7000 slides

[uddhava]

My mom is moving and has over 7000 slides of my father's to digitize. We will sort through them first and pick only
some to digitize. Still, it will be a large amount. Any suggestions what is the best and most practical way to do this?

[Lloydy]

http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/ion-film-2-sd-plus-n06da?gclid=CMOkkfb8mMICFeHHtAodM0UAig

I bought one of these ION Scanners from Maplins a while back and I'm impressed with it, I've done maybe 2,500 slides with it and it's working well. I can scan 500 slides in a couple of hours
It is way quicker than the Epson flat bed scanner I've got with the proper illuminated lid and film / slide holder. It's also so much less messing about, there's no lifting the lid, farting about with horrible plastic holders and all that stuff.
The ION has a little lever to adjust for thick or thin slides,l and it is essential that this is set correctly, it it's too wide then more than one slide will go through - it's easily cleared though. It plugs into the USB of the computer and is powered from that - or a separate power supply. The scans are downloaded onto a SD care, and can be downloaded either from the USB lead or from the card. I use the software that I normally use for downloading pictures from my camera (Faststone ) just because it's what I like to use.
I do check regularly for dust and hairs in the scanner, there's a cleaning tool supplied and I use a rocket blower as well. I always blow the slides off as well before stacking them in the ION.

There are cheaper ones, there are ones that scan prints, but I bought this on someone else's recommendation, because they had tried a cheap one and it was slow - the 14mp scanner speeds the process up considerably.

It also works well with negatives. I like it, it's a good scanner that beats the Epson flatbed hands down for speed and quality.

[uddhava]

Thanks Lloydy, that sounds like it could be a good choice. It's not too expensive and works at a fast rate.
How much space does 500 slides take up in gigibytes?

[Lloydy]

About 1.8mb per slide - I just averaged 100 slides from different sets, the biggest I saw was 2.99mb.

Top tip - if you are removing slides from projector trays or carousels, and you are reasonably confident they are the right way up and the right way around. Get a sharpie and run a 'line' across the edge of the slides while they are still in the tray, if they are straight trays make the line off centre, with carousels just hold the sharpie and use a finger as a guide and make the 'line' around the rim. What you want is a a mark on the edge of each slide so it's easy to get them back in the trays. It also makes it easier to load the scanner with the slides in the correct orientation, portrait slides must be put through the scanner on their side - as landscape - and then corrected in PP. that is a bit of a pain, but I soon got into a rhythm of removing just enough from the trays to fill the hopper, and quickly looking at them to put the protrait ones on their side. Without the edge marks, getting them back in the trays correctly is a real pain in the butt.

[PhantomLord]

Hi Lloydy,

Could you post a few scans done with this ION?
I would really appreciate scans in full resolution from negatives.

Cheers
Mateusz

[Lloydy]

Here's a few slides, just resized. These will easily PP and it's not that hard to get the dust and dirt off in PP as well. Sadly, I stored my slides badly , they were ( are ) in cases, but in a cupboard where the temp change was great so they started to get condensation on them that stuck the dust on. I got them out before any great damage was done, but the spots aren't easily removed dust, it doesn't blow off I have to brush each slide - or remove the spots in PP.











I have done a couple of negative strips as a test, but I can't find them at the moment - I'll keep looking or do some more.

[uddhava]

Those remind me of vacation when I was a kid, since I lived in California. They look good, I think that scanner is doing
a nice job.

[alaios]

Hi thanks for this useful post. I think this is the first post I read with someone claiming that a mickey mouse scanner does better than a flatbed scanner.
Can you show us a comparison between your flatbed and the mickey mouse scanner? Does your mickey mouse saves in jpegs or in tiffs?

Regards
Alex

[Lloydy]

Three scans from film neg's. all have been tidied up a bit - spot healing brush on the dust spots . The landscape has had the most because it was underexposed - but not huge amounts. The portrait is just about untouched as is the building.
The pictures can be saved in any format, and there is a setting on the scanner for colour or B+W, and some adjustments, but I leave the adjustments alone and process as I would pictures from my camera.

Minolta XD7 50/1.4 Poundland Agfa 200


Rolleiflex SL35 planar 50/1.8 Ilford XP2 400


Rolleiflex SL35 planar 50/1.8 Ilford XP2 400

[uddhava]

Any other ideas by the way?