Scanning Slides...

Good Morning,

I didn't know which forum to put this under so...

I started shooting slides in 1971 and now have over 30,000 slides in cases in the basement.

I recently decided it was time to start scanning the better / more important slides and burning them to cd / dvd for preservation.

I have a Microtec Scanmaker S400 scanner that came with a slide / negative attachment.

Saturday I started on the 1st box of slides ( I have over 200 boxes ) and picked the first four out. I put them into the attachment and used the Microtec software to scan them at 600dpi. The software automatically saved them as tif files in a strip of 4.

I pulled the strip into Paint Shop Pro 9 and was not pleased to see that they were out of focus. The orginial slides are clearly in focus but the digitized files were not.

I tried 4 more and got the same results.

The scanner works perfectly when I scan photographs and other paperwork but the attachment seems out of whack.

Am I doing something wrong ? Could it be the attachment that is faulty ? Is there a solution ?

Thanks for the help.

Captain America

Maybe the mounts are too thick and you need to take them out.

Scanning that many slides on any scanner is extremely laborious. Scanning them on an inexpensive 600 dpi desktop scanner with a slide back is also a waste of time: even if you get them in focus, you'll only get a fraction of the density range and very low resolution.

In other words, if you're ready to invest the hundreds of hours of work needed to do the job, do it properly.

My suggestion is not to use a scanner at all. Instead, use a digital camera. I assume you have a dSLR since you post a lot in the Nikon forums. So, use that. There are a number of ways in which you can go about it.

(1) Get a dedicated slide copier. I've used one from Soligor that works rather nicely on a DX sized camera (although it gets pretty soft in the corners on full-frame). Use either a flash or some other white, controlled light source for lighting. Then all you need to do is set up the camera on a tripod, take some test shots to get the exposure and WB right, and blast away. It's much faster than using a scanner, you'll be able to digitize more of the density range, and resolution will only be somewhat lower (and much higher than with the method you're currently using).

(2) Use a macro lens, copy stand (or tripod in a pinch), lightbox, and some black cardstock. A dedicated macro lens is of significantly better quality than, say, the Soligor I mention above. However, you'll need to be a bit creative about solving the focusing, positioning, and stability issues. For example, set up the slides on a lightbox, set up a tripod on top of that, point the camera down at it, make a funnel out of black cardstock to stop stray light from polluting the image, and shoot. You'll need to use much longer exposures than with a slide copier which will slow things down a bit, but other than that it's just about as fast once you get going, and the quality will be better.

Petteri
--
[ http://www.prime-junta.net/ ]
[ http://p-on-p.blogspot.com/ ]

Just to confirm the above:



35mm slide taken with 60mm Micro on D70s, very hurried, minimal PP.

More here: http://www.pbase.com/tuckeruk/scans&page=all

Obviously a little slow, but I have no intention of digitising my entire slide collection, projection shows them off to far greater effect.

Hope that helps.

--
Geoff

'The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.' - George Bernard Shaw

WSSA member#68
PBase Supporter

http://www.pbase.com/tuckeruk

Scanning slides is part of my job.

I use a Minolta Scan Dual III scanner (good enough for me)

Get yourself a Slide Scanner, IMO you will be a lot happier with the results

Some have great software (ICE3) and easy to use interface, some don't.

Nikon has some excellent slide scanners, Minolta are very good, Microtek, and others would do the job too.

Good luck

get yourself a slide scanner.

i have a nikon coolscan v. have used it to scan ektachrome going back to 1970. all results are excellent. if you go this route think about storage space: the resulting scans are 131mb each as tiffs. they have tremendous about of info and the dydnamic range is very big.
i am completely satisfied. scanner was bought a while age for $600.

I had considered a Nikon slide scanner but didn't know anyone else who had used one so I was hesitant to put out $500+ for one.

I'll have to run by my local photo store and talk to my camera guy for his opinion.

Captain America

Removing 20,000 slides from the mounts would be a very labor intensive job and remounting them would be very expensive. I can't see this as being an option right now.

Captain America

I started out this way. I bout a $60 copier on ebay and it did a fairly good job but I figured I would burn out the shutter on my digital. I was taking three shots of each slide... one proper, one under and one over to be sure I got a good exposure. That would have meant 75,000 + shots on my D70.

The results shooting this way were much better than going with the flat bed scanner.

Captain America

I have considered getting a CoolScan but I didn't know anyone who had used one and could give me data on the results.

I'll check with my camera guy and see if he has used one.

Captain America

I've done hundreds of slide with a specialized single-slide scanner and that was a chore. But, with as many slides as you have to tackle I would think that investing in a slide scanner having automated batch scanning is the onlly way to remain sane.

My suggestion is the Pacific Powerslide system which holds 50-100 slides per session.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?A=details&kw=PAPS3600&is=REG&Q=&O=productlist&sku=287975

I've used a scanner similar to the Nikon and just don't believe that you will be a happy camper with the number of slides you have to process. Experience tells me that you need something that can handle LARGER numbers of slides automatically.

You have to check out the reviews, etc. but the Pacific Image 3600 would be my choice. I put a link to BHPhoto on another reply.

Replacing the shutter costs about $200. I still say go for it this way.

Alternatively, you could buy a non-SLR digicam without a mechanical shutter for the job. It shouldn't wear out, and the quality could be quite good.

Petteri
--
[ http://www.prime-junta.net/ ]
[ http://p-on-p.blogspot.com/ ]

TuckerUK said:

Obviously a little slow, but I have no intention of digitising my
entire slide collection, projection shows them off to far greater
effect.

Click to expand...

Kodak has discontinued slide projectors and the sources are dwindling.

Much MORE importantly, the bulbs are disappearing. You can no longer get bulbs for some of the Kodak models at all.

I wouldn't count on being able to project our slides too much longer into the future unless you have a stash of bulbs.

I agree... a few years back the bulb in my Kodak projector went out and I tried every place in town to find a replacement bulb. I contacted Kodak and they gave me the names of a few places across tho country. None of them had a bulb for my projector.

A few weeks later we were at a yard sale and a guy had a projector and a screen that he said he hadn't used in years. I bought them both for a grand total of $5.00. He even had a replacement buld for the projector.

Captain America

That's a thought. But a nice 5 mega point and shoot and use that to copy the slides. I saw a 5meg at Target the other day for $69.99.

Captain america

Thank you Tom... I am retired so time is not a problem but an automated scanner would speed up the process.

I have never heard of this brand of scanner but if B&H carries it it is probably a good one.

Captain America

. . . would be my suggestion as it can make a full res scan with dust and scratch removal in under 50 seconds per slide and with the optional slide adapter (SF-210) will allow the convenience of unattended scans of up to 50 mounted slides at a time. Without it, only 1 mounted slide can be scanned at a time. You can find more details at http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=310477&is=REG&addedTroughType=search

My Film 2 Album has a collection of full res results from all the various films that I have used with this scanner at http://www.fototime.com/inv/D163377BD1A059A

These were all scanned with auto focus/expose, crop, orientation and ICE (not with true b&w film) and all other settings either OFF or neutral - no post processing unless otherwise stated. I have scanned over 3000 frames of film with this but have never used the optional slide feeder.

I have also compared the results from using this scanner vs using my Canon 20D with the EOS 100mm macro lens and here is the equalized size of it compared to the Coolscan result . . .
http://www.fototime.com/B1E577593A00E4A/orig.jpg

I shot the 20D tethered to my PC for optimal aperture (f8) and confirmed focus on screen, tripod mounted with mirror lockup - best as I could get it. Of course you would still have to remove dust and scratches as well as post process for optimal results which is nowhere as fast as using this scanner.

I also recently got a flatbed scanner - Canon C8400F, and at 3200dpi it appears to only resolve as much as using my DSLR+macro combination as shown in this example which I didn't resize to the Coolscan result . . .
http://www.fototime.com/3AD5C7DD36CE8BA/orig.jpg

First try higher dpi. 600 is very low for slide scanning and it may just be that what you get is fuzzy (instead of out of focus) because of lack of resolution. Try 2700 dpi. There is not much to gain above this.

Second here is a review of a very good scanner for slides and documents:
http://www.photo-i.co.uk/Reviews/interactive/Epson%204990/Page%2011.htm

It comes with digital ice software and you use this software as you scan to remove the "dust" accumulated on these old slides. Although this is very good it is also very slow. You load 12 slides and it will take about 10 minutes/slides. So you load a bunch and go do something while scanning goes on automatically.

Dust on old slides is not so bad when you project, but on a computer screen it is pretty ugly and obviously if you print it is terrible.

i have the nikon coolscan v scanner. it scans one slide at a time. i am also just retired. when i started i had upwards of 10000 slides to scan from 1970 to the point where i switched to digital.

my process was that i held the slide up against a white sheet of pper to see if i was even intrested in putting it in the scanner, if yes i would put in to scan on pre-scan. at this point i made the decision to do the full scan or not. the pre-scan in the nikon is just a very few seconds, while the full scan is near 40 seconds. you can go through many slides pretty rapidly without doing the full scan. i am assuming that, like me, you are NOT going to full scan and keep ALL of the entire slide collection on the computer. i have many slides that i never put on the pc, and never will.

another issue is storage. the nikon v scans are 131mb tiffs. if you do a little multipying 10000 slides x 131mb = 1,310,000mb. this is a very powerfull reason not to fullscan all the slides in the pc. i considered a scanner with a slidefeeder, but then after a little thought on the above math discarded it in favor of one-by-one system. the sole reason was to select the slides that i really wanted to keep on my pc. also, being retired i had the time. but i did not scan them all in one long session. it took me 2 months. i now store all my pics, digitally taken or scan-in, on a 300gb external hard drive that is backed up to a second 300gb external hard drive. after taking the digital pics or scanning them in, i had to have some way of protecting the effort and investment and time.

as stated in my earlier reply, the nikon coolscan v does suberb scans. they are everybit as good as seeing them projected on a sceen.

good luck.