Old Projector slides

nutter

Hi

Its my dads 60th Birthday soon and as a present I wanted to convert all his old projector slides into digital images. I went down to the local photo shop and the want a lot of money each and i have a lot to do over 2000, does any one know of a scanner which can scan them in, i am not sure if they are the same as a negative.

Any help would be most appreciated.

Nutter

penrhyn

You could look at the Epson 2580 Photo, Which recently recommended it.

Rave

You can do it easily, or you can do it cheaply, but not both I'm afraid. The cheap way would be to buy a flatbed scanner with a film adaptor. These start from about £50 up. Most will allow you to scan between 4 and 6 slides at a time- but to do four slides in decent quality will take at least two minutes for every batch of four, quite possibly longer. Then you'll need to load up the next batch. 2000 slides would probably take you a weekend or longer even if you worked pretty much non stop.

The easier but far more expensive way would be to buy a Nikon dedicated film scanner with a slide hopper. You can load 50 slides into this and then leave the scanner to get on with it. You also get a higher quality scan. However you are looking at at least £500 for this option, probably more- if that's affordable get back to me and I'll find the latest models and prices for you.

shrek101

The Epson 4990 at around £320 is a good scanner. It also has digital ICE which can remove unwanted noise and artefacts.

A review is here
http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Epson%204990/Page%201.htm

I been wanting to get ones of these for age, I have the Epson 1650 but its hard work scanning all those slides/photos and cleaning them up. This scanner takes most of the hard work out.

Info on digital ICE
http://www.asf.com/products/ice/FilmICEOverview.shtml

nutter

Thanks everyone,

I will problable be after the cheaper option as money is tight as ever.

But the Ice bit looks great is that software or is that something built in to the device.

Nutter

Rave

ICE is built into the device according to their page, although it can be enabled or disabled via the scanner driver software. In dedicated film scanners it works by scanning the image from two or more directions- then anything that moves relative to the image (I.E. dust and scratches) is digitally removed. It works well, but the scan time is increased as more than one pass is required.

I assume that flatbeds with ICE use a similar system although I have no direct experience with them.

shrek101

Yes that's right Rave the flatbeds are similar to the film scanners.

If on a budget then the Epson scanners are good with built in film adaptor. It's just that if slides are old they will contain dust, scratches it is real time consuming removing if you want a excellent finish, although if its only relatively low resolution and printout then all but the worse slides will be okay.

Over the years I have tried various software to remove dust and scratches some with varying degrees such as Adobe CS, Paint shop pro and Microsoft digital image. Many contain filters to help remove dust and scratches but there's always a price to pay as images can be blurred and need sharpening.

carpool72

Rather than using a scanner my mate has a device that screws onto their digital camera to hold the slide - you take a photo of the slide. I think they got it from Innovations. Again, it would take ages to do a lot of slides, but their end result was quite good.

Good luck!

shrek101

Don't like the sound of that, can't imagine that the copy of the slide via a digital camera would be anywhere near as good as a dedicated slide scanner. But I am happy to be proven wrong