UKH

I've been taking photos on hikes since i was a child, my dad used to bring his camera and we'd take photo stops several times every hike. my father sadly passed away 7 years ago and i came across a box of hid old slides and have been getting them scanned with a local company (supaphoto.com) and then printed to show my children, but i thought that maybe doing it myself and involving my children might create a fun and memorable experience. i was wondering if anyone knew how to do this? any scanners you could recommend just running me through the process? I'd love to share the photos with you all

several years ago I bought a slide scanner (from Jessops I think). It works fine but is very time consumming. I thought I would slowly scan my slide collection but progress slowed down quite quickly & most are yet to be scanned. Maybe this winter ...

I've been experimenting with using a DSLR and macro lens to photograph 35mm negatives. Camera on tripod, negative held flat on a lightbox. I use a spirit level to try to get the camera back and negative parallel. Results have been mixed. You can buy frames which hold the negative strip flat - Lomography make one, and another is made by Hamish who runs 35mmc.com. Nikon also make a device called the ES-2, which looks to be the best solution, again using a DSLR and macro lens.

I have tried using the DSLR technique. It worked OK, but was very time consuming and fiddly to get good results. I recently bought a Plustek 8200i scanner, which will scan negatives and slides. The film holder takes up to 6 negatives in a strip or the same number of slides. I am Linux only, so needed a scanner that was supported by Vuescan. However, the scanner comes with its own comprehensive software for Mac and Windows. You push the film through the scanner a frame at a time.

The scanning progress takes about 30 seconds per negative. Time taken depends on how much you want to tweak a setting for each frame. I decided to adopt a "standard" for each film type and not try to tweak each individual frame. Vuescan incorporates infrared scanning to help remove dust and some other imperfections. Vuescan offers an almost unlimited number of tweaking options and works with both Windows and Mac. There is a trial version.

There are a lot of words I'd use about slide scanning, especially in bulk, but 'fun and memorable' are not among them!  I absolutely love wet processes and shooting film, but gods I hate scanning.

Remember, you get much better results with colour negative film rather that colour reversal (slide) film. It all to do with grain structure and contrast. A drum slide scanner is the best for this task, or else take selected trannies/ film to a lab. I've had reasonable results from this. I also have a dedicated 35mm scanner, but quality is all dependent on the quality of the original being scanned!

have a look at the epson perfection v550/600 photo flatbed- quality up there with dedicated film scanners and can scan multiple 35mm/120 negatives at once..

There are companies which scan them for you, and you can also hire a specialised slide scanner which takes universal slideholders.  I've not yet tried it myself, but it might be a project for the winter.

My lockdown entertainment was scanning my grandads 1700 35mm colour slide photos from 1962-1985. I used an Epson Perfect v800 negative scanner.

You can mount 12 slides per A4 page on the plastic slide mount and scan each one to an individual file with the supplied Epson software. I think I did them at 4800dpi for the good pictures and the quality is outstanding. 

Scanned pictures were then imported into Lightroom for organising, cleaning up, processing and cloud storage. 

I got quite a good rhythm going and although time consuming it wasn't an unpleasant job. 1 slide takes about a minute to scan, plus another minute to import and upload, and then however much time you want to devote to cleaning dust spots, fixing wonky horizons, trimming the cardboard borders off the scan etc.

If you want any more details or some examples from this process to see how they compare to your scans drop me a forum message with your email.

I have a fairly cheap Canon A4 printer & scanner, which according to the manual can scan slides and negatives. I've not tried it mind you, but these days even cheapo stuff has high scanning resolutions.

If you want to do it seriously and well, buy one of these scanners

https://www.holydogwater.com/product/124307431496/

and then sell for a small loss (or even break even) when you've finish. Consider it an 'unlimited hire' with a large deposit. 

The Epson 700/750 series is a second best and they go for reasonable prices second hand. The Minolta is bloody brilliant and easy to use though.

Once you've scanned your film and you've chosen your favourite you want to get printed. Send them to me ... 

http://www.drumscanning.co.uk/

And I'll do a good job for you with a bit of a discount. You can try it out for free by sending two frames and only pay return postage. 

To give you an idea of the quality, here's an example slide scan I recently did for a client vs someone using a £40,000 camera and £3,000 macro lens.. 

http://www.drumscanning.co.uk/2020/08/28/testimonial-gerd-ludwig/

and here's another sample from a guy using an OM2 with 1600 speed film

http://static.timparkin.co.uk/static/tmp/35mm-OM2-Fuji-Superia-1600-6000dpi...

And finally, you can check out Alan Hinkes' 8000m book for some of my work. 

Tim