Save the slides
Compliments on an excellent publication. As I am heading for retirement, I started to look at digitising my 4,000 or so slides several months ago. I weighed up the pros and cons of various possibilities — i.e. getting it done professionally or doing it myself. I chose the latter and bought a manual device which made me realise that I needed a lot of time and patience. I subsequently purchased a semi-automatic second-hand device (PowerSlide 5000) akin to a slide projector but without a lens. It worked well for a while but started to introduce artefacts into the resulting TIFF or JPEG end products. To cut a long story short, I tried to get to the bottom of the problem and contacted the manufacture only to find out that no service was available in Australia. Sending the unit to the US was not a viable option.
There must be more people like myself that want to digitise their precious slides. Perhaps you can do an in-depth article on this somewhat neglected part of technology at some future date. [ FRED HOETMER ]
Ed replies: You’re right that photoscanning is an involved process Fred — we did a big cover feature on converting almost every analog type of media (not just images, but audio and video as well) a couple years back, in TechLife #38 (June 2015). In testing, for that, we found the best option for scanning photos was the Epson Perfection V39 — a $150 flatbed scanner that’s still current two years later. There’s no dedicated slide mode with the V39, though if you step up to the next model (the Perfection V370 at $250, pictured above), it has the built-in capacity to scan 35mm negatives and slides and will do multiple frames at once — up to six negatives or four slides. That should at least speed things up at little bit...