Converting old slides

[Lotto]

Anyone paid to have slides converted to dvd? I was wondering if this is an expensive venture.

[Suhit Gupta]

Anyone paid to have slides converted to dvd? I was wondering if this is an expensive venture.
Do you mean for a process other than just scanning them all and burning them onto a DVD?

Suhit

[Jason Dunn]

Anyone paid to have slides converted to dvd? I was wondering if this is an expensive venture.

Depends on how many you have, and what your time is worth do you. If you have a lot of slides, and a lot of time, it may be cheaper to guy a scanner with a slide scanning attachment...I'd get a quote from a local place on the cost, then compare that to the cost of a good scanner that can scan slides.

[possmann]

OK - I have to ask - what scanners do you use to scan slides? Any recommendations or things to look for?

My parents have a ton of old slides (glass) and I'd love to scan them on to the pc...

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Well, if you're looking for a scanner, a dedicated film scanner is what you should be looking for. I myself have a Nikon Coolscan III which I picked up cheap (slightly over US$120).

The current crop of cheap film scanners would be the Acer Scanwit 2740S (~US$450) and the Minolta Dimage Dual Scan III (~US$350). The Acer offers Firewire and ICE for dust removal, while the Minolta offers USB 2.0 and some software thingy for dust removal.

If you're willing to spend more money, look at the Nikon Coolscan V. 4000dpi resolution! Think it should cost about US$700?

[Suhit Gupta]

OK - I have to ask - what scanners do you use to scan slides? Any recommendations or things to look for?

My parents have a ton of old slides (glass) and I'd love to scan them on to the pc...
Actually I have only scanned in 35mm (film) slides and have used an HP Scanjet 5500c. I initially got the scanner mainly to scan in my ridiculously large collection of 4x6 photos - hard copies (and since the scanner was known for it's photo feeder, good resolution and general overall quality). But after I saw my officemate use it to scan in some of his slides, I tried it on my (very small) set as well. Now I do have to say that I have not had much experience with scanning slides, but I believe I got good results with it. Unfortunately I don't know how glass slides will work on this device, but this may be a start.

Suhit

[Janak Parekh]

Actually I have only scanned in 35mm (film) slides and have used an HP Scanjet 5500c.
The big problem, assuming you get good quality, is the hassle of mounting slides. Dedicated slide scanners let you can stick a stack of 100 slides (or more!) in them and it'll run through them much like the 5500c handles 4x6s.

possman, it ultimately depends on what "ton" is...

--janak

[Lotto]

My parents probably have about 6-8 boxes of 5-6 trays each. Sounds like it'd be worth checking for someone who has that scanner equipment already. Will have to check into my local Cord camera shop. I know it does tons of restorative work.

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

The dedicated slide scanners that allow batch scanning of a hundred slides will cost you an arm, a leg, and possibly half a torso. =P Typically your lower end (read: affordable) slide scanner should allow batch scans in sixes (a film strip or six mounted slides).

If you want more, you'll need to get a more expensive scanner (eg Coolscan 5000), and buy the additional accessories. In the Coolscan 5000's case, it's about twice the price of the Coolscan V, and will let you scan 50 mounted slides, or 40 unmounted slides, provided they haven't been cut.