Transferring slides to a digital format

I’ve used a Nikon Coolscan IV to scan in a load of my fathers slides from the 60’s (See a few of them here) and – if you’ve got loads to do – it’s worth looking for scanners which have the ability to clean up your slides (Digital ICE on the Nikons) and restore faded colours. Either of these can be done in a editing program but it’s an awful lot easier to let the scanner software do the donkey work.

“Digitising” 35mm Transparencies

Hi Pete,

For what it’s worth, I’ve got a ca. 2001 vintage Canon Flatbed scanner which has a lid-mounted “backlight” and a film holder which will accept either unmounted 35mm strips, or mounted 35mm trannies. Scan resolution is up to 4800dpi (I think). Sorry can’t remember the model, and anyway, being 5 years old it’ll be long superseded.

It works well, and a couple of default buttons save time configuring the thing to recognise 35mm film/slide scans rather than usual flat bed scans etc.

I have been fairly pleased with results, but find the whole process painfully slow – maybe it’s my PC, maybe its the scanner, or maybe it’s the pair of them together, but each scan takes an age, and my grand plans to scan all my old 35mm images (slides and photos) died a death within a month or so – now I only scan them as and when i need digital copies of them. I know some of the recent Epson scanners now have holders which take four 35mm slides per scan, and presumably save data as four seperate files via clever software, which would save a lot of time.

So, main thrust of this post is :Be warned, scanning a large library of images may take many, many, hours if you use a typical flat-bed scanner with a slide mount – especially if you are going to tweak each image in photoshop post-scanning.

Use of one of the lens mounted slide holders on a digicam may offer a time saving? Or, acquisition of a semi-pro scanner may be worth considering.

Paul F

With regards to file size – 1 pixel does not = 1 unit of memory. The amount of memory required will depend upon colour depth and a number of other variables too – so yes, file size is important. Displaying on a monitor is not always why you might make an image available on the web – a higher resolution will allow you to download and print an image in a variety of sizes, and resolution in that sense is a measure of clarity.

Indeed so… But my point was that whether the resolution is 300ppi or 72ppi, the file size will remain the same (assuming that things like colour depth, compression, etc, etc, are also the same).

Sure there are other uses than just display on the web, but the original comment was “for uploading to this site” and as such whether the image is 72ppi or 300ppi will make no difference to how the picture is displayed on this or any other website. I merely wanted to point out that the myth of 72ppi for web display is just that, and if anyone is rescanning just to achieve that resolution for web display they are wasting their time.

Andy

There are two myths surrounding displaying images on the web – first is that DOTS per inch are important, and second that ANY resolution is important.

You are wasting your time scanning at 72ppi (its pixels per inch, not dots per inch anyway – the latter is a measure of printer ink drop size) for web use, as well as at 300ppi for print. For the web, just use the 300ppi scan, downsized to whatever image width/height you want – i.e pixels across/down.

When displaying on the web, image resolution is irrelevent as the display of the on-screen image is dictated solely by the number of pixels in the image, not the resolution. For example, if your screen resolution is 1600 pixels across and your image is 1024 pixels across, the image will occupy approximately 10/16ths of the width of the screen, irrespective of the resolution of the image and irrespective of the size of the screen. Likewise, if your screen resolution is set to 1024 pixels across and your image is 1600 pixels across, you will see approximately 10/16ths of the image on your screen again irrespective of the image resolution or the screen size. There isn’t even any file size advantage – an image that is 1024 pixels across at 72ppi will have the same file size as an image that is 1024 pixels across at 300ppi.

Andy

With regards to file size – 1 pixel does not = 1 unit of memory. The amount of memory required will depend upon colour depth and a number of other variables too – so yes, file size is important.

Displaying on a monitor is not always why you might make an image available on the web – a higher resolution will allow you to download and print an image in a variety of sizes, and resolution in that sense is a measure of clarity.

I scan at 72dpi for uploading to this site

There are two myths surrounding displaying images on the web – first is that DOTS per inch are important, and second that ANY resolution is important.

You are wasting your time scanning at 72ppi (its pixels per inch, not dots per inch anyway – the latter is a measure of printer ink drop size) for web use, as well as at 300ppi for print. For the web, just use the 300ppi scan, downsized to whatever image width/height you want – i.e pixels across/down.

When displaying on the web, image resolution is irrelevent as the display of the on-screen image is dictated solely by the number of pixels in the image, not the resolution. For example, if your screen resolution is 1600 pixels across and your image is 1024 pixels across, the image will occupy approximately 10/16ths of the width of the screen, irrespective of the resolution of the image and irrespective of the size of the screen. Likewise, if your screen resolution is set to 1024 pixels across and your image is 1600 pixels across, you will see approximately 10/16ths of the image on your screen again irrespective of the image resolution or the screen size. There isn’t even any file size advantage – an image that is 1024 pixels across at 72ppi will have the same file size as an image that is 1024 pixels across at 300ppi.

Andy

Pete,

Thought I would throw my 2 cents in as we seem to have been shooting slides for the same period. I use an Epson Perfection 1200PHOTO scanner with slide adapter, which gives reasonable results. Slides can be scanned up to 9600dpi which is incredible, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it will be as sharp as you’d like. I scan at 72dpi for uploading to this site and at 300dpi for publication purposes, as this is the minimum resolution that most magazines accept. This scanner cost me about £200 about four years ago, but i believe it is now somewhere around £99.However, the quality is variable depending on resolution and target size. I have friends that swear by the Nikon Coolscan V slide scanner, which gives you top quality every time but is around £600-£650 at present. Horses for courses I guess, but I am watching the price on this one and waiting to pounce! I believe you would be wasting your money on anything that didn’t do justice to slides taken over 40 years ago! Good luck!

Rob

I don’t mind at all. The day when you think you know everything is the day when things go horribly pear-shaped!
Thanks for the advice,

William

Ahhhh I’m doomed 😮

:diablo:

When you do this, please also reduce image size. If you simply reduce the file size you lose some quality in the image anyway, so it makes sense to reduce the image size to, say, 1024x or 800x as these sizes better fit computer monitors, and the loss of quality issue better matches the image.

Here’s an example – hope you don’t mind. As usual, click for full size image.

Rob

I don’t mind at all. The day when you think you know everything is the day when things go horribly pear-shaped!
Thanks for the advice,

William

All the scans have been reduced in file size to allow posting on this board

When you do this, please also reduce image size. If you simply reduce the file size you lose some quality in the image anyway, so it makes sense to reduce the image size to, say, 1024x or 800x as these sizes better fit computer monitors, and the loss of quality issue better matches the image.

Here’s an example – hope you don’t mind. As usual, click for full size image.

Konica Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400II is the one I’m looking at but I working on a better computer system to load it on 1st. I also have a lot of slides and neg’s from the 35mm days. Good luck..

Lynn

When I first got into computing I purchased a canonD1250U2F slide scanner, unfortunatly for some unknown reason I have been unable to get any joy out of it and ended up making a stand whereby I can slide the trannies in a holder made from slide mounts and photograph them with my Fuji602, it focusses as close as 1 cm on super macro so instead of flash I shine a 40 watt daylight type bulb through white perspex from the rear. This method works well and you can clean up, sharpen, etc with photoshop. give it a try, I have done hundreds of 35 mm slides over the past couple of years. 😀

Depends what you want to achieve. If all you want to do is get your slides onto a digital format – say for exhibiting on the web – then a slide duplicator attached to a DSLR will be cheap and will do the job, or try a flat bed scanner maybe one with a film/slide adapter. If on the other hand you want to come close to archival quality/high-resolution scans and/or have a desire to print from the scans to A4/A3 size, then a dedicated film scanner is probably going to be necessary. Dedicated scanners take either film strips or mounted slides.

As has been said, film scanners do not come cheap AND getting a good quality high-res scan takes time because the slide has to be meticulously clean and/or a lot of post processing might be necessary in Photoshop to clean up the image – I usually plan on 5-10 minutes for each slide to get a reasonable final high-resolution digital file via my slide scanner.

Dedicated slide scanners are usually in the £200+ range, Minolta being a good brand at that sort of price point, whilst I now use a Nikon Coolscan which I believe produces somewhat better results but which cost £500. A simple slide duplicator that you can attach to a DSLR using a T2 mount will probably not set you back more than £50 total.

Andy

I can also recommend a film scanner, capable of scanning slides. I bought mine about 4 years ago when studying Photography. Although not especially cheap, if you use it time and time again, you are really getting great value for money.

Over the past two years I’ve digitized a few thousand slides, using a dedicated scanner. In my case this is the Konica Minolta Dimage Scan Dual IV (now discontinued), which cost me some € 350,-. The results are quite good, especially since corrections can be made at the scanning stage as well as in postprocessing in Photoshop (Elements) or similar programs. I’m quite sure that scanning is the best possible option for digitizing slides.

Pete

I’m in a very similar position to you. I’ve been using an Epson 2480 to digitise slides – it cost me about £65 18 months or so back.
The results are certainly good enough for my purposes, although nowhere near what you’d get from a £500 dedicated film scanner.
I’ve attached a couple of samples. The Spitfire is from the 1968 RAF 50th anniversary show at Abingdon. I would have been using my trusty Praktica Nova then, and the film is Agfa.
The Britannia is from Cosford a fortnight ago, taken on Fujichrome with the Nikon F60 I use for what few films I shoot these days. The high contrast and slight underexposure are in the original, BTW. There are also some more slide scans towards the end of the Historic Helicopters thread on Historic Aviation, from rather underexposed originals.
All the scans have been reduced in file size to allow posting on this board, and both are from slides still in their mounts.
I was also using my Fuji S7000 at Cosford, and there are some samples on the Historic Aviation board if you look far enough back, including a composite of four images stitched together with Photomerge. It was also a chance for a reunion with an old girlfriend in the shape of Spitfire K9942, but that’s another tale…
Hope this gives you some food for thought,

William

Cheers for that, I will visit my nearest decent camera shop in Bishops Stortford and see what they can come up with.
Incidentally, the former girlfriend met after 40 years was absolutely gorgeous, don’t try it, it caused a bit of trouble, nuff said.

There are two ways I know of:

1. Buy a device which screws onto the lens or via an adapter to the camera itself.

The slide is placed in the slot and illuminated either by its own bulb or a suitable external source. You might have to watch the “white balance”. With the Canon 20D, for example, using RAW allows modification of the white balance in Photoshop CS so this is not a problem.

2. Put the slide into an appropriate holder in a scanner designed for this purpose. This might be difficult as the slide might have to be demounted so it stays in focus. You will need to research this one.

I haven’t tried either system but #1 is the way I would try if I ever get around to coping my collection of slides from the early 1970s in Canada and England.

I would be interested to learn how you get on. It might be a bit like meeting your old girlfriend after 40 years and finding that she has aged more than a little. Of course, she might say the same thing!