Slide to digital

[SenorNikonMan]

I need to convert quite a few 35mm slides to digital. I do have a flat bed scanner that will do this, but I need better quality than I can do at home. Where can I have this done?

[jorgemonkey]

Depending on how high quality you want, you could photograph them. I was give the Nikon Bellows set, and I bought the slide copying adaptor and shot the slides with my D70.

You could send them out to get scanned in, or you could buy a dedicated slide scanner.

[SmartWombat]

I have a Dimage scanner of some vintage, and might dig it out to see if I can get any drivers to work with XP (I doubt it).

Photographing the transparencies with a bellows, copier attachment, and my 50mm lens on the 1DSmkII is probably going to give better results, quicker than trying to make the scanner work
It might even be cheaper
Thanks for reminding me of that idea !

[another view]

A friend of mine and I talked about this recently, and we think it might be best to buy something like an LS5000 scanner and auto-feed attachment and then sell it when we're done with it. Neither of us is shooting slides anymore so we're only concerned with what we already have. There would be a learning curve with setting all of this up, but once it was going correctly it shouldn't (hopefully) be much more work than loading a stack of slides and leaving it alone.

Our plan - which may involve another person or two - would be to buy the equipment brand new and then sell it when we're done with it. We'd split the cost and also the money that we would get from selling it. Resale value is decent on these items so (other than time) it might cost less than $100 each if we split it 3-4 ways. He's a computer guy, so he has a spare that could be set up for just this purpose (with tons o' RAM, of course). When my pile is done I'd come over with a hard drive and some blank DVD's and leave with my scans and a backup. Done, except for Photoshop work as needed.

PS - that 300 f4.5 EDIF is a great lens. I'm looking forward to scanning some of the images I have that were taken with that same lens.

[GB1]

Can't recommend any but there's a number of places that specialize in this for a fee. Just doing a quick Google search resulted in

www.DigMyPics.com
www.ScanCafe.com
http://www.slidescanning.com/slide-scanning.htm

Hope this helps

[freygr]

Depends, I still have not scanned all my slides (started in summer 2000). It takes about 2-5 minutes per slide using a Nikon Cool scan, Load the slide, preview and crop, scan, remove slide and place back in slide case. Granted the auto feeder is nice and would reduce the time of loading and unloading. Some flat bed scanners now have slide adapters with high resolutions than my old Nikon Cool Scan and the LS5000. Also the scanning time is highly dependent on the options selected for post scan processing (GEM & ICE examples).

[mjs1973]

If you're still looking for a place to get your slides scanned, you can check out www.newdarkroom.com. They are offering a scanning service for 50 cents/slide. Check out their order for for additional charges depending on what resolution and other services you want.

http://www.newdarkroom.com/forms/ndr_slide_scanning.pdf