How do you convert old slides / photos / videos to Digital?

[englanddg]

I'm currently in the middle of doing so, and would be curious how others go about it? Do you use a service? If not, what equipment do you use?

 

[maryszhi]

my family and i took all of our stuff to walgreens and they did a great job! i notice your from england so any drug store with a photo/specialty department will work.

 

[NowInc]

We use a Artixscan 3200xl at my job. We have all sorts of adapters (we mostly use it for scanning x-rays but it does great for slides too). I think at this point even wallgreens can do a decent job of scanning, as long as you are prepared to do a bit of post production afterwards.

 

[ddbowdoin]

I'm currently in the middle of doing so, and would be curious how others go about it? Do you use a service? If not, what equipment do you use?

180 bucks for an EPSON V600... comes with adapters that hold slides.

It get's the job done, is it as detailed as a 3000 dollar scanner... no, but it gets the job done.

 

[ddbowdoin]

I'm currently in the middle of doing so, and would be curious how others go about it? Do you use a service? If not, what equipment do you use?

hope this helps... this is a pretty damn good scanner for 175 bucks

 

[flynnibus]

..except that entirely distracting grass blade..

 

[ddbowdoin]

..except that entirely distracting grass blade..

Yeah, completely agree... I was just sharing to show how a slide was being scanned.

It's a totally new game for me, I'm so used to having an LCD screen that I've found myself making some pretty damn rookie mistakes with this camera. Oh well, all for the better in the long run

 

[NowInc]

What blade?

 

[ddbowdoin]

What blade?

LOL, the power of the repair brush or clone tool?

I try to leave these alone as much as I can... I use the repair brush just to remove spots and dustmarks from the slide, but I try to nail as much as I can in the camera as a way of challenging myself. Otherwise, if I'm messing with everything in PS I might as will stick with my digital rig

 

[NowInc]

Actually content aware fill. One of the coolest and yet spookiest features of CS5.5 and CS6

 

[ddbowdoin]

Actually content aware fill. One of the coolest and yet spookiest features of CS5.5 and CS6

don't believe I have used that... I have Cs5

 

[NowInc]

I think its in CS5 too...

 

[ddbowdoin]

I think its in CS5 too...

good call! I'll have to work with this

 

[5thGenTexan]

Instead of starting my own thread, I will post here I have in excess of 2000 slides from when we stopped using slide film in the mid 90's back to the 50's. I may have that many prints as well. Then there are the boxes of negatives that I am not even sure what all is there.

Would I be better off biting the bullet and getting a scanner to handle the job or send things out? None of this is professional work, I just want to preserve it digitally so that everyone in the family can have thier own disk and to make sure everone in the family has a disk for the purpose of preservation in case of fire or something.

I have looked at the V600 from Epson and also considered the V700 because it will scan 12 slides at a time instead of 4.

 

[NowInc]

Instead of starting my own thread, I will post here I have in excess of 2000 slides from when we stopped using slide film in the mid 90's back to the 50's. I may have that many prints as well. Then there are the boxes of negatives that I am not even sure what all is there.

Would I be better off biting the bullet and getting a scanner to handle the job or send things out? None of this is professional work, I just want to preserve it digitally so that everyone in the family can have thier own disk and to make sure everone in the family has a disk for the purpose of preservation in case of fire or something.

I have looked at the V600 from Epson and also considered the V700 because it will scan 12 slides at a time instead of 4.

IMO it would be substantially cheaper to just get your own scanner.

 

[5thGenTexan]

IMO it would be substantially cheaper to just get your own scanner.

I have come to the same conclusion. Additionally, after looking there are 35mm slides, 110 slides, 126 slides in the mix. They also are all different directions in the boxes. I have a job ahead of me.

 

[thomas998]

IMO it would be substantially cheaper to just get your own scanner.

You will also have much better success. I've had slides sent out in the past and had mixed results in how they were scanned. The same place not less than a week between the two jobs and one just didn't come back well at all. Scanning is much slower, but it pays off in quality and money at the same time.

 

[ratherbeinwdw]

I'm currently in the middle of doing so, and would be curious how others go about it? Do you use a service? If not, what equipment do you use?[/quote

I'm currently in the middle of doing so, and would be curious how others go about it? Do you use a service? If not, what equipment do you use?

I use a self feeding Pandigital picture scanner and a hand held scanner for all our old photos and negatives. They both do a great job. You can either scan them to sd card or directly to the computer. They are both very inexpensive, but do the job. I use the hand held one to scan 8X10's as they won't fit into the small one.