Best Way to Convert Slides Into Digital Imagery

[Duane Thomas]

For my next book I am going to need to transfer a lot of old slides over into being digital imagery. Does anyones here have any experience in doing that? I have, myself, in the past dealt with the computer hardware/software necessary to do this.

OTOH one of my editors tells me there's the option of a slide copier that consists of, basically, a frame that fits onto the front of the camera instead of a lens, you insert a slide into the frame, point it toward a light source, and basically take a photo of the slide. He says that works great, and certainly it sounds easier, and less expensive, than the computer hardware/software option. Anyone have experience with the low-tech slide copier option? Which might be my best bet?

[Nik Habicht]

For publication and for archiving/future use purposes, I'd want to investigate buying a slide capable film scanner, scanning the images into photoshop, and then saving them as .tif files. Edit only copies of the original scanned files -- your color correcting and toning skills may improve over time, so it would be nice if you could start over with the "not-degraded by editing" initial scan.....

Never crop the originals, and make cropping the last step in your editing process, after saving an uncropped copy. You can't add size back in very well.....

[latech15]

Seems like I saw something like that in a brookstone, or a skymall mag a while back. Not sure if either of those would be high quality enough for a book though.

[424D57]

I'm not sure what the 'low-tech' camera option would cost, but I'm sure I've seen decent slide scanners under $150 which should have software included or at least sufficient drivers to get it done in windows 7 or osx without additional expense.

If its the experience/time with which you're concerned, there are also a couple of service options where you can send off the slides and they do the work for you. I've never used one and can't can't say what the pricing options might look like.

-424D57

[g.willikers]

The slide copier that attaches to a camera works pretty good.

But you have to be careful what the camera is aimed at.

A poor choice of light source can ruin the copy, as will a busy background.

A scanner with a slot for a slide and light source in the lid works good, too.

Edited November 1, 2013 by g.willikers