Dedicated Slide Scanner

[jb]

Well, if we did not have a Slide Scanner archive, we sure have one now!

Thanks everyone for so many interesting and most informative comments on the subject.

I have about 2000 slides. Most of them are in 120 slides carrousels, Some of them are still in their original photo lab containers.

The Nikon CoolScan is out of my price range. Even if I increase my expenditure to 200-300$,for a newer flat bed with slide scanning capabilities, I still would have to spend the time to cull the slides and select those that I want to digitize.

Many of your comments contained various links to various solutions. One of them, actually 3 or 4 of them, referred to camera/slide viewer arrangements. So I am tempted to fabricate a camera/slide viewer assembly. I already have a lighted slide viewer.

However, my first order of business would be to select the slides I want to digitize. This would involve to either use the slide projector or a light box that I have. Either will require me to handle most of the slides one by one, a very time consuming travail, that I estimate (undersestimate?) to be about 1 minute per slide, or 2000 minutes divided by 60=33 hours or so. At 2 hours a day, what I am I saying, at not much more than ONE hour a day, this will take a month or so, IF I don’t get discouraged!!!

This exercise should reduce the number of slides to digitize to what? 1000? 800? 500? or less?(was I that bad at taking pictures!!?) Let’s say I reduce the total to 600. Again I will have to physically handle each of them. But this time I estimate the total handling time, including the transfer of the photos to the computer and the burning of a DVD, at 3 minutes if not more, that’s another 1800 minutes or 30 hours!

I think I just convinced myself that after making the slide selection, if I go ahead with this, I will use an outside service to have the slides digitized. Then I won’t have to buy anything and resell the equipment after I am finished with it.

Come to think of it, I am sorry to have started this topic...(says he with a chuckle)

Many, many, thanks again.

jb

[jcarter]

Actually its a pretty neat topic, my Photoshop classmates are always talking about digitizing slides.
And you sure have the time frame correct, its the looking, sorting, and the time you take looking thru them that is the one reason that
Ive not gotten very far with our project.
Jane

[Xairbusdriver]

A wise decision jb, while you could save money doing it yourself (as usual), the time you'd spend could probably be better used. The money is certainly secondary, you can usually find some more of that. Time, however, is precious and we never know how much of it we 'have.'

[Raven]

Very interesting topic. One I've pondered for years.
Have 1000's of slides. But didn't want to take the time or expense to convert them to digital files.
Some good suggestions here.
My use would be of a good enough quality to use them for design/printing purposes.
I like the idea of an attachment for my Nikon D80 and just point and shoot!
Purchasing a $400 macro lens for one time(!) use poses a similar quandry!
Can you rent such a lens somewhere?

Thanks for all the input!

[Paddy]

Yes, you can rent camera lenses - there are both stores that rent them and some online services:

http://www.lensrentals.com/
http://photodoto.com/8-online-lens-rental-stores-compared/
http://www.vistek.ca/rentals/