Transfering slide film to digital pictures?

Question

Over the past few years I have taken lots of pictures using slide film........ obviously now everyone has moved to digital images.
How can I transfer my slide images to digital images? Is there are machine that I could buy that would read my slides and turn them into digital prints? Thanks for any help received.

Answer 1

If you don't want to lose the resolution and details, you are going to have to bite the bullet and get a good film scanner. The Nikon Coolscan V ED will go up to 4,000 dpi resolution. There is a slight learning curve, but it's a great piece of equipment. Minolta makes one that is probably comparable in the same price range, which is about $550. There is another company that I am not familiar with called Pacific Image that makes several slighly lower resolution film scanners for about half the price.

There are other Nikon products as well as some by other manufacturers. I chose the Coolscan V ED because a review in Popular Photography said that the dynamic range of the V ED was greater than perceived by the human eye and that's good enough for my purposes.

Here's one example of a slide I scanned. Flickr will allow up to a 20x30 poster print from this high resolution image.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/538368473/

Here's a link to a lower priced scanner that would also be suitable:
http://www.popphoto.com/digitalscanners/2491/which-scanner-should-i-buy.html

While going to a photo store is certainly the most cost effective for a few slides, if you have a lot to do, you might consider using a commercial service (do an internet search and you'll find one near you) or just buying your own slide scanner. I have a Nikon Coolscan V and it's a great piece of equipment. The only downsides are the intial cost of $600 (It has not dropped in price in 3 years.), which make the drug store approach rather attractive for a small stack of slides, and the time cost. Once you start doing this, you will want to make every scan perfect before you finish with it. Fingerprints and dust that you can overlook on a projected image look horrible in a print.

Here's a place that says they will do it for 35¢ a slide scanned to 2,000 dpi, which is decent. The price goes up to 45¢ for 3,000 dpi and 65¢ for 4,000 dpi. They have a $100 minumum order, though, so if you have "only" 150 slides, you may as well go for the highest resolution. When you get your images back, the higher the resolution, the easier they are going to be to work on.

http://www.myspecialphotos.com/scanning.asp

Answer 2

You need a scanner that has the capacity to scan transparencies. Nikon makes good ones, but they can be pricey. It will depend on how many slides you have, so it might be worth it to get one with a feeder.

I use an older Agfa flatbed scanner, T1200, and love it. The only thing is, I can only do about 20 at a time, with the optional tray that I bought. But I can at least batch scan them, and it gives me good results.

It is not dedicated to transparencies, however, and I can use it for anything at all. That's what I like.

HTH.

Answer 3

Get your self a decent scanner. They will have slide and negative scanning capabilities. I recently bought an Epson for about $250 on sale and it does just about anything when it comes to scanning, and it was rated real good by Consumer Reports.

Hope this helps.