Sue has a large collection of 35mm and (I think) medium format slides and we’d been looking around for a way of getting some prints from them without giving them to someone else and hoping they’ll take care of them. We discovered in the end that we had all the equipment we needed just lying around in the house!
Of course the first thing we tried was scanning them using the trusty HP OfficeJet all-in-one, but the results were really quite disappointing. We’d tried the same thing with negatives before, with equally disappointing results. The colours were really bad (far too dark), and the resolution was appallingly low.
Next we tried looking at purpose-built slide scanners. These things are quite pricey, and I actually couldn’t find one that was affordable and had Linux support. I had heard you could get slide holders for scanning slides on a conventional scanner, but couldn’t find out much about where to get them from. I did find a page describing how to make one yourself, so we tried that — it was rubbish. It was fun to make, but gave no better results than just scanning the slides as they were.
It was at this point we discovered that the HP scanner hits some sort of resolution limit at about 400dpi, beyond which the results get markedly worse. When the slide is only an inch and a half wide, 400 dots per inch is quite a lot lower than we were hoping for. The advertised resolution of the scanner is 1200dpi, but never mind.
Somewhere I’d read that another approach would be to take digital pictures of the slides on a lightbox. So, slightly resigned to the whole effort being a failure, and about to give up, I suggested to Sue that she should have a quick go at that. Bingo!
Using a macro lens, a tripod, a lightbox, a chair and a pillow, Sue managed to get much better results than I had with the scanner. To get the slide as close to the lens as it would focus, she inclined the lightbox to about 30 degrees on top of a chair, holding it there with a pillow. The slide was kept in place with some sellotaped bits of paper! Once it was lined up correctly the photo was taken using the infra-red remote shutter release trigger.
The slides were not quite full frame in the camera, but not very far from it. The lightbox provided a nice evenly-lit background, and the tripod and remote trigger avoided any shaking while taking the picture. Each slide had to be perfectly square on to the lens to make sure it was all in focus.
Once the pictures were all taken it was just a matter of cropping them on the computer. To get prints from these digitized images, we’ll probably take the easy route and send them to PhotoBox. 🙂
Here is a reduced-size version of the finished result, a picture of the Pixie House (Harbour Lights) in Boscastle, taken sometime in the 1960s:
UPDATE: This building was washed away during flooding in recent years. Since then, we visited Boscastle and took some pictures. Here is a picture of the rebuild:
Comments
124 responses to “Digitizing 35mm slides without a slide scanner”
Ye gods. That must take a lot of effort.
I borrowed a Canoscan 4000FS slide scanner from a friend and used it (with Windows) to scan some of my mother’s old slides from the 60s. Time consuming though. I need to do some more.
What sort of resolution does a real slide scanner give? We’ve been getting about 2,500 pixels across for a 35mm slide.
It isn’t too much effort once you set everything up. Cropping is quick, but colour adjustments (which I think are probably always necessary whichever method you use) were a bit fiddly.
Wow! This is just what I’m looking for! Thanks, Tim, for going through the whole scanner route first, so as to rule it outl You saved me a ton of effort.
Guess I’m gonna drag out the tripod today. Yay!
Mirth Maker
Thank you for posting this info. I struggled with a friend’s Epson – it kept cropping the slides. It took us 2 hours just to scan 10 slides. Having a Dell all in one, there is no software/hardware kit available via Dell to do slides, and it costs £40 to have 10 images produced at one of the local print shops. Having hundreds of slides, this will save me a ton of money. Thank you so much.
It’ll save money if you already have a macro lens. 🙂
For what it’s worth, we used a AF Micro Nikkor 60mm lens attached to a Nikon D70.
Hay Tim, This looks like a wonderful Idea. I’m wondering about what size was the box, and whether you used these new electricity saving bulbs or rigular, and the wattage.
I’m going to try this !
Don
It’s a normal light box, the kind you can get for about £15 at Jessops.
Hello Tim, you have done what I have had in mind for over one year now, i.e. photographing slides with a digital camera. In the past I used bellows with a slide holder attached at the end, to duplicate slides on film. I thought this would work also with a digital camera. I tried the Nikon D200, but the Nikon pb-6 bellows would not fit. In addition the format is now different from the 24×36 mm. I have repeatdly written to Nikon and lately also to Canon to ask them to produce a lens or a simple device to photograph slides with a digital camera, but they did non bother to reply. Apparently all they want is to sell their costly scanners which yeld poor results. So, I will now follow your advice and build myself a box. Thank you for your efforts. FM.
Let me get this straight … nice Nikon DSLR, nice bit of Nikkor glass … take pictures of slide with a light behind it on a pillow??? Did you hate that slide? Because the digital version looks like some weathered old postcard in a forgotten seaside shop.
Nikon 5000 ED 16 bit 4000 dpi scanner, Digital ICE works magic with image enhancement and scratch removal. Under £500 on ebay, or pay a professional to do a few slides for around 60p.
Was that slide taken by a good photographer? It’s a lovely place in Cornwall, historic picture, but the greenery in the background is completely blurred and the sky is like dishwater, even on a web page. If you care about images, there’s a better way.
You always get one don’t you!!
Mog is obviously a geek with more money than sense.
Looks like a good way to store all those old slides taken years ago where the recalled memory is more important than qualty of the image. I’ll certainly give it a go
A thought.
Has anyone tried projecting a 35 mm slide onto a clean screen, and photographing – with flash off – the projected image using a digital camera on a tripod? The camera image is a jpg file. Advance the projector one slide, CLICK, repeat, I’d think. Scanner seems to need a good minute to complete a higher resolution scan. I’d think this would go faster, and be more reproducible.
Dennis
I think it might be harder to avoid perspective distortion if you project onto a screen, but perhaps it depends on what lens you use. Photographing the slides directly didn’t have any perspective distortion that I noticed, not that I was particularly looking — as Grahame said, the recalled memory was the important thing in this case.
thanks for your page. I have some 10000 slides from all over and did try projecting them on to a screen and digitizing. Only some 10% gave me decent quality, with lot of distortions and darkness. I have not tried the light box trick since I did not have a macro digital camera, but will try soon.
I have photographed slides projected on screen with reasonable results,camera positioned behind and just to one side of projector on a tripod.One problem is having to manualy press shutter button.Is there a cable release for digital cameras.Mine is Panasonic fz5.
I like Tims idea of using light box as this would eliminate projector lens and screen.Think Ill give it a try.
> Is there a cable release for digital cameras.Mine is Panasonic fz5.
Not sure about that model but Panasonic do seem to do some kind of remote shutter.
The Nikon one uses infra-red… 🙂
This seems like an awful lot of effort to save a few pounds. Why don’t you just use a slide copier on your camera?
These are like a telephoto lens with a slide holder at the end. You can zoom in and crop the image and you don’t need a cable release, because you can easily adjust the lighting to enable a fast shutter speed.
Oh, not heard of them! The reason we did it the way we did was because we already had a macro lens and a light-box.
Just a thought, could a PC monitor displaying a nice bright white screen be used as the lightbox? Would this be bright enough? Have to lay monitor down (or use tape). Cost practically zero – results probably hopeless.
In the absence of a cable release, your self-timer works fine as a hands-off release. Some cameras even have a short-delay setting of a couple of seconds or so, so there’s no need to wait for the full 10 seconds (whistling some random hurry-up notes for each of 10,000 slides…).
The prospect of getting my thousands of slides into digital folders after decades in the dark has got me really fired up!
Delighted to have found your ‘thread’.
Hi folks, a mate posted me the link to this forum and the input from everyone seems very informative.
Inclined to agree with Mog however, the colours quite simply are`nt there in the Boscastel photo. Nice photo, but drab. I reckon if it were compared with the original then there would be no dispute. However, thats not realy what I`m on here for.
I was particualrly interested in Steve Frank`s posting re a slide copier to fit a camera. My “project to be” is not just slides or film strips but rolls of film. ie. 35mm roll of film. Old newspapers on microfilm to be more precise. Have you had any experience Steve with photographing films ?
I`ve not heard of the device you mention but I would shirly be willing to try it out as I imagine it is a long way cheaper than a scanner. I imagine we all have a scanner but are reluctant to upgrade to a slide/film scanner if it is not warranted ???????
Look fwd to a reply