[nickdiamand]

I have over 3000 slides & some film I'd like to digitize. I'm not sure of the best way to go about it. I have the time to scan but I don't have the money to spend a lot on a professional scanner or to have them done by an outside service. I suspect, once I've scanned them, I'll sell the device & stick strictly to digital imaging. I don't need perfect results (most of them are holiday trips, etc.) but do plan to offer some for sale on eBay, etc. I have been looking at alternatives such as Vupoint, Optex, Wolverine & Spectare although I understand that these are really only cameras & not scanners & the reviews see quite "negative".
I may be asking too much, here, but can anyone recommend some options based on your experience?
Also, need I be concerned about memory space on my PC - 2 Gig memory, 320 gig HD? I imagine I'll burn them on discs as I won't be needing to see them regularly.
Many thanks, Nick.

[mindless 1]

I used scanner from Staples @ http://www.staples.com/HP-Scanjet-G3...?cmArea=SEARCH was quite pleased with results.
also, I believe Kohls and JCPenney both had something for sale at Christmas time that would scan negs into usb. good luck!

[antimoth]

The camera type scanners should be fast, but seem to have lots of driver issues based on all the posts here. You can do the same with a digital camera, a suitable closeup lens, and a homemade rig (clothes pin on a board) to hold and illuminate the slide. If you have a camera that can manually focus, set the distance once and then you can crank thru slides. I have burned thru 100 slides an hour this way.

The flatbed and dedicated scanners run 1-2 minutes for the scan. Trust me, you get bored silly, pushing the holder thru a manual feed scanner every 1-2 minutes, or waiting 8 minutes for a flatbed to do 4 slides. If your scanner supports digital ICE, which is a separate scan that looks for dust so it can subtract it from the image, add another 1-2 minutes per scan if you turn it on. If you go at max resolution, add more waiting time. It's a tedious job. I can do 30-60 slides a night before I get bored.

If you want good results with no boredom, they say buy a used Nikon Coolscan with a magazine feeder. Load it and go to bed. In a month, you will be done.Then sell it for about you paid for it. I would like to do that, but the initial costs ($600-1000) are too high and I fear I would get stuck with the unit if it broke.

Among the scanners I've owned and used, the Epson V500 flatbed (apprx $170 on sale in the USA) is a good one. It scans 4 slides or two strips of negatives, and its software will break the scan up into separate images. It's also a good general purpose scanner.

With 3000 slides, you will be very close to whatever you buy for a long time. Why not get something that will give you good results.

[steigerhouse]

I agree with antimoth on this issue. I was going to do what you are thinking about doing. I bought a Minolta Dual Scan slide scanner. Paid about seven hundred dollars for it. The results were very good. But it took forever to make digital copies of my slides. It would scan 2 slides at a time. The carrier held 4 slides but after scanning two, you had to take it out and turn it end for end to scan the other two. Then if you really wanted to get good results you needed to do a little color correction or white balance, etc. with either the resident software or with Photoshop, which I preferred. So you could easily spend two to five minutes per slide. Bottom line - good results but very time intensive. I only ever completed about 600 slides and never finished the job. I sold the scanner for $250 on ebay. Now I have a Canon 5600F flatbed scanner which does a very decent job, scans 4 slides at a time and since I usually do a little editing anyway, its what I prefer. The big enemy when you use a slide only slide scanner is dust. You will be amazed at the dust that you don't see on the slide until you scan it at high resolution. Try to Photoshop out each one of those little specks and you will drive yourself crazy.

[nickdiamand]

Thanks for the tip. I shall investigate.

[nickdiamand]

Given the cost & the fact that I have the time to muck about it sounds like a flatbed scanner, such as the ones you've both suggested, is the best choice
I do appreciate the time you've all taken to get back to me, Nick.

[K7M]

I started to scan my slides using a Mustek slide scanner. It was very time consuming although the results weren't bad. I did a search and found this:
http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/photo...ographing.html
and I copied the jig and use it with my Nikon d40x. It is much faster and the results are very good.

[nickdiamand]

Thanks very much for the info. I just have a mickey mouse digital camera now & no longer do major photo. stuff so will probably go w/ a scanner. Nick.