PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS AND TECHNIQUES
Scanning Slides: The Basics of Digitizing Your Collection GUEST COLUMNIST: STEVE BARRY
IF YOU HAVE BEEN A CAMERA-TOTING RAILFAN for more than a decade, then you probably have a ton of slides sitting around in little yellow Kodak boxes or filed away in some arcane filing system that only you understand. But you’ve also probably switched over to digital photography at some point in the last decade (unless you are a die-hard like our associate editor Otto Vondrak) and you’ve discovered the ease of sorting, tweaking, and retrieving your images via computer [Yeah, yeah, yeah. —O.M.V.]. Now you’re wishing all those slides could be just as easy to access. The key is to turn all those slides into
digital images, and that’s going to involve scanning. A decent scanner is going to be a fairly heavy investment (more on that in a moment) and scanning is a time-consuming process. Think of putting yourself into a digital darkroom. The upside is you will soon discover that even the most perfect slide can usually be made better with modern digital enhancements.
Using an Outside Service Do you want to digitize your collection,
but not bother with a heavy investment in equipment and a steep learning curve in technology? If you only have a thousand or so slides that you want to convert to digital images, then an outside scanning service company is probably the way to go. A company like ScanCafe (
www.scancafe.com) can generate a JPEG that’s 3,000 pixels across (big enough for most publishing and printing)
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for just 33 cents each; if you want your slides recorded as TIF files, then it’s 57 cents each. As of this writing, a thousand photos will cost you somewhere between $330 and $570, depending on your mix of file formats. If the total number of photos you want scanned is somewhere around 2,000, it is probably still more cost-effective to have an outside source do the scanning, even if your final output is the costlier TIF file format. The difference in file formats can be debated, but JPEG is generally intended for sharing and posting to online galleries, while TIF is preferred for print publication. Perhaps you are looking to scan only
a handful of slides from your collection. Depending on where you live, you may still be able to find a photographic lab nearby that will do drum scans or other scanning services that will digitize slides to your exact specifications. This could be a good option if you are looking to share images for publication, but are afraid of loaning out your originals. The downside is the cost for these services can be anywhere from $25 to $50 per scan. But let’s say you want to scan your entire collection of 5,000 to 10,000 slides, or more. This is where an investment in a film scanner and taking the time to learn how to use it may pay off. Before we get into the nuts and bolts, a
caveat — everyone seems to have their own way of scanning slides, and no one way is correct (although some people will tell you their way is the only way). I’ll try to present
both sides of all the arguments, and I’ll tell you what I do. You may disagree with me, and that’s okay.
What Scanner Do I Need?
There was a time when dedicated film scanners were the only way to go. Traditional “flatbed” scanners just didn’t have the quality to turn a mounted slide into a digital file that was adequate for publication or printing (although some were good enough if your only desire was to post photos to the web). There are now a handful of flatbed scanners that do a pretty decent job of scanning slides, such as the Epson V700 and higher models. One advantage that a flatbed scanner has over a dedicated film scanner is the ability to scan prints or large-format negatives. If your photo collection includes those you may want to go the flatbed route. But if your collection consists of only 35mm
slides or negatives, a dedicated film scanner will give you the best results. Unfortunately, the manufacturers who produced the best film scanners saw the market as being somewhat finite, and both Nikon and Minolta (now Sony) no longer produce the scanners that were the cream of the crop. If you’re looking at buying a new dedicated film scanner, then your best option is probably the Pacific Image Power Slide 5000, which has a street price under $1,000. If you want the best available consumer
film scanner (new or used), then you’re looking at the Nikon LS-5000 (also known
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