides or negatives. Hit scan and your set. It also allows you to make adjustments. Sent from my iPhone using The H.A.M.B. mobile app
Lightbox photo: For viewing color slides, individually or in bunches... Sorry, I do not have any of the 2.25’ x 2.25’ slides handy for the sample slides on the lightbox, Only 35MM size. Hey 6, Wow, what a treasure trove of slides and negatives. You made a great find. 2000 of them will take a few hours of your time. First, get a dust blower, not aerosol. Then get a fine hair brush, sometimes these have a rubber bulb for blowing dust off of the negatives/slides. There are products that are liquid…stay away from those. They will screw up the color/B&W at the first drop. Plus, they smell. There are some fine cloth-like materials to wipe off gently if necessary. Scanning picks up every “dust mote” known to mankind. But that is where your editing program on the computer takes over for touch ups. In our photographic hey days, we had a very large box (18” x 24” wide x 6” tall) that I made out of redwood/cedar (outside frame) and an opaque plastic sheet insert that could be seen with a light coming on from the other side. We used regular bulbs, and fluorescent. It is your choice as to which bulb to use underneath the plastic insert. Those light bulbs, both, give off different looks. If the redwood/cedar has an “L” groove on the top, the opaque plastic insert should fit right in place. Once I laid out the 35mm color slides, the light made it easy to see all of them at once. A Loupe really helps get the details. The B/W strips of negatives were another story, but I made a contact sheet and used the Loupe again. At the time I had great eyesight, but the Loupe helped make it so much better. Also, with the slides, I used my trusty Kodak slide projector for life-size photos on our white walls. If you had asked in 2017, I just gave away the Kodak slide projector and super 8mm movie projector that we used only a few times. Those 8mm color family baby shots just did not do them justice vs the 16mm color movie camera. Jnaki Epson 600: Scan Only device Now, current scanning projects: In 2007, I got an Epson 600 color/b&w scanner only, no printing mode at all. That was left to my printer/scanner combo unit. It had the requisite insert to hold the film strips and individual slides while the scanner does its thing. 300 dpi is good, 600dpi is better. 1200dpi takes too long and the results aren’t truly visible to the naked “print” eye. Slide film insert for detailed accuracy while scanning. It lies directly on the scan glass with the lid closed. So, that is the scanner part. Normal printer scanners can scan 300 and 600, but I used my wife’s printer/scanner and it did not give such good results with the color process. Check out the Screen Shot and Showcard threads on the HAMB. Those are “over 50 years old” Ektachrome Color Slides scanned into my computer hard drive from this Epson 600 scanner. Finally, the last device needed is something to replace that huge color slide viewer that bit the dust years ago. Now, on Amazon, you can get a small lightbox that will take care of a lot of 35mm slides at one time and the cost is very low. It takes up less space in a closet or can be sitting next to your scanner if needed. There is no need for a huge light box. The slides are still 35mm in size and the loupe makes the detailing better for the tired old eyes. Tilt for different viewing P.S. I found some other color slides and decided to just scan without cleaning. To the old eyes, they looked clean. But when they became digital files, JPEGS, the editing program showed every speck of dust on the slide. I tried editing and spot erasing those specks. It is much better to do a thorough cleaning before scanning each slide or group of slides. Scenario: Maybe one photo, but, certainly not 2000. Good luck and PM me if you need any other information.
I have tons of slides that I wanted to digitize so I checked Craigslist for a used scanner then hit the reviews for each unit that I found. The low volume, four-at-a-time scanners are slow and you will get discouraged with the process. Might as well not even go there. I bought an auto feed scanner that takes 50 slides at a time. I'll set it up then go away to do chores or before I go to bed. If it fails somehow, I fix the problem slide and restart the process, no babysitting. I think I paid $250 for it from a guy that bought new, did all his slides and just needed to unload the device. When searching be aware of software limitations on a newer computer. I still run into problems with some slides that have thicker cardboard cases or just wonky alignment, but I can get a bunch done real fast. With this device, I scan most everything except the poor quality slides. If I really like a slide, I will scan it higher resolution after dust cleaning. In the end and for me, scanning speed rules. None are going to be displayed in a museum and doubtful any will be enlarged and hung on the wall.
I had considered a professional lab to transfer my slides to cd but it was really cost prohibitive. This was before this service started popping up on Groupon. I purchased one of the "four slides at a time" scanners from Wal-Mart about eight years ago. I was reluctant to because I didn't need another piece of unused equipment sitting on a shelf when the job was complete, but when I mentioned this to the associate I was dealing with she said to use it and then return it, which is what I did. I'll admit, it's a tedious job but this $70.00 scanner did what it was supposed to. I got good color representation and there was no degradation of the image or sharpness, for the most part. A few clinkers came out of the batch of over a thousand, but only a few. I was not as successful scanning negatives and I won't even go into that. You can make this procedure as difficult as you want to. Call me cheap or call me lazy but I didn't spring for any different number of lightboxes or slide viewers. I held my slides up to a light bulb to see what I wanted to scan. Of course, I was familiar with them all, having viewed them countless times through the years. No, you don't catch every bad nuance with this method but having a bad image (or scan) is often better than not having it at all. Plus, now that these images are in my computer and on compact discs I can edit them at will, and believe me, I do edit them. Though I sell 8x10 prints occasionally, I'm far from a professional but that doesn't mean I settled for whatever result I got. I worked them with an editing program called Picasa. I still have some slides I'd like to transfer but I'm very hesitant to try a mail-to lab like those shown on Groupon. I'm very fearful of losing images I couldn't possibly replace. Here are a few examples of my (do it myself) scan job. Good luck should you try it on your own.
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