Need a suggestion for a slide scanner to put RR slides on PowerPoint

Looking for one myself to scan to computer. I have about 600 slides to do.

 

Neal,

 

I'm in the same boat you are in, and have been struggling with the same issue for several years now, without good resolution. What I can tell you is forget the cheap units. They are nothing but garbage.  Some people claim to have had good results with flatbed scanners, but again, my experience has been otherwise.  At the expensive end of the spectrum is the Nikon Coolscan 9000. This does produce quality images from slides. However, I don't know how long each image takes, nor how much it can be automated.  It's not cheap. Try ~$7000 or so street price. There are older versions available on the "Bay", but I don't know how compatable the software is with today's operating systems.

I've been looking at Plustek as a reasonable compromise. Their latest is  ~$500, and MAY be up to the task. Unfortunately, I have not found anyone who has used one yet.

 

The last alternative is to go through your collection and select those that you truly want digitized. Pack them up and take them to you local camera shop. Around here, it's Dan's Camera City. They can scan them in for you, at a price. It won't be cheap, but it will be right, and you don't have to fuss with the scanning end at all. Food for thought.

 

Chris

LVHR

 

PS Let me know what you decide!

Unless you need a scanner and have plenty of spare time....look online for firms that scan them in bulk, let you preview them and then pay for just those you would like burned to disk.

 

Matt

 

Need to know what price range you're comfortable with, the quality you want of slide conversion you're aiming for, the original quality of your slides, the total number of slides you wish to convert and the time and effort you're willing to put into coverting them before realistic advice can be given.

Options for converting slides range from the least expensive but time consuming of using a simple slide holding device that's mounted to the lense of a SLR camera and you then photograph each slide. A flatbed scanner with a slide holder can also be used and results will vary dependent on whether the scanner uses direct or reflected light to do the conversioon. A dedicated slide copier generally yields better and faster results than the first two options I've mentioned but a caveat is that the less eepensive home units yield questionable and unacceptable results to photo enthusiasts. An expensive professional slide convertor will give uncompromising and highly satisfying superb results.

Costwise, depending on the number of slides you plan to convert, having it done by a company specializing in such conversions might be your best option both in cost and satisfying results. Such companies also offer additional services of color and quality restoration often desirable tfor older slides which might suffer from natural degradation of detail, color shifting, etc. due to age.   

Try http://www.scancafe.com/

 

I've heard good things.

 

I am a photographer, and have been transferring my negatives and slides to digital.  I picked up the same scanner that my photo lab uses.  Epson Perfection V500.  it is a flat bed scanner with masks.  you can scan 4 slides at a time, it takes about 3 min a slide for the resolution I am using.  there are two shining points about it, #1 it costs about 100.00 (Adorama is where I got mine) and two it has Digital ICE built in.  Here are two examples form slides with no image enhancement, the only thing is that I use ICE, .  Granted it takes a bit, but once you develop a system it is painless.  I have scanned about 1200 images.. getting my moneys worth,  i would be happy to answer any questions ,

 

Bill

Slide digitizer

I've scanned over 3,000 slides using an old Epson scanner that does 4 slides at a time. First 1,400 took about 4 days. I set my scanner and laptop on a TV tray and babysat while watching TV, etc. Once you get a system going, it's not all that bad. I forget how much it would have cost to send them out, but it wasn't cheap and there's always the chance they'll get lost. I'm in the process now of scanning my pre-digital photos. That takes a lot more time and patience. Of course, it helps to be retired.

I second Scan Cafe. Even though I have two Nikon 9000 film scanners,  simple work I would send it out

Walmart will digitize slides for you, as well as old movies.  Pricing is not too bad but it is not 'cheap'. I had about 1200' of Super 8mm done and it is about $75 per 400 ft of film(8x50ft rolls).  I am not sure what the cost of slides would be.  But it saves you lots of time.  

With thousands of slides to scan I used ClickSlide similar to Rob's.  The system uses Carousel trays.

I bought a Plustek 7600Ai from *&* about one year ago. I have scanned over 900 slides and am pleased with the results. This is a manual scanner that sells for around $500 and that "low price" is due to the fact that handling the slides is a manual process, no automatic feed, etc.

One think I did learn when scanning is that this scanner comes bundled with Silver Scan software which manipulates the image much like Photoshop. I tried using the Silver Scan dust and scratch and it eliminated the handrails and parts of the front running board steps on my steam images! (I tried a higher threshold and the image was too blurred,) So now I scan with the Plustek and open the image in the full blown Photoshop 7, which also has auto color adjustment. I sharpen, etc. in Ph. 7 and the images turn out very good. Photoshop is still the gold standard.....in my opinion.

Wish I would have purchased a Nikon Coolscan when Nikon was building them, but I have heard they have a tendency to crash a computer. And I am not sure they work with the new 64 bit software systems. What is obvious is that Nikon has never updated this software in recent years.

As to copying movies, there are a lot of hacks out there. I did locate a firm in McKees Rocks, PA that uses conversion equipment modified from the film industry. Their web site is very impressive and I am anxious to try them.....

I have a Canon Canoscan 9950F which cost me just under $300 several years ago.  The results of scanning all photo formats have been excellent.  The scanner came bundled with special trays for many negative formats as well as 35mm sized slides.  The slide tray holds 12 slides which can be scanned at one time, while saving each slide to a separate file name.

 

I imagine an equivalent model would still be available for a price in that ballpark.

 

Bill

I have old slides to scan too, if I ever find the right deal on a scanner. I copied a few by taking digital photos of projected images, with mediocre results.

 

OC&E East Switchback - by Ace 1974

Just a bit of technical advice

Power Point only  needs low resolution files, really no more than the screen resolution. If you are going to go through the effort of scanning slides then go big and scan at the Maximum Optical resolution of your scanner in a non-lossy format such as DNG, RAW or TIFF. If the scanning software that comes with your scanner only offer JPG chuck it and get one like Vuescan (www.hamrick.com) that offers other formats. All scanners can support multiple formats, its the software that doesn't

Then rescale and convert copies of the files (never the original ) to fit into PowerPoint and save them as JPG's. Don't put high res files in PowerPoint it just makes the presentation too large and too slow.

 

Finally when you look at the specs for the scanner only pay heed to the max optical resolution, the interpolated or digital resolution is BS and does nothing to improve your images.

 

Finally a dedicated film scanner will beat a flatbed with film holders every time, but they are getting harder to get.  Shop around and see what you can find. My Nikon 9000's  are going for over 4 grand each on eBay right now, but I refuse to sell the 2nd one out of fear the first one will die before I run out of film to scan. Also why I am hanging onto the Minolta scanner as a reserve unit (besides it does a better job on black and white than the Nikon does)

I found one of these on sale a while back  http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/..._14Mp_35mm_Film.html

 

First one was DOA but I have been happy with the replacement.  You are not going to use this to scan your slides in for the next Morning Sun book but for looking at them on the computer I have been happy with it.  

 

If I had 2 grand I didn't need I would love one of these http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/..._SlideScan_6000.html

 

FWIW here is the thread when I asked the same question in September https://ogrforum.com/d...ent/9173459911126392

Thanks for all the replies.  I was leaning towards just getting the slides commercially scanned until I read Garfield's reply.  Can't find your e-mail, but do you know if the resolution of the images from the Wolverine scanner you refer to are big enough to use for a PowerPoint presentation.  Do you recommend getting the cable they show to connect it directly to the computer as well as the extra slide holders?

 

Neal  the wolverine resolution is 4600 x 3100

Far more than PowerPoint needs. If you start loading scans made that big into PP the presentation will be huge and slow

Can the resolution be lowered on that unit?

 

I'll look back at your suggestions too

I am sure it will give you options to (smaller size is all scanner software dependent) , but it's far better to scan large and resize in an external program (not PowerPoint which scales images it doesn't make the files smaller)

Look at something like PhotoShop Elements to size them after the scan

I just turned my Wolverine on and I cant find a way to adjust the resolution.

BTW since I bought mine they have come out with a 20 MP slide only scanner (mine is 14MP and does photos too)

Here is the factory page http://www.wolverinedata.com/i...site/quicklinks/C72/

I would link you to the manual but that link is broke.

 

Things to know before you get one:

It works as a stand alone scanner.  If you have a SD card and a wall outlet you can scan.

 It comes with a itty bitty LCD screen.

 For about $12 you can get a cable to hook it up to your tv.

 You can use it to play back images on your pc but not while scanning. In other words if you want to see what you just scanned on your pc you have to exit the capture mode, go in to playback mode (they call it something else). Then you can see what you just scanned on your pc screen.  Because of this I would plan on getting the cable and connecting to a tv or monitor (anything with a RCA or Line in jack)while scanning or just scanning all your slides in and editing them on you pc later.  

You do not get to choose file format it saves as JPG.

 You do not get to pick file names. It will start with PICT0001.JPG and go from there.

 It has color and brightness adjustments you can make but they are nearly impossible to detect on the 2.4" screen.

 

Having said all that, it is quick,easy to use and does a pretty fair job.  If I would have known that I would be upgrading my PC about 6 months after buying it I might have gone with one of the epson flatbeds.  The pics posted in this thread from one look pretty nice.  The stand alone feature is nice.  Part of the reason I went with this model is so we can take it to the In-laws house and quickly copy a few boxes of photos.  

 

If you want quick, fast and the limitations I mentioned don't bother you, the Wolverine will be great.

 

BTW I did not buy the extra slide holders.  If you have a bunch of slides and an assistant to load and reload they would make a lot of since.   Doing it by yourself I don't know if you would save any time by loading and scanning  12 pics before having to unload and reload.