35mm slides to CD

[monkey boy 1]

While over my parents over the weekend, we were sorting out loads of 35mm slides that they had accumulated over 45 or 50 years. Then I thought there must be something on the market that can convert the slides to CD.
Has anyone there in PH photography land got such a device and what are they like, what alternatives are there & how much are they to buy ?
I had a quick trawl around & some places are charging about 35 - 40p per slide. My Father has boxes & boxes of them.
Any help much appreciated

MB

[cirks]

you can buy dedicated film/slide scanners or alternatively use a flat-bed scanner with a slide adaptor.

However, the dedicated ones are not cheap and if you have loads of slides to do it is incredbibly time consuming (speed and storage is obviously dependant on scanner but even more so on the resolution that you are scanning to (ie a scanned slide could easily be anything from a few Mb to over 20Mb). Once you've scanned you can just save the images to CD/DVD/media player etc. I've got a Minolta 5400 and I haven't even got around to scanning many of the hundreds/thousands of slides I have around the place. The scanner was 'cheap' at £340ish. Weigh this up against the hassle of doing it yourself vs giving it a company charging 40p per slide and not having the hassle!

With your own scanner (if you buy one) or even the businesses offering the service, I would go through all your slides with your projector and determine which slides need scanning at the lowest resolution (ie just for viewing on screen etc) and which you want at the highest (eg for printing at A4+ sizes) before actually doing the scans. Then you need to consider how much post processing you want to do in Photshop etc or whether you use things like ICE to remove dust and emulsion defects on the original during scanning....

The one thing that I didn't find at a reasonable price when looking to buy was a scanner that could do large quantities in an unattended state (most will only do 4 slides at a time). The other thing you might want to investigate is whether anyone hires high capacity professional scanners - this might be the most flexible option?

[simpo two]

Quick and cheap way (if you have a macro lens or close-up lens), is to hold them up to a nice bright light and re-photograph them.

[monkey boy 1]

Cheers guys, I'll look into this, I may do a "part invest" with my Father 50:50 purchase. He buys half & i buy the other half.
I had thought of the re-photographing using a macro lense & a light box, buy as you say, it's going to take ages.

At least it's got me thinking, rather than just forgetting about the photo's

[simpo two]

monkey boy 1 said:

I had thought of the re-photographing using a macro lense & a light box, buy as you say, it's going to take ages.

Actually, once you get the set-up fixed, it will a lot faster than grinding through hi-res slide scans!

[sjg]

Been looking into this for my parents too.

There's someone on ebay advertising 20p a slide (you buy a CD in the auction that the images go onto!) which seemed pretty reasonable for smaller numbers.

Most cost-effective way I think is to buy a second-hand slide scanner, get through them all then sell it on again. Nikon and Minolta scanners seem to still be supported for drivers and software (including in XP), even ones 6 or 7 years old. They seem to go for £100-150 on ebay, which is a *lot* cheaper than buying new.

[Captain Beaky]

cirks said:

The one thing that I didn't find at a reasonable price when looking to buy was a scanner that could do large quantities in an unattended state (most will only do 4 slides at a time).

The Canon 9950F will scan 12 mounted slides at once, or 30 if you have them in strips (unlikely). Still takes a long time though...