Several folks in the CM Photographic Group have expressed their interest in digitizing film slides. Just to make it clear from the start -- I am not a film scanning expert. I did it a few years ago and this details my experience.

In 2003, prior to moving to Thailand, I purchased a Nikon Coolscan 4000ED with a Nikon SF-210 Auto Slide Feeder. At that time, I paid about $1,200 for the scanner and about $350 USD for the bulk slide adapter.

Additionally, the Nikon scanner software, which is very good, was in my opinion, inferior to the VueScan software. After testing a free trial version of VueScan (the trial version will leave a watermark on your scans) I did side-by-side comparisons of the results. I thought that the VueScan software produced better results, especially with Kodak Ektachrome slides. (FYI: The software interfaces perfectly with the Nikon scanner. I assume it does so with many of the other supported scanners listed on their website.) I bought the license to VueScan (about $40USD) which removes the watermark from future scans.

To achieve optimal results, the Ektachrome and Kodachrome slides required different profile settings in the VueScan software. The software provides profiles that match a particular slide film type / manufacturer. You can also manually adjust to make a custom profile to achieve the results that look best to you.

In preparation for scanning, I would remove the slides from the carousel one at a time, ensuring I kept them in sequence. If the first 10 slides were Kodachrome, I would then set the scanner software for the Kodachrome profile and scan those. The next batch (probably Ektachrome, since I only ever shot those two film types) I would need to change the settings for that particular flavor. You can see how this routine can be rather time-consuming, especially if you have 3 slides of one type and then only 4 or 5 of the other type, and then have to go back again. Luckily, that didn’t happen too often. Most of the time, I would have 20-30 slides of one type that I would then batch scan together.

Why not just scan ALL of the Kodachromes and then scan ALL of the Ektachromes? My reasoning for this madness was that I really wanted to keep my slides in the exact order of the carousel they came out of. My slides are in chronological order and I numbered them accordingly. The first two digits designate the number of the slide carousel. The second set designate the slide number in the carousel. The last set designate the year the picture was taken. For instance, a slide numbered "04-074-1981” would designate that that particular slide came from carousel 4, slot 74, shot in 1981. Each carousel resides in its own directory on my hard drive. After all of the slides of a carousel were scanned, I scanned that carousel's index page on a flatbed scanner. I included this file in the directory of the scanned images to use as a reference.

Once I was happy with the setup, scanning slides was fairly easy . My method was to put 50 slides in the bulk adapter and then go watch TV. If I recall, the scanner did about one slide every 40 – 50 seconds. At that rate, I could do about 50-100 slides almost every evening. Of course this was dependent on how many times I had to switch the slide settings in the software.

I saved the film strips for last. Since I shot almost exclusively on slide film, I only had about 100 - 200 frames on film strips. Those had to be done manually. The scanner makes film strips pretty easy though. Once you scan the first frame, the scanner will auto-feed to the next frame. It will do this until it hits the last frame. Then you'll have to manually load the next strip.

Once I had everything scanned, I removed the slides from their carousels and placed them, in order, into this Archival Slide Storage Box. I gave the empty slide carousels away since they take up way too much space! For backup to the files on my hard drive, I burned two copies to DVD. One DVD set is here with me and one in a safety deposit box in a bank in California.

Notes:

After the job was finished, I sold the scanner and Auto Slide Feeder on eBay for a total of about $1200 USD. So, for a cost of about $400 USD, I had my slide and film negatives digitized.

I did notice that my mom's slides from the 60's and some of my earlier slides from the mid - late 70s were already starting to deteriorate in the corners. Digitizing them now, before they were gone was a good thing.

I am very pleased with my results but I now regret that I did NOT scan the slides into TIFF or RAW files. I scanned my slides into large (about 15-20 mb each) JPG files. I just did not understand or comprehend at that time the benefits of TIFF files. If I could do it all over, I would use TIFF or RAW settings.

Here’s a 2001 review of the 4000ED. That model has now been discontinued but is still, in my opinion, equal or superior to some of the other current brands on the market today.

I hope this information helps when considering to scan your own collection of film.

I, on the other hand.......

Knowing absoutely nothing about digital photos other than having Costco (U.S.'s Macro) put my prints on a disk, I got to thinking about what to do with my old slides as I prepared to move to Thailand.

I bought a PrimeFilm series PF3650u slide/film scanner (48 bit, 3600 dpi, manual feed) that came with CyberView X S/W that included digital ICE for "dust and scratch removal, color reconstruction, and grain management". It also came with Photoshop Elements 2.

The CyberView S/W offered adjustable image palette, color balance, and ton curve/histogram setting (CMYK or RGB). I was so ignorant, I used none of that.

Either the ICE claims are over exaggerated or I did not know how to use the S/W correctly (probably both, more of the ignorance mentioned above?). Either way, I ended up with pictures that pretty much had all the scratches and other problems the slides had. And since some of the slides had been in Thailand for 4-6 years and the PI for 2 years and back and forth around the US, their condition varied a lot so my end results vary alot.

Maybe I should add here that I got the scanner as a "refurbished, like new" via Costco's on line site for about $125. So I scanned at 1/10 of Mike's costs and maybe got 1/10 of the quality? Maybe we should compare?

I, too, knew nothing about RAW or TIFF so I might have done it differently with the slides. I still have not done the print film and am getting motivated to do them and will now try to incorporate what I have learned in the last 6 months. Luckily I kept my scanner.

The scanner rate (offeres single pass only) for negatives is

1. 8 bit/1800dpi/frame, 150 secs
2. 8 bit/3600dpi/frame, 190 secs

The scanner rate for positives is

1. 8 bit/1800dpi/frame, 90 secs
2. 8 bit/3600dpi/frame, 140 secs

Mike's posting and my getting out the scanner to look at it to prepare my reply has gotten me motived. I have a few very good shots I would like to capture; time to start scanning!