I don't know if I posted this to the right forum, but I need help. My father has mountains of slides, and I need to find a way to transfer them to digital images/photos. How can I do that, and what equipment and software do I need? Thanks for any advise you can give me.
I would recommend a dedicated slide scanner. Flatbed scanners with film attachments are usually not that great. I got mine off ebay (Minolta Quickscan Plus 35mm), and theres lots out there in an affordable range.
Agree, dedicated scanner for slides. I have an older HP Photosmart S20 ($60?) which uses a SCSI interface ($20), watch for this in the ads on eBay, some of the good old ones, need SCSI cards and if you don't have one, it's just a piece of electronic plastic. Watch out if you buy used, that the scanner includes the needed cable or interface card. Mine runs about 1 1/2 minutes from start to finish for each slide, That's brushing the slide for dust, putting it in, having it preview, then scanning, and saving the image to a file. Some of the Nikon slide scanners had stacking trays and you could run a batch of slides. All this costs a little more of course. The slide feeder is an option, so some will have them, some won't. The flatbeds you can do a group at a time, most 4 some larger units 8, but since you are looking at a tiny slide, on a big flatbed, I'm not sure how much time or quality difference there is. Then there is digital ice which is supposed to clean up scratches and dust. Whatever, you'll need a scanner with backlighting, holders or masks. Or a dedicated slide scanner. Nikon Coolscan V Ed just under $600. Minolta Quickscan Plus Amazon $180. Option 3, take them in to a lab and have them run all of the slides off to a CD or DVD. Done!
If there are a lot of them, you might want to consider having them done, if you can afford it. If you buy the scanner, you'll have it for future use, but there is a lot of labor involved in getting a good scan. Despecing the dust alone is a pain.
