RE: digitizing slides advice??

[Don Bryant <donsbryant@gmail.com>]

Chris,

I sort of agree with Liam, that is paying a service to do those scans could
probably pay for a V700/750 which would be an increase in quality compared
to the Canon scanner. But of course there still is the time element.

I sold my PB5 bellows and slide duplicator a couple of years ago for several
hundred dollars but it did work well for generating inter-negatives from
slides and one setup on a digital camera would work even better since you
can preview the exposures.

The thing I would add here is to use a small electronic flash instead of a
light box, the light will be very even and easy to white balance especially
when the light is diffused through white opal glass which the Nikon slide
copier attachment has.

And yeah I'm in the same boat, hundreds of family photo prints and thousands
of slides to be converted. I've promised my brother and sisters that I will
create a family album for everyone. It sounds like a great idea to begin
with but after the reality of the time and work required sinks in it becomes
a real burden.

Don Bryant

-----Original Message-----
From: Liam Lawless [mailto:lawless@bulldoghome.com] 
Sent: Saturday, July 04, 2009 10:30 AM
To: alt-photo-process-l@usask.ca
Subject: RE: digitizing slides advice??

Christina,

I've scanned glass negs very successfully on an Epson V700.  It's not that
expensive; if glass negs are the problem and you're thinking of paying to
have them done, it'll probably work out cheaper to buy one of these.  Scans
transparencies up to 8X10: drop the 8X10 area mask on the glass and arrange
some slides within it.  Sharpness was fine... the film holders hold film 2
mm or 3 mm above the glass in any case.


Liam

-----Original Message-----
From: Christina Z. Anderson [mailto:zphoto@montana.net] 
Sent: 04 July 2009 14:44
To: Alt List
Subject: digitizing slides advice??

Dear All,
I know that some of you who have worked as professional photographers for 
many years or have inherited family pictures have this same problem.

I inherited over 25,000 slides/negatives from my family of origin--both my 
parents were very much into photography. No one else in the family wants to 
handle them so it fell to me. To be even more accurate--25,000 slides, 1400 
bw large format negs, 3500 16x20 imagesetter negs, and untold numbers of 
medium format color film.

Over the years I have brutally culled that collection first to 8000, then 
5000, then now about 2500 (tho I didn't remove all the past husbands of the 
7 divorces in my family of origin much to my sisters' chagrin--too much 
"revisionist history" for me). That is the absolute lowest amount I can cut 
it down to. There is just too much historical and excellent "vernacular" 
work in there to throw out.

I have a student scanning the large format BW negs for me, I can scan some 
of these images myself with my flatbed and my Canon 35mm.  But there are 400

glass slides in there as well.  I have found a place in Michigan that will 
scan these for me, but it is not cheap.

I cannot tell you how many hours/days/weeks/years I have spent doing this. 
I am not completely complaining, because the Family of Origin project on my 
website is primarily from these images.  But I was wondering what choices 
any of you have made with this issue of digitizing your former film/slide 
images? And how much can you expect to pay for this kind of service?

The nice thing, of course, with the digitizing process is all those great 
gum diginegs that can be produced from it.  The sad thing is there is 
NOTHING that comes close to kodachrome with a great 35mm lens.  I don't know

what lens my mom had on her Nikon but the images are just glorious, some of 
them. I am waxing poetic about the "good ol' days" here I suppose, but I am 
a sucker for nostalgia, and when "lake living" in MN actually meant an 
unwinterized teeny cabin on the lake with barefoot summers instead of 20,000

sq.ft. second homes.
Chris


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Christina Z. Anderson
http://christinaZanderson.com/
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