Railfan Technology > 35 mm slide scanners

I'm looking ffor a slide scanner that will scan a lot of slides quickly.  I won't say "cost is no object" but I have several decades worth of slides and I'm not getting any younger.  These are personal collection slides, so we're not talking high-end archive work.  

What I have been doing is using a Nikon ED5000 film scanner with the SF210 slide feeder. I can put in 40-50 slides, start scanning (with VueScan) and then come back later and the slides are all scanned and ready for Photoshopping and adding the file names. It scans about 30 per hour. Like you, I have decades worth of slides and I am archiving them now before the film rots. 

The slides do have to be in good condition - the feeder can be a little touchy and a bent slide can jam. I've scanned over a thousand slides and it has only jammed twice.

Ted

I have had good results using a Nikon ES2, just search youtube for Nikon ES2. I believe you do not necessarily need a Nikon to use this.

I wouldn't waste the time nor money on a dedicated slide scanner.  Here's why. In their summer issue from 2017, CRPA ran an article entitled Why Scan When You Can Shoot. Basically you're doing a very minor mod to a Kodak Carousel projector, running the slides through it in a stack loader, and taking a pic of them.  I did this with several decades of slides a couple of years ago, along with thousands of 35mm B&W negatives.  The results are outstanding. It's a very efficient process.  I've shot professionally in Tulsa for two decades and am pickcy about my files.  CRPA posted the side-by-side comparisons and they are very nearly indestinguishable.  In fact the shadow detail in the pics (RAW Files) are superior to the scanned slides.  Having scanned some of mine in a Nikon Coolscan and compared my results with shooting them, I can verify their findings.  PM me and I'll be happy to email the article to you.  If you want to talk about it, my phone is 918.527.1109.

Have a blessed day!
Jerry
ATSF5669

How many slides do you want to scan?

It’s certainly easier, and perhaps more cost effective depending on quantity, to pay a scanning service to do the work.

The more you scan in one batch, the cheaper it typically is per unit.

At one time I thought I would scan my own slides and negatives. Turns out I didn’t have the time or patience to do it. I found the job incredibly tedious.

Although I did buy a fancy, expensive negative scanner before deciding to outsource the job.

Posted from iPhone



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/26/24 21:58 by walstib.

What ATSF said, above.

I've just started scanning slides in a big way myself (2000 down, roughly 50,000 to go). 

Shooting into a slide projector with a good DSLR and a macro lens is the way to go. 

walstib Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> It’s certainly easier, and perhaps more cost
> effective depending on quantity, to pay a scanning
> service to do the work.
>
> The more you scan in one batch, the cheaper it
> typically is per unit.

I understand the appeal of a do it yourself scanning solution, but walstib has good advice especially since a scanning service can help with dust removal and other corrections. A photo is only as good as the data that go with the photo, so let someone else scan and then put effort into identifying date, time, location and other photo details. ScanCafe and other services make scanning easy. Put effort into the metadata and sharing the photos, not into scanning. I know it's human nature to want control over the process but sometimes others can do a better job, and faster, too.