Evening all. My dad has got thousands of slides stashed away in their house, but very few have seen the light of a projector in years, maybe decades. I think he’d really love if he could look at them on the computer, so was thinking about getting him a scanner so he can digitise his collection.

Can someone please recommend me a good place to start?

I imagine, as with all photography equipment, that the sky is the limit price wise. Although I would like to get him something decent quality, I doubt he’ll use it much after he’s archived the collection, so doesn’t want to be hugely expensive.

I did my folks with a 20 quid slide adapter. Like a lens with a slide holder. Click-slide-click-slide-click-slide-click-slide-click-slide. Reload. Repeat 200 times and you’re done.

You can get all in one solutions for not a lot too. Not tried them but can’t imagine they’re much different.

Send them to a slide scanning service to get done. You’ll probably pay about the same as a half decent scanner but get a better result and not have to spend hours and hours scanning stuff. You could even just take the slides from your dad’s place get them scanned and then return with them all loaded up on a drive ready to view, could be nice surprise that way.

That’s a damn good idea muppetWrangler!

Can anyone recommend a service they have used?

I’ve got a slide scanner you can borrow if you want. But TBH, if I was to do it again I’d use an external service.

Maybe slide scanning services are automated hence cheaper, but my lab charges 8eur per 36 scanned negs so multiplied by thousands would not be cheap.
If he’s only going to look at them a couple of times on a cheap monitor and not print them, a cheapish dedicated scanner might be less painful than a flat bed. I have a reflecta x7, basically a digital camera in a housing, scans direct to SDCard, you’d get a couple of hundred done in an evening. My flatbed would take much longer.

Cheers for the offer Cougar, but I suspect it’ll be a long job, something that he can do a little bit now and then.

He used to be really into photography, but he started to lose his fine motor skills in his early 50s due to MS, making it hard for him to use his camera. I think he’d really like to look at the pictures, but I doubt he’ll print them. If he does decide to get some printed, then he could always get the odd frame done professionally?

For decent quality, look at something like Plustek OpticFilm 8200. Costs about £200.
Though yes, it is rather slow. Especially if you want to tweak and clean up each slide.

I used to have scans made from slides when the film was processed. Even pro labs used to use a minilab for that sort of thing, and I was never impressed by the quality. They were fine for general use, but they were never completely sharp, and would lack detail and colour in the darker parts of the picture.

For really good quality scans the lab could use a drum scanner, but they would charge a good few quid for each one.

Some of the more expensive home/pro slide scanners (Nikon and Minolta for example) came with software which would have a bash at automatically cleaning and correcting the scans.

I know a few people who bought a scanner, spent many hours scanning their slide collection, then sold the scanner once they’d completed the task.

The options might be different depending on if the slides are mounted or not, and if they have glass or glassless mounts.

When I did mine about 12 years ago I used a Nikon Coolscan,I think it cost me £450 & it took a few weekends & evenings to get it all done.It’s certainly time consuming..

I’d expect a decent quality service would cost a packet, though are you paying for them to dick about with the photos to enhance them also? I’d only want raw scans. Cheap services I’d be wary about. Also I’d worry about sending the stuff off and stand a chance never seeing it again. Doesn’t matter if they have insurance, the photos are irreplaceable.

Anyway, likewise interested in something decent, though a mix of some slides and then a lot of negatives. Do these things do both and how easy is it scanning negatives?

As a side question (sorry)… scanning in silent 8mm films? There’s some knocking about with the family and would be good to get them done. Long ago some stuff was converted to VHS via a service but costly for a small amount and it gets the “memories” treatment with editing and naff music. Again I’d just want raw so can edit myself.

Be careful if you buy a Nikon or similar quality scanner off eBay you will struggle to get drivers for modern OS you may have to buy something like Silverfast to dive it. Make sure you allow for such in your budget. If you just want to look at them on a computer then Aldi do a scanner that will do the job admittedly slowly.

I’ve got one of these that I was going to put up on ebay:
Film / slide scanner
Open to offers if you want it.

Has he got a projector? Get it out and look at the slides!

Be careful if you buy a Nikon or similar quality scanner off eBay you will struggle to get drivers for modern OS you may have to buy something like Silverfast to dive it

This

I bought a fancy Nikon scanner and it does do a good job but it is too slow to do the job I wanted it for. Now I’m not sure I want to throw good money after bad and update the driver.

I know a few people who bought a scanner, spent many hours scanning their slide collection, then sold the scanner once they’d completed the task.

I know someone who did the first bit, but took too long to scan the slides and by the time he’d finished the scanner was nearly worthless, and then broke!

I don’t think the OP wants a flatbed, it’s too slow for the job. The Reflecta I mentioned above is literally just a camera, so it’s a couple of seconds to scan each one. There’s a review of the older model here, mine is identical but slightly higher resolution.

For negs I use a flatbed (v750) to do a quick, low res ‘contact sheet’ then pick the ones I want to scan properly. There are never more than 5 or so decent shots per roll, and I’m not going to spend time scanning rubbish I’ll never look at. The final scan takes a good few minutes on the Epson, a bit quicker if I use the dedicated 35mm scanner, an old Plustek.

I thought that the scanning service offered by shops was automated – the one I used wasn’t, they did each slide by hand. I think it cost something like 30p a slide but it was well worth it.

They also managed to develop some rolls of 35mm print film that had been exposed in 1974 and sat in a draw until 2014 and put the pictures onto a DVD – amazingly they all came out fine.

Depends how discriminating about quality you are and what film formats you have and the volume.

The v750 Epsons can give excellent results if used with care but are slow, and very prone to dust and misregistration. The plastic masks are a faff and expensive if they get damaged (easily done if scanning a filing cabinets worth). If the slides are mounted then you’ll have focus issues with any flatbed. It’s entirely possible if doing a family collection that there might be medium format size film from old 16/120 (essentially 645) folding cameras etc or even quarter plate cut film / glass plates etc. If you have a mix of stuff then a good flatbed is the way forward.

If it’s all 35mm in plastic mounts then a dedicated mounted scanner like one of the Nikon Coolscans is the choice for quality and speed, but isn’t cheap. On the other hand, it’s going to give far better quality than consumer grade scanners and the autocleaning options are genuinely helpful and speed enhancing if you understand Photoshop/Lightroom level software.

It would be worth reading this… Especially the comments regarding real world scan times.

Ken Rockwell on what he thinks about scanning thousands of slides…

Tip: whatever Ken Rockwell says is likely to be wrong.

When my auntie died, we found a load of boxes of slides and a couple of old projectors. Amazingly the bulb still worked in one of them, so I had a view. Most were flower gardens around the UK, but there were a few family ones in there.
I projected them onto my magnolia wall and took photos with my DSLR 😀
The ones orginally taken with flash came out ok… can’t see paying £400 for having a load of rhododendron photos being worthwhile…

I need to check the slides, though I think they’re in plastic mounts? They’ll have been made in the late 70s/80s I suspect.

Thanks for all the help. I managed to find a service who charge 20p per slide, though, like deadkenny said, I’d be worried they would get lost, and I can’t seem to find anything local that would be suitable. Side note, for people so into photography (and presumably aesthetic quality), scanning service websites are horrible.

My dad is not particularly tech savvy, so I suspect that there’s a fair chance that I’ll end up doing any image correction for him after they’ve all been digitised.

Great pic, I bet those sprouts were boiled for 25min 😀

Oi! My Granny was an awesome cook! 😆

I did something similar a few years ago. I already had a Nikon CoolScan IV from before I went digital and used to process negatives myself. It is very time consuming to do well. I managed to cut down on the number of scans required by buying off ebay an old hand held battery powered slide viewer to sort out which ones I wanted to save. I ended up making scans of only about 35% of the collection. It still took a number of weeks of evenings processing them, but the family now each has an archived set which was worthwhile

Holy thread resurrection Batman!

My crumblies have just asked me to sort 300-400 ish slides out for them – to be viewed on ipad and they’ve not seen the light of day for 30+ years.

OP – what did you do in the end? Who did you use?

I also have an slr so might consider doing it myself on the evenings I have away from home – @5thelephant what was the adapter you used as I can only seem to find more pricey ones?

Ta!

Rich last October I sifted through about 260 boxes of family slides, whittled it down to 6 boxes!!
I then scanned them using an Aldi slide scanner and sure they are not studio quality but for family viewing on a TV they are fine. You are quite welcome to pop round and borrow it.

Here you go 2 scans first is me on my pedal tractor in 1969 🙂

And one of another member on here! She claims her hair has never been that tidy since (1973)