Anyone here have any experience, good or bad, with getting photos covered to digital format?
Specifically 35mm slides (for now).
I’ve got a mountain to go thru, but even after culling it’ll probably be over a thousand images.
There’s probably an app for that.
All seriousness aside…I used something called Photomyne, which is an app on your phone where you literally take a picture of the picture. It scans and digitizes and formats it so it doesn’t look like you just took a picture with your phone. It worked pretty well for a hundred or so, but it’d be quite a chore for 1,000 plus, and I don’t know if it would work for 35 mm slides. But I’m sure there are apps out there that can or you can have that professionally done for enough $$$.
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I’ve done 35mm slides with a slide scanner and it’s no picnic. If you’re just doing a few dozen it’s OK but if you’re getting into the hundreds or up to 1000 then you’re going to be at it non-stop for weeks. If I had that many to do I would look for professional services.
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Thanks.
I should have clarified that I’m really asking about having it done rather than doing it myself.
Ahh…then, no.
My uncle had a bunch of old, way back old (100 year old black and whites), stuff done. Can’t remember if he did it himself or had it done. If you’re serious I can sure ask.
eta: they weren’t all that old, but they all turned out really well.
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To do this professionally will probably run you as much as 50 cents per slide. Could be money well spent since, as Ty said, the process of doing it yourself with a scanner kind of sucks… at least, it did the last time I did it 15 years ago using a flatbed scanner with a slide attachment. Modern slide scanners (Kodak makes one for $179) look more convenient, but even if you assume 1 minute per slide that’s still 16+ hours of your life that you could’ve spent doing something else.
Assuming you’re still in DFW it looks like Fort Worth Camera has a good reputation. If you’re comfortable with shipping your slides and having them shipped back, Precision Camera in Austin is an option and includes a quick cleaning of the slide before scanning.
Do note that the digital images you get back will probably still look like slides, and would need some retouching to mitigate that desaturated look. Not super important if your only goal is simply archiving the images, but might be good to do at some point. If you’re so inclined, an app like Adobe Lightroom could make quick work of this once you dial in the right settings. If you’re not so inclined, Precision charges $80/hour for this kind of work, and other places probably won’t be too different.
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Thanks all.
I’ve seen some places locally that charge more than a dollar per slide which is too steep for this many.
I may end up shipping them to a service that can handle a bulk order but I’ll check out FW Camera too.
I do have some experience with Lightroom and I don’t mind them looking like slides at all.
There are reels from the late 60s thru '91. In all between 3 and 4 thousand pictures. I’ll obviously have to cull quite a bit but most of them are vacations out west and I’ll want to digitize enough to tell the story of each trip. First step is getting them off the reels and into slide storage boxes just to reduce the bulk we’re storing.
If it were me, that Kodak scanner is relatively cheap enough to be worth a try. If the process sucks too much you can always return it and have a pro do the work.
Also, do you already have access to a slide projector and screen? If so, you could just set up a camera on a tripod, advance slide, click shutter, advance, click, etc. I could see that going pretty quickly and with the right camera settings the quality will be decent enough.
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My wife and father run a business together in Houston that specializes in this. It’s called Digital Memory Productions. You could either ship them your slides or make a trip down to Houston and drop them off.
If you come down to their Houston office, they will allow you to view your slides to make sure you know which ones you want digitized before confirming the order.
I fractured my left kneecap in November and am still recovering after two surgeries, so my wife has been at home taking care of me, but my dad is still running the business in the interim.
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My brother “the archivist” uses a CZUR ET16 model scanner, says it can do 12 a minute. He copied around a thousand photos using one. I don’t know how well it works with slides. He was able to then put them on thumb drives which he gave out to the family.
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My brother just told me he uses a Kodak Slide-N- Scan for slides, and color and B&W negatives
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Thanks David.
And ouch. I hope you’re healing up ok.
The kodak scanner that Sphinx sent was very tempting but I’m gonna use your dad’s service. Just got off the phone with him.
I should be sending things his way in a few weeks.
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Your wife and your father run a business together? What an amazing dynamic!
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You’re welcome, David, and I’m glad I could help with your question.
As for my kneecap, it’s healing, slowly but surely. I tripped on one of our dog’s rawhide bones as we were leaving to get him from the groomer on November 15 and my left knee made direct contact with our tile floor. I had an initial surgery on November 20, but the immobilizing brace they put me in after the surgery didn’t work properly when I first tried to get up and use the toilet, causing my knee to crunch in pain when I tried to sit down. That crunch was the screws moving out of place, and I had to undergo the same surgery again on December 6.
It’s been four weeks since the second surgery and there have been no relapses this time. My orthopedic surgeon anticipates seeing significant bone healing around the end of the month with physical therapy to follow. I’m in a locked immobilizing brace right now and have to keep my knee elevated at all times with no moving around/weight bearing on that leg, yet. I have another appointment with my surgeon this afternoon.
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Goddamn, I thought my arthritic knee was bad. Your injury sounds terrible!! Hope you’re on the road to recovery toute suite.
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That’s brutal. You have my complete sympathy. I’m glad things are heading in the right direction now.
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Yep. In 2018, I was laid off from my job with an oil and gas publishing company in Houston, and my cousin was looking to sell the Digital Memory Productions business that he inherited from his father in law. My dad bought it as a way to give us some income in the short term as I looked for work and possibly it would become profitable enough for us to run it as our full-time business down the line. He made her the business manager and pays her an hourly wage for the three days they are in the office (Monday, Wednesday and Thursday). They handle all the digitization tasks together, but my wife ie especially good at digitizing reels because of her steady hand and attention to detail.
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Wow, I didn’t know about the second surgery. Let us know what the surgeon had to say later today.
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That’s not a sentence you ever want to hear. Very sorry you’re going through it—best of luck with the recovery.
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