Slides to JPG?

I have many slides from a "few" years ago and would like to turn them into JPG pictures.

Can anyone give me some recommendation as to how best to do this and what would be the best equipment to use?

Thanks for any help

Lenny

I can only suggest you better have A LOT of time on your hands if you have many slides. Unless you spend a lot of money on a high end scanner designed to do this type of work, you will have to laboriously scan each and every slide. Will take forever. If do decide to do it scan them as TIFFs not JPGs. Always scan anything as a TIFF. Cheers ...

wiz

You can spend hundreds or thousands. Test the waters before you jump in. The newer flat beds are often available with slide sanning attachements. The performance is better than my first film sanner from HP and you get a current fladbed.

This would allow you to batch scan at moderate resolution. Then cull like mad. Not all the slides you have are really worth the effort. After the cull you can see just how many slides you really "need" to convert. That way you can decide if a dedicated film/slide scanner is what you want.

I have learned from a couple of disasters that the slides can survive as well as present digitally stored images. A roof failure and a couple of fires and several hundred still made it. Stored in good acid free boxes at stable temperatures they will be there while you set up to enjoy a raining days work.

Paul Stricklin
--
Club, Event Photographer to pay for the equipment
Nature, Landscape for the joy of life

LPS

I have thousands of slides I want to digitize., but not knowing how difficult it would be, I ated to invest several hundred $$$ on a dedicated slide scanner. On recommendation of someone on the forum, I bought a ca $70 Promaster Digital Slide Duplicator. It attaches to the front of my dSLR as well as my Pro 1. I've had great luck with it. Below is a link to some images that I scanned with it. The slides were all shot inside the Egyptian museum or in Egyptian tombs where the light is mixed, and often strange. Photography is no longer allowed in those places, and I wanted some digital images for my files.

The duping process is quick and easy. It is dealing with the digital images that gets tedius. I definitely will be editing what I decide to dupe ! You use a small slide light box for the light source and need a tripod for the camera duper. That is all the equipment that you need. It definitely pays to shoot sevreral shots of each slide, experimenting with w/b, as sometimes that is dependent on the type of light that the original slide was shot in. Pretty easy to figure out once you try it.

Link to slide dupes here:

http://www.pbase.com/chammett/egypt__photographs_no_longer_permitted

Here is a link to the Promaster slide scanner:

http://www.promaster.com/products/products.asp?CatName=Lenses&CatSM=C_Lenses&SubCatName=Slide%20Duplicator&Page=SubCat&CatID=230&SubCatID=8&sm=sm2_2308

carolyn

--
Ranger a.k.a chammett
http://www.pbase.com/chammett

'elegance is simplicity'

I would suggest that you first decide how many slides you want to scan. From my own experience I can tell you that it is a pretty tedious job. If you have a few hundreds you can manage with a flatbed scanner with transparency attachment. If you have several hundreds to thousands, you will be better off with a dedicated slide scanner with auto-feed facility. With either equipment each slide will take 3-5 minutes for scanning and then a good amount of post-processing.
--
Gautam

older thread on the same topic
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=21846536
--
may the light be with you
RIccardo BIANchi
(equipment in profile)
http://www.riccardobianchi.it

Thanks to everyone

Much appreciated..........

Looks like I will look into the Promaster.

Lenny

The problem with any add-on to the camera is the time it will take to play with one slide at a time. I have a $200 scanner that does a good job with slides or negatives and I can scan about 6 at time. To save eventual effort, I can scan them first at low resolution and see what they look like and then re-scan the important ones at high resolution. My scanner has "Digital ICE" which works pretty well at removing the unavoidable dust particles.

But no matter what you do, FIRST go through all your slides and pick the ones that really matter.
--
Jeff Peterman

Any insults, implied anger, bad grammar and bad spelling, are entirely unintentionalal. Sorry.
http://www.pbase.com/jeffp25
http://www.jeffp25.smugmug.com

Lenny said:

Thanks to everyone

Much appreciated..........

Looks like I will look into the Promaster.

Lenny

Click to expand...

The Promaster takes two slides at a time. It takes less than five seconds to load them in the little holder, push it into place and click the shutter once you have set up the tripod and light source. You can run through 25 or 30 in 30 minutes or less. If you have a lot of patience you could easily do several hundred at a time in a couple of hours. My patience is limited to about 30 at a time. Also that way you don't feel overwhelmed re: downloading and pp !

FWIW, I had about 80 slides scanned at my local camera store on a flatbed scanner with slide attachment, and they were lousy compared to what I get with the Promaster. They ordered the little device for me, and also one for the store, which they admit does a much better / cleaner job than their scanner. Any way you do it, you are going to have to pp some, but I found MUCH less pp necessary with the Promaster. On some slides, I had almost no pp other than cropping the image and doing a little contrast / sharpening.

And the price is right !

IF you get the Promaster, I can give you some quick tips to save some time - after you have it in hand. You'll need a lens that will go to about 80 mm for best results. At least that has been my best results.

carolyn
--
Ranger a.k.a chammett
http://www.pbase.com/chammett

'elegance is simplicity'

I am in the process of scanning about 2500 slides as old as 50 years using a Minolta Dualscan 4. Colors on each slide need to be adjusted as they are scanned as there is no real good slide to digital color right off the bat.

You will definately need to get a scanner that comes with some sort of dust removal function or photoshop plug in.

thanks for the input in this thread.

do you think the would the promaster work with a 28-105 canon (58mm thread) on a 1.6x body? the website has very little info and i need one of these asap

c.hammett said:

Lenny said:

Thanks to everyone

Much appreciated..........

Looks like I will look into the Promaster.

Lenny

Click to expand...

The Promaster takes two slides at a time. It takes less than five
seconds to load them in the little holder, push it into place and
click the shutter once you have set up the tripod and light source.
You can run through 25 or 30 in 30 minutes or less. If you have a
lot of patience you could easily do several hundred at a time in a
couple of hours. My patience is limited to about 30 at a time.
Also that way you don't feel overwhelmed re: downloading and pp !

FWIW, I had about 80 slides scanned at my local camera store on a
flatbed scanner with slide attachment, and they were lousy compared
to what I get with the Promaster. They ordered the little device
for me, and also one for the store, which they admit does a much
better / cleaner job than their scanner. Any way you do it, you
are going to have to pp some, but I found MUCH less pp necessary
with the Promaster. On some slides, I had almost no pp other than
cropping the image and doing a little contrast / sharpening.

And the price is right !

IF you get the Promaster, I can give you some quick tips to save
some time - after you have it in hand. You'll need a lens that
will go to about 80 mm for best results. At least that has been my
best results.

carolyn
--
Ranger a.k.a chammett
http://www.pbase.com/chammett

'elegance is simplicity'

Click to expand...

Lenny

The only high-volume slide scanner I've seen is the Braun 4000, based on a slide projector. I havn't seen one work, so I can't give any more info.

http://www.firstcall-photographic.co.uk/pp/Digital_Photography/Film_Scanners/Braun_Slide_Scan_4000_Film_Scanner.html

Brian

Carolyn,

Does the Promaster works with x1.6 crop cameras ? I have seen some other slide duplicators that crop all slides on such cameras. They work fine with film and ff caermas though.
--
Gautam

Gautam Majumdar said:

Carolyn,
Does the Promaster works with x1.6 crop cameras ? I have seen some
other slide duplicators that crop all slides on such cameras. They
work fine with film and ff caermas though.
--
Gautam

Click to expand...

--Mine works on my 20D and on my Pro 1. I haven't tried it with the 28-105 lens, but that should be fine. You'll have to experiment with slides in the holder to see what focal length gets the least black border around the slide when you look through the view finder. For me it is easiest on my little Pro 1 as it has a swivel LCD and I can adjust the swivel to viewing height. The 28-200 L lens (SLR equivalent) works super well at exactly 85mm. You'd have to figure out the exact spot on YOUR zoom. It will be easily apparent once you have it set up and see how it works. You need a 52 mm thread for the device to fit on. I had to buy ($6) a step up adapter ring. That would depend on the lens you are using. Here are some exerpts from the (very brief) instructions . I am abbreviating and paraphrasing here:

"...Use a tripod to insure stability and continuity of light source. Best to use manual-focus, (though both the camera store as well as my own experinece show AF to work best). Set exposure to Auto. (You can experiment with that.)

Best results are obtained shooting in 80-120 mm range (SLR equivalent). (For me it is just perfect at 85mm on the Pro 1). You will probably find a black border around the duped image which I crop before pp. If working in aperture priority mode, set aperture to f11-22 for sharpest image.

Screw the slide dupicator onto the camera lens (or step up ring) and point the camera toward the light source. I use my slide light box set up on its long end on a counter top, with the tripod standing on the floor, and the camera pointing toward the light box on the counter. For me it works well with the end of the duplicator with the slide holder about 6 inches away from the center of the light box. This seems to be a comfortable working height. You put the slides in the holder, press the shutter to AF (or manually focus) and click and that's it.

I had to experiment a little to get the right distance and exact mm range. Like I mentioned 85 mm worked perfectly for me with the Pro 1. With my dSLR, I can't remember exactly what focal distance I used, but you will just have to experiment.

Here you go... my setup - hope this helps...





carolyn
Ranger a.k.a chammett
http://www.pbase.com/chammett

'elegance is simplicity'

Hellashot said:

I am in the process of scanning about 2500 slides as old as 50
years using a Minolta Dualscan 4. Colors on each slide need to be
adjusted as they are scanned as there is no real good slide to
digital color right off the bat.

You will definately need to get a scanner that comes with some sort
of dust removal function or photoshop plug in.

Click to expand...

--All of the slides I've scanned with the Promaster were archived in metal boxes and have been carefully filed. If yours are old or not well stored, Hellashot is right... be sure you wipe them off carefully before scanning. It is easier than cloning out dust blops !

FWIW... we scanned about 20 slides that were over 65 years old. They turned out beautifully after a little pp to bring out the faded colors. Some were in better condition than others, but if you are working with OLD slides like that, be prepared to have to fool with them a little after they are in the computer. Scanning is same (other than cleaning dust off prior to scanning) as duping slides in good condition.

I forgot to mention that I included some images of my setup in the above post.

carolyn
Ranger a.k.a chammett
http://www.pbase.com/chammett

'elegance is simplicity'

Also...some instructions on using the Promaster...

carolyn
--
Ranger a.k.a chammett
http://www.pbase.com/chammett

'elegance is simplicity'

thanks!

if anyone can post about using one of these with a 1.6x canon body that would be great.

i don't care if i have to "crop" the photo just as long as i can focus on and capture the entire slide picture image then tweak the RAW file

chinch said:

thanks!

if anyone can post about using one of these with a 1.6x canon body
that would be great.

i don't care if i have to "crop" the photo just as long as i can
focus on and capture the entire slide picture image then tweak the
RAW file

Click to expand...

--I just went to the Pro 1 because I could set it up using the flip screen LCD and didn't have to stoop over or adjust the setup so I could sit looking through the viewfinder of the 20D. NO problems using a crop camera. Everything depends on the lens, and you need something that will focus between 80-120 mm SLR equivalent, which should be within the parameters of the 24-105. Like I said, for me 85 mm SLR equivalent was perfect.

carolyn
Ranger a.k.a chammett
http://www.pbase.com/chammett

'elegance is simplicity'

You will definitely need to get a 58 > 52 mm step down ring. That worked on both my 20D with my 28-105 lens and my Pro 1, both of which are 58 mm threads. If you will look at the images I posted of Egyptian tombs and Cairo museum, those that don't specifically say they were digitized with the Pro 1 were taken with my 20D and (I think) the 28-105 lens. It is the only other lens I have that is 58 mm and that would work with the step down ring. About the only difference I can tell in the pp images from both cameras is dependent on the poor and mixed light sources of the original slides.

carolyn
Ranger a.k.a chammett
http://www.pbase.com/chammett

'elegance is simplicity'

Did the images I posted above showing how I set up the duplicator help ?

carolyn
--
Ranger a.k.a chammett
http://www.pbase.com/chammett

'elegance is simplicity'