Digitize color slides on the cheap . . .?

[Matthias099]

With all this knowledge accumulated here and years of experience I am sure somebody has the same problem as me . . . .

Over the years (before digital photography) I accumulated many thousands of 35mm color slides. I know that they will deteriorate over time, but I don't want to loose them. I looked into services that digitize them, but the cost would be too high for all my slides. I also thought about buying a slide scanner like the Plustek Optiscan 7600. Also a bit pricey right now. Another option I briefly tried were those small slide scanners for about $100 you can get now everywhere, with very limited success. (Don't waste your money on them!)

So therefore my question: does anyone know of a low-cost alternative to digitize slides in good quality? Maybe a rental place? (I haven't found one so far) Any hint in the right direction would be welcome. Also if anyone has experience with the Plustek scanners and can comment about their picture quality I would appreciate it.

[Matthias099]

Well, I guess its not as common a problem as I thought . . . . Does somebody know who could help me?

[4umfreak]

If you have a projector, could you simply project and shoot them with a digital camera?

Or is that too low tech?

[arlon]

I went through the same situation. I would have used a service like scancafe.com but I chose to just shoot them with my camera instead. I had all the necessary gear already so it wasn't much of an issue. I used several setups from a 1x4 board and a piece of pvc pipe to a much more expensive bellows. I even did the 1x4 thing with a small P&S camera that did as good as my scanner (epson perfection 4990 photo scanner) did.

Galleries of my "shot" slides HERE and HERE

My first slide copy rig was a Nikon D50 with a manual focus 55mm micro lens. Slide holder was $5 in a camera shop junk box.



And it did work (me in 1957)!

[Matthias099]

Originally Posted by 4umfreak

If you have a projector, could you simply project and shoot them with a digital camera?

Or is that too low tech?

What about the quality? I don't think that's any better than those cheap $50 scanners. Have you ever tried this?

[Matthias099]

[QUOTE=arlon;1318765]I went through the same situation. I would have used a service like scancafe.com but I chose to just shoot them with my camera instead. I had all the necessary gear already so it wasn't much of an issue. I used several setups from a 1x4 board and a piece of pvc pipe to a much more expensive bellows. I even did the 1x4 thing with a small P&S camera that did as good as my scanner (epson perfection 4990 photo scanner) did.

Galleries of my "shot" slides HERE and HERE

My first slide copy rig was a Nikon D50 with a manual focus 55mm micro lens. Slide holder was $5 in a camera shop junk box.

Thanks for the idea . . . I will try that. Hopefully I can find a slide holder.

[4umfreak]

Originally Posted by Matthias099

What about the quality? I don't think that's any better than those cheap $50 scanners. Have you ever tried this?

No, but I have done similar with paper documents with satisfactory results. If you're looking for perfect quality, maybe it's worth paying for the service after-all.

Arlon's solution looks like a good one - and has the proven results!

[SwissJon]

Interesting..

Was the length of the pipe critical or random? You mst have had this slightly further away than 1:1 distance to get the 35mm slide to fill the frame on a crop sensor?
What was your light source?

[slh]

Galleries of my "shot" slides HERE and HERE

I just checked them out, they are absolutely wonderful!! I love them! The black and whites, the color slides.. everything is just great! Your set up for copying the slides worked really well. I really enjoyed them, great work!

I tried the doing the same, only with a cheap slide scanner ($100) with my dad's slides. They didnt come out near as good as yours.

Here Oshkosh Fly-In 1975 - a set on Flickr

and here Oshkosh Fly-In 1975 - a set on Flickr

[arlon]

Originally Posted by SwissJon

Interesting..

Was the length of the pipe critical or random? You mst have had this slightly further away than 1:1 distance to get the 35mm slide to fill the frame on a crop sensor?
What was your light source?

The pipe was very specific in length. I set the camera on the board and found what length it took to get the whole slide in the shot. Marked the board and bolted the camera to it with a 1/4-20 bolt of the right length. My first slide holder was just the end of a box with a window cut in it, piece of milk jug on the back for a light diffuser. The box worked fine and was only slightly slower than the slide holder I found later. Slide holder is nice but it sure isn't a necessity. All the pipe does is keep out stray light, probably work just about as well without it.

Light source was just my desk lamp with a daylight compact fluorescent light in it (100w equivalent). Since the whole thing is bolted down and nothing really moves, shutter speeds don't matter. Most of my slides were shot at f8 iso 200 and some as slow as 1/4 second. I liked the camera because I could use a custom white balance set on my light source and it was really easy to check the shots and adjust the shutter speed for best exposure. My exposures were better than shot on the slides in most cases. It wasn't fast but I have more time than money and it worked.

Lense I've been using is also an old Manual focus macro. It just happened to be the perfect lens for the 1x4 version with the D50 (later upgraded to a D200) and my last copier is a real nikon bellows, slide copier and a full frame D700. The results from the bellows/D700 really weren't much better than the D200 and 1x4. Just got a few more useful pixels.



Just for fun I grabbed a random slide and my P&S (Canon SD790IS) and walked outside. I simply held the slide up to the house wall (light colored) and shot the slide totally off hand in the cameras macro mode. No tripod, no fixture, nothing but holding the slide in front of the camera with one hand and shooting it with the other.. Can't get any simpler than that. Blotches on the left were the shadows on the wall from a tree.. Needed a cleaner wall.

Click the image for the full size version if you like.


I should have at least grabbed a better slide.. (-:}