UKH

Just wondering whether I should bite the bullet and buy a scanner, but have read that better results can be obtained using a dslr with macro lens. Anyone tried either options?  Lots of negatives to do as well.  

Personally I'd say using a mirrorless camera setup is your best bet in terms of quality. I have a flatbed scanner for negatives and slides and while it is decent, the results from a mirrorless camera are a significant amount better and more adjustable.

I’ve got a Nikon D810, not mirrorless, and happy to buy a macro lens - do you think this would be better than a scanner ?

It's hard to say, DSLR cameras can have a little bit of shake from the mirror moving, which in normal macro cases is fine, but can reduce quality in the final photo. I haven't tried using the DSLR setup so I couldn't comment but there will definitely be some much more in depth resources online that can advise

Yes, though a faff.

I digitised a load of slides last year. I rigged up a light box using a LED panel light as a backlight with a slide holder made from thick black card. I then positioned the camera over it on a tripod using a 100mm macro lens and took the shots either with a remote release and self timer or a phone app. I did some on a Canon 5DS and the rest on a R5, so comparable to your D810. It matters not a bit whether the camera is mirrorless or not.

I shot everything in RAW and processed them in Capture1 Pro. I was amazed at what I got from the images in terms of highlight recovery. I was also amazed that many photos which I thought were sharp 30 years ago turned out to be anything but!

There is a lively Facebook group dedicated to digitising slides using a camera though most of it is pretty kit heavy and probably only worth it if you shoot a lot of film.

Edit: if your camera has a mirror lock up feature use it, I did on the 5DS and had no problems with shake, though I do have a tripod and head you could abseil from.

some proper slide scanners include an infra red lamp which identifies dust and surface defects on slides and removes them from the scan image. You won’t get that using a mirrorless camera

I've digitised a lot of slides using a plustek 2800i alide scanner and VueScan aoftware. I was very pleased with the results.

I also have a flatbed scanner and i looked into using that, and also the option of a dslr, but a dedicated slide scanner seemed to be the best tool for the job.

Regarding slide scanners, as someone said above, they are the best tool for the job unless you are pursuing quality/resolution above any other considerations. If you have say, a few hundred slides and you're not bothered about big print potential, it might be better to take them to a professional photography developer/printer/processor and get the lot done in one go. They can digitise the lot to a drive and remove dust and scratches in the process. I'm anal about quality and too tight to pay someone to do it for me, besides I already had all the kit (I occasionally do a lot of macro) which was pretty much what the serious digitisers were using. 

I'm using a Kodak 'Slide N Scan' scanner. It does slides & negatives, but only to Jpeg files.

I have many boxes of my own slides and prints and recently inherited many more from my late father.

The image quality is good enough for me as they are stored on Google photos and occasionally on social media.

For the prints I use an App on my phone, which are also Jpegs.

The scanner has a small screen to view the slide.

It is a slow process, mainly due to looking at all the slides & prints to decide which to scan and then reviving fond memories.

There is a fair bit of staring into nothing and thinking of past adventures.

I am taking the view that although I will end up with only a small fraction of the original images, they are at least more easily accessible compared to a lot of boxes gathering dust in the attic.

Thanks all. So far, Ian shares similar view to mines and think I will invest in the same gizmo. I’ve got the gear, but very little time (I’m particularly useless at the moment, full of illness and just want to mess about outside whenever I’m not coughing my guts out).  
As an aside, I downloaded an app for my phone, held a couple of slides up to a decent lamp, and took these on my phone from slides. Me on Ben Nevis a good while back, and a few others. 

Obviously in the intervening years technology has changed... but... Mid-90s digital cameras weren't really a thing: I scanned slides with a Nikon Coolscan, getting around 40MB per image. Cleaned the scan for dust and dynamic range only. Each scan from loading the slide to putting it back in the box: 8 minutes.

Maybe others have more up to date experiences ? But ask yourself what you want to do with the images; what quality scan you need to do that and what time you want to invest in the project...

Cant comment on slides but have used a plustek 8100 with the silverfast software (included) on 35mm negatives, with great success... does take aaaaaggggesssss tho...

I scanned thousands of colour slides over the lockdown with a flatbed scanner designed for the job (Epson v800 off eBay) and it was far better than trying with a camera and light box. Being able to do 12 at a time whilst loading the next 12 in a spare frame saved hours. 
 

Definitely better quality than a dslr which might produce higher mpx files, but remember that absolute size isn’t everything. 

I've digitised a few hundred of my slides but still have thousands more to go. Mine were done on a old Minolta DiMage IV film scanner which sadly no longer works. It took forever to do each slide to output as a TIFF so I switched to highest quality JPEG for the rest. With dust and scratch removal it still took ages though. It was a bit of a faff to be honest.

If I ever get round to doing the rest I'll probably use the camera / macro lens / adaptors route. There is an (oldish) article here about using Nikon cameras for this -

https://www.scantips.com/es-1.html

You would need to check you can still get all the necessary bits and pieces.

Despite the faff it is worth doing, perhaps focusing on favourite pics if you have lots to do.

It is sometimes possible to get quite decent results out of slides that look like a hopeless case, but does require some work in addition to the sacnning bit. The pic below from Carn Mor Dearg back in January 1993 was badly underexposed, had multiple conflicting colour casts, and had several bad scratches from careless handling so I was quite pleased to get a result which reminded me of an outstanding outing.