How to Convert 35mm Slides to Digital What to do with my entire library of 35mm slides? I have roughly 3,000 slides in boxes, and loaded into Kodak carousels. I gotta get them into digital.
In short, I used my Kodak carousel projector to back-light the slides and shot with them with my DSLR. Only small modifications and tinkering are required. I had to face facts. I just don’t look at my old slide collection anymore.
How to Convert 35mm Slides to Digital. What to do with my entire library of 35mm slides? I have roughly 3,000 slides in boxes, and loaded into Kodak carousels. I gotta get them into digital. In short, I used my Kodak carousel projector to back-light the slides and shot with them with my DSLR. Why should I convert my 35mm slides to digital? The most compelling reason is to archive via slide scanning and preserve your important 35mm slides. Some of my photo slides are dark, under-exposed or in poor condition. How will slide scanning from those slides look A.
Pulling out the Kodak projector, setting up a table and wall it is just too much of a hassle. Besides my friends have an attention span of about five pictures in length. Show the sixth and they sneak off to the kitchen. Send them out for scanning I looked into various services out there but thought they were just too expensive. I understand why, the work is a bit labor intensive. I also could not find good data on the quality of the results. This made me a bit nervous.
Buy, use, and then sell a scanner This actually made sense to me. I figured I can buy one of those great Nikon scanners used on eBay for around $1,200, blast through my slide collection, and then turn around eBay it to the next guy doing a conversion. With a bit of luck, this approach would be cost neutral. Of course, I would have to put up the $1,200 and take a small gamble that I could recover the money. An advantage to scanners is the processing software that is highly touted as important.
They claim to remove dust particles and such. While this sounds important, I really did not have problems with dust showing on my slides just didn’t. I did blow the slides in their trays with compressed air first so maybe this helped a bit. I just did it myself with my Kodak Projector and my DSLR I can’t tell you that this is best way to do conversions, but I do enjoy a good challenge and overall, I am happy with the results. I really could not find a definitive opinion on where or how to obtain the best scanning and conversion results so I just gave it a try myself. If I didn’t like the results, then I would look into spending some real money. Just look for yourself in the portfolio above where I show what came out of the camera and the final results.
Total cost for me to do this was only my time as I already owned all of the equipment required for this transfer. Looking back on it, I may have tried to borrow a true macro lens as it may have produced better results, but overall, I think the pics came out looking great.