slides to digital CD ?

gypsy77360

I recently acquired a number of 50 year old 35mm slides . How is the easiest way to get them converted to digital CD. I do not own a scanner. Any commercial sites someone could recommend ? Thanks. :scratch

mercphoto

Scanning slides

gypsy77360 wrote:

I recently acquired a number of 50 year old 35mm slides . How is the easiest way to get them converted to digital CD. I do not own a scanner. Any commercial sites someone could recommend ? Thanks.

I know Precision Camera (percision-camera.com, Austin TX) can do the job for you. I do not know if they are expensive or cheap because I don't know what others charge. However, they are a great store and know what they are doing. I buy my lenses from them, pay more than from mail order, and feel I get my money's worth anyway.

For slides, do at least 2,000 dpi (which works out to 6 million pixels). If you can, go higher still, as a good slide will have more information in it than 6 million pixles.

pathfinder

gypsy77360 wrote:

I recently acquired a number of 50 year old 35mm slides . How is the easiest way to get them converted to digital CD. I do not own a scanner. Any commercial sites someone could recommend ? Thanks.

Rather than repeating a lot of what has been discussed before - here is a link to an extensive previous discussion of this topic. ( The short answer is that is is easier to hire your local photo shop if you are not really interested in quality work - but that you can do much better yourself if you invest the time and energy to learn how to scan well and spend the money for a good slide scanner or even one of Epson new flabed scanners. I am sure you can hire GOOD scans from commercail custom color shops, but I bet you can buy a good scanner for a lot less money if you have over 300 slides to scan which is a farily small family slide collection) I scanned my father's slide collection beginning in 2000, and it takes a fair investment of time - figure 10 minutes per slide if you are fast.

Here is the link http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=824&highlight=scanning+slides

mercphoto

Scanning slides

pathfinder wrote:

( The short answer is that is is easier to hire your local photo shop if you are not really interested in quality work - but that you can do much better yourself

Interesting link and neat stuff about scanning slides. One question about your comment above, if your local photo shop is a store that caters to professionals (even large format film processing) does the above still hold true? The shop I recommended, Precision Camera, isn't the level of a Wolf Camera.

Shay Stephens

gypsy77360 wrote:

I recently acquired a number of 50 year old 35mm slides . How is the easiest way to get them converted to digital CD. I do not own a scanner. Any commercial sites someone could recommend ? Thanks.

http://www.chromedigital.com/promo4.html

The time needed to scan on your own is prohibitive to actually ever finishing ;-) I recommend sending it out to be done if you want the job finished before the end the century hehehe.

pathfinder

Shay Stephens wrote:

http://www.chromedigital.com/promo4.html

The time needed to scan on your own is prohibitive to actually ever finishing ;-) I recommend sending it out to be done if you want the job finished before the end the century hehehe.

You are correct about scanning slides yourself - I've scanned hundreds and hundreds -
I said figure at least 10 minutes per slide if you are FAST and KNOW what you are doing! There is a bit of a learning curve... - otherwise maybe two or three per hour. If you have many slide it can take days and days - just like you are pointing out Shay. But custom scanning I bet will not be cheap either, and my experience with having slides scanned to CD by my local photofinisher was money thrown down the drain - their quality did not begin to approach the very worst of mine. Depends on whether the critical variable is time or money or quality I guess.

gypsy77360

thanks
Thanks for the info.It seems like the $0.65 price from Chrome will suffice for scanning all the collection with upgrades for the individual slides that proof out for enlargement/print.
I noticed that many slides when seen thru a hand-held viewer reveal lots of dust , lint , etc. What is the best way to prepare /clean them prior to remitting them to shop for scan ?
Thanks ,
gypsy

Steve Lear

Lunar problems
Watching the moon sinking was a spectacular site. I took a range of shots with different exposures, but couldn't seem to get the moon details without loosing detail in the rest of the landscape. Is there a trick to it or is this just a fact of photographic life.

Any help here would be much appreciated.

Thanks, Steve.

Shay Stephens

Steve Lear wrote:

Watching the moon sinking was a spectacular site. I took a range of shots with different exposures, but couldn't seem to get the moon details without loosing detail in the rest of the landscape. Is there a trick to it or is this just a fact of photographic life.

Any help here would be much appreciated.

Thanks, Steve.

The moon is fully lit by sunlight, while the landscape is only partially lit. The moon is therefore much brighter than the landscape and is loosing detail to the overexposure. You could try a large 4 or 5 stop bracketed shot, shoot one for the landscape and then another for the moon.

You could also try to use a graduated ND filter, but they typically top out at three stops. If you shot an average exposure in RAW, you could probably process the shot to look right.

But either way you slice it, it is a tricky situation that will be hard to do, though not impossible.

Steve Lear

Shay Stephens wrote:

The moon is fully lit by sunlight, while the landscape is only partially lit. The moon is therefore much brighter than the landscape and is loosing detail to the overexposure. You could try a large 4 or 5 stop bracketed shot, shoot one for the landscape and then another for the moon.

You could also try to use a graduated ND filter, but they typically top out at three stops. If you shot an average exposure in RAW, you could probably process the shot to look right.

But either way you slice it, it is a tricky situation that will be hard to do, though not impossible.

Thanks for the info Shay, much appreciated.