Equipment question re: slides to digital

[astonamous]

My father was a photographer and since his passing, I have inherited thousands of slides and 35mm negatives. I am not rich, in fact, very not rich but would like to scan these slides into a digital format to better enjoy them and pass them on to my son or at least be able to share them easier. I tried using a flatbed a few years ago that had a transparency attachment, but it was slow and not very good quality.

Does anyone have any suggestions or experience with slide/film scanners?

[NV Whino]

1. I use a Nikon slide scanner

Not too expensive and has good quality, but is still not fast.

There are places that bulk scan for reasonable amounts of money. Be aware that you will need to align slides properly because they don't do anything but dump into a feeder shoot and scan. No individual attention.

P.S. my father was a photographer, too. I understand your predicament.

[astonamous]

3. LOL! You must surely know what boxes and boxes of slides look like.

I don't mind the time...I can go through them and organized as I go. I just want good quality, enough to print if I want to and not have to crop each one separately. I was looking at something like this.

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=836427&Q=&is=REG&A=details






On edit: spelling error

[Major Nikon]

2. Yes, use a professional service

I have a decent Nikon film/slide scanner, but if I had thousands or even hundreds to do I wouldn't be doing them myself. For one thing, it takes a lot of time, work, and processing power. For another, the pros have better equipment and better software. As long as you use a good service, the results will almost certainly be better than what you could do on your own unless you want to spend a lot of time doing it.

It's fairly expensive, so you're going to want to go through the slides and pick out just the ones you want to scan. Get a good hand viewer for this. You can either get a light board and a magnifying glass/loupe, or a battery operated hand viewer. I have this one and it works reasonably well:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/40322-REG/Pana_Vue_FPA001_6560_Slide_Viewer_1.html

[astonamous]

4. I have one of those too.

I even have two slide projectors, Bell & Howell with the big round cassets. Neither of them work and I am not in a position to get them repaired.

We live in Los Angeles and I am sure I can find many professional services locally, but lordy, they want a lot of money.

[Major Nikon]

5. Online services will charge you about 25-50 cents per slide

Depending on what options you want. Yes, this is expensive, but compare that to buying an expensive slide scanner, expensive photo processing software, and the untold hours you'll spend doing this yourself and professional scanning starts to become an attractive option.

[ManiacJoe]

6. +1, given the number of slides it is not worth your time.

While I have not used either of these services, many of my coworkers are happy customers:
http://www.digmypics.com/
http://www.scancafe.com/

[alfredo]

7. A coffee cup from Starbucks, a knife to cut a slot, digital camera,

Macro lens or extension tube, a light source, and you will have a slide scanner.

[astonamous]

8. LOL! I just might try that.

Reminds me of the olden days when we use to take pictures of a picture in a book for presentations/reports at school.

[alfredo]

9. I took a couple clothes pins, a white background, and extension tubes for the following

images from the sixties. That's my Lancia.

[astonamous]

10. Wow! Nice.

These turned out really nice. I think even better than the ones I scanned years ago with a flat bed with the transparency attachment.

[alfredo]

11. Thanks. I tried the flatbed route, but I was unimpressed.