Slide Projection and Digitisation Thoughts and Questions

[Snookerman]

I currently have an Agfa Reflecta which is ok, but sometimes sticks. I've got two lenses for it.

As a lockdown task, I am probably going to convert some of my maybe 6,000+ slides - I'll probably pay to have about 100 done and maybe think about having more done or doing some myself.

I have a few questions for those who have slides or have done or are considering similar projects:

1. If you have digitised slides yourself, which machine do you recommend? I know you can pay from £50 to thousands. It's always a pay off between ease of use, cost and quality, I know.
Realistically, I don't see the point in paying more than a few hundred as I may as well just pay to have half of them digitised if I pay more than that...and it's a big job, right?

2. I will be keeping my slides and ought to invest in a better projector. Some of my slides are in CS mounts and use CS trays. I am really not sure if other brands of projectors that use straight magazines can cope with CS trays (where there are 100 slides in the space of 50). Is it only Reflecta and Agfa projectors that can manage them, or would a Leica or other quality machine deal with them? I know Leica projectors are much better than Reflectas, but there may be a cost of buying more standard trays and time to fit them - it's something I would consider though. I cannot find any info on this CS mount issue online. If I do buy a new projector, I'd go for something much better than what I have and realise it may cost up to £200.

3. I could also go down the Kodak route - it would be time consuming and costly to transfer slides to rotaries - even if I could find 120 trays instead of the normal 80s. Still, it's another option - and maybe 10 hours work. It's easy to find Kodak projectors on Ebay. The trays are not cheap though, and I'd have to sell my existing trays on.

Thanks in advance for suggestions.

[MikeOxon]

I digitise slides simply by re-photographing them with the camera. There are attachments available but I made my own with a slide holder from a hand-held slide viewer and a short length of black plastic drainpipe. You need a close-focus lens (I use the 60mm macro) and I use daylight as my light source. The tube needs to be about the length of the focal length of the lens, for same-size copying, but I used trial and error to cut the correct length. It's very quick and easy to work through a large stack of slides. Turn off stabilisation or you'll find the image moves around!

[Graham_of_Rainham]

I use OM Bellows with an 80mm Bellows Macro lens (flat field ) and the slide copy attachment

[wanderer]

I have a small (A4) Jessops light table.
I put the slide on top of that and surround it with black or very dark card. Actually the other way round. Card with slide sized hole cut out.
This prevents stray light bouncing off the lens back onto the slide.
The camera EM-1 mkII is mounted on a tripod with 35mm macro lens. ISO 200, F8 (allows for the difference in distance lens to centre & lens to edge of slide).
Using the in camera level set camera up level & pointing vertically down. The camera is mounted on an old Olympus rail to position it as close as necessary.
Diamond setting on shutter with cable release. Capture in RAW (16-17Mb). Then process in Lightroom, Denoise and Sharpen as necessary. Save as Jpeg (20Mb)
This gives a good high definition picture and is a good project for lockdown and bad weather.
I may take a photo of the setup,
You can rattle through the slides but the slow down is processing, notably, muck, grain and sharpness. Some of my slides are nearly 50 years old and shot on an Kodak Instamatic, a well known high quality camera.

https://www.e-group.uk.net/forum/forum/show-your-photos/foto-fair/821486-a-few-photos-from-hikes-the-past-few-days

see post 13 for an example.

[Snookerman]

Yes, I'd love to see a photo of that set up.

[DerekW]

I copied about 1600 slides last spring. I used a Kaiser slide copier attached to the OMD mkiii camera

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kaiser-Duplicator-Digital-Compact-Cameras/dp/B001JFHJPY/ref=sr_1_9?crid=CAO9H2F3MEHU&dchild=1&keywords=slide+copier&qid=1610815411&sprefix=slide+copier%2Caps%2C250&sr=8-9

with the Oly 50mm macro and MMF-3 and an A5 sized light panel

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/171981960553

I found that letting the camera do all the hard work - eg focus, colour balance so that all I had to do was select the slide put it in the slide holder and adjust the slide holder such that it was in the centre of the image and then expose.

I also have a Canon colour slide copier which required me to use Vuescan to drive it (the Canon device being long discontinued)
using that device was tediously slow, the actual reading og the slide was a two pass process and the loading of the slides into the holder was a fiddly process. This process was at least 4 times slower than using the Kaiser device.

Then you have the usual processing to do. I used Lightroom which once I got the hang of it for this set of slides it worked OK.

[drmarkf]

I took the same sort of approach that DerekW used, although I had a Nikon ES-1 slide copier attachment hung on the front of a mZuiko 30mm f3.5 macro via a step down ring, on my M1iii. Lighting was with a small LED panel, daylight balanced (£20 on Amazon).

The Nikon adapters (the ES-2 works as well) come up quite often second hand in the usual sorts of places (and in old-style camera shops, which is where I got mine) and even new you can often find special offers.

The huge advantage of doing it like that is that you don’t need to set anything up very carefully (just check the slide carrier isn’t twisted out of kilter), and you can spend many happy hours snapping away while watching Netflix. Otherwise, many peoples arrangements need a lot of care and attention, and sometimes blackout, which would have made me lose the will to live.

It is possible to use the 60mm f2.8 macro, but you need to customise some sort of extension tube for the ES-1 or -2 mount since they’re designed for use with one of the Nikon 50 - 60mm full frame macro lenses and you need to extend the slide-to-lens distance.

I’ll post a quick snap of the setup shortly.

[drmarkf]

Here’s lots of useful background (rambling presentation, but lots of practical tips): https://scantips.com/es-1.html
And more: https://www.scantips.com/es-1b.html

Although you can get better quality by using a scanner, they’re mostly expensive, slow and manual, and since most of my fathers images dated from the 50s - 60s, the resolution is pleasantly low, and ultra sharp reproduction of grain and dust is a waste of time 😎

I blew each slide with a rocket blower and wiped a few times with an anti static brush, and had very little trouble with dust.

[DerekW]

The batch of slides I was copying had never been removed from the boxes that Kodak sent them back to me - so dust was not a problem. They were covering about 6 years of travels (so much but no time to look at them). For some of them it took me quite a while to remember where and when. Kodaks labelling system was not too clever compared to days digital image systems

[buddha01]

Snookerman,
I can recommend to you the Plustek 8100 film/slide scanner. https://plustek.com/gbr/products/fil...pticfilm-8100/
I bought it, because of same reason you have. digitalization of about 4500+ slides and I didn't wanted to compromise on quality of image. I alreasy did some of the storage boxes, and the Plustek 8100 does what it promises, keep a good quality of image thanks to the 7200 dpi and the Silverfast software that comes with it. the great thing of this pacage is that you can save the images as TIFF file so you can PP in whatever post process software you like i.e. Capture One, Lightroom or so. I can also recommend a bottle or 2 of PEC-12 film cleaning solution to clean the slides of dust and dirt before scanning them.

[Otto]

I have a Nikon Coolscan LS-40 film scanner which does an excellent job, but the downside is it takes about five minutes per slide! If you switch off the ICE dust/scratch removal (which doesn't work on Kodachrome anyway) it's a bit quicker. I have rigged up a copier using an old bellows and slide copier, using my E-M5i and a 30mm macro lens. This is quicker to use but the result needs more post-processing so it's as broad as it's long really.

[Snookerman]

Thanks for the advice guys: on Amazon, the Epson Perfection V600 Home Photo Scanner is only about 60 quid cheaper than the Plustec Optic Film 8200i, so there's not much saving there. The blurb on the Plustec said that at full res you are looking at 18 mins a pic. I guess I have to ask myself how many of my 6000 slides would I want at that resolution and how many lots of 18mins I'd want to dedicate to that. Maybe 1000-2000 of them, the rest, well, a less details but decent pic would do. I guess you could use the Plustec on a simpler setting and scan slides at 5 mins or less each. That might be an option.

I also note that the Plustek OpticFilm8100 Film Scanner (ie does not have an 'i' in the title is considerably less at £269....might be worth looking at. Don't know what you are getting for £189 more.

It also might be an option to buy a much cheaper scanner at say £200 or so that would do things at a very decent level but be quicker - say 1 or 2 min per slide.

I'd imagine a scanner would do better quality than trying to shoot the slide via various methods using my OM D E-M1 mk 1. I did use (and still have) a fairly cheap gizmo I once bought from Jessops - a black tube you stuck on the end of an OM2 with a slide attachement on the end. It worked well to take negatives from slides, and since I have an OM to M43 adaptor, I could probably sue that on a tripod to take an image. Could be hard work on my back and laborious though, and probably worse than a scanner.

Any slide projector thoughts?

[buddha01]

True, at 7200px it can take a short while, but at lower resolution I found you can go faster then 3 slides p/h. I still think, if you have the the patience, the Plustek 8100 it is worth the investment. Yes, you can set the settings at lower resolutions and go on an average of 5 minutes per slide. Even at lower res the Plustek 8100 gives good results. I used for years a cheap film scanner and the results were very disappointing ie stripes throughout the scanned pic due to the poor quality of scanning camera inside. Even with the best available PP software you can't get rid of them stripes. Those cheap scanners are in my opinion not worth buying, because you will get ending up buying a more expensive scanner anyway because you will want to have decent scans of your slides/film. Beneficial is that with the Plustek scanners Silverfast software comes for free, at least that was the case when I bought mine.

Second of all, I use PEC-12 cleaning solution for negative/positive film to get rid of all contamination on the film before scanning to get the best possible results. PEC-12 is the cleaning solution which professional photographers/ photo stores use to clean negative/positive film. You can get it either online or at the better photo stores. I found out that using PEC-12 and regular cotton swaps work very well. Just a few drops sprayed on the cotton swap and you can clean up to 5-5 slides, before you need to reapply a few new drops on the swap. It is worth investing in. I bought 2 bottles for about € 15,00. Here are some links to shops who sell PEC-12:

https://www.photospecialist.co.uk/photosol-pec-12-film-cleaner-spray-59ml#

https://www.bristolcameras.co.uk/p-photographic-solutions-pec-12-emulsion-cleaner-59ml-bottle.htm

[Bikie John]

It's a big question to try and answer, and there are lots of opinions as you can see above. And there is no simple answer because what's best for you depends very much on your needs and facilities - and patience!

I haven't done that many slides, but have done many thousands of negatives over the last 10 years or so. I have a Nikon film scanner (Coolscan V, also known as LS-50) and a fancy Epson flatbed, the V750 (now replaced by the V850). The V750 will scan 4 strips of up to 6 negs, or 12 mounted slides in one go (I think the V850 will do 3 strips/12 slides and the V600 2 strips/4 slides). I have also got a setup to photograph slides or negs using a light box, the 60mm f/2.8 macro lens on an E-M1 and an Olympus Handy Copy Stand I found on eBay for thirty quid.

My approach has generally been to scan everything at relatively low resolution and not worry too much about quality. In effect this is a bit like making "contact prints". The important thing there is keeping the files organised, specially if you have a big batch to do. Then it is easier to pick through what is there is and identify suitable candidates to really go to town on. If you want the best results it will take time and care.

Some things I've learned:

1. For doing a big batch I find it easier to scan on the flatbed than to photograph each slide/neg individually. If you've got lots to do it is worth getting an extra slide or neg older so you can be loading up the next lot while the previous lot is scanning.

2. Once I've got a session up and running, I can whistle through about 2 to 3 films of 36 an hour with the flatbed, scanning at 1200dpi (for roughly 2 Mpix files) and not using the ICE (infra-red dust reduction - see no. 6) facility to deal with dust and crud. The results will sometimes be pretty rough, but mostly good enough to see what's what and sometimes good enough to stick straight onto social media if that's your thing.

3. If you have a good original - fine grain film, well exposed, sharp, clean and undamaged - the best quality is probably from a dedicated film scanner. It will take some time and be quite a fiddle. There is a big BUT though - I have found that the Nikon scanner is very good for getting detail out of film, but also really accentuates any blemishes like dust or scratches. The flatbed is less sharp, but much more tolerant of blemishes. Quality-wise the camera is possibly the best solution if you have really grotty originals.

4. Slides are more difficult than negatives because the dynamic range is greater.

5.If you are using a scanner, you can use the software that comes with it or go for a third-party product, the two big ones being Silverfast and Vuescan. I have recently been trying out Vuescan and found that, while it has a pig of a user interface, it can sometimes deliver better results than the native Epson dirver. it is also not very expensive. I haven't tried Silverfast for a long time, there are a lot of not very complimentary reviews of it and it is expensive.

6. Many scanners include the ability to run an extra scan with infra-red light and use that to reduce the effect of dust and scratches. Most manufacturers refer to this as something like "Digital ICE", I think Canon call it FARE. This can work quite well, but it takes longer. It definitely doesn't work with traditional silver-based B&W films. I have also read that it doesn't work with Kodachrome. I have tried it on the Epson flatbed with some Kodachrome and found that with the Epson software it produces horrible results, but Vuescan seems to handle it much more intelligently and it is quite useful (as long as you don't mind it taking longer). I haven't yet tried testing this with the Nikon film scanner. If you use a camera, you don't have this option at all, of course.

7. Neither of my scanners cope very well with very heavy (dark) slides or negs. The camera and light box do much better, presumably because it gives much more control over exposure. Very thin negatives are likely to be pretty hopeless whatever method you use.

Sorry, that is all rather rambly but I hope there are a few useful suggestions in there.

Good luck ... John

[Otto]

I found the difference between my Nikon film scanner and my Epson flatbed to be similar to that between a condenser enlarger and a diffusion one - the former tends to accentuate scratches and dust whereas the latter is less sensitive to them.

[Bikie John]

My thoughts exactly, Richard

[Snookerman]

I'd like to see a pic of how you use the Olympus Handy Copy Scanner...could be interesting to me. How did you get focus on the slide right so as not to have wasted space at the side of the digital image? How did the results compare to a your scanner?
One issue may be the fiddliness of swapping slides over for the next shot, though I am sure I've seen some sort of Kaiser holder that allows you to pull slides or negs through on a track that means everything is the same each time. As a sufferer with bad back, this would also make bending over contantly to set up each shot perhaps less problematic.

[Snookerman]

There is also the Plustek 135i whcih scans 4 slides at a time. Seems to be an improved version of the 135. I'm tempted by that as possibly an inbetween solution.

[AJW]

I have pretty much the same problem.

I have a Canoscan 9950F ( and fortunately I still have a machine which will run the software - Mac OS 10.6. I can scan 12 slides in one go but at high resolution and dust removal settings this takes 50 mins or so, the files can be saved as Tiff or Jpeg. It does this automatically in a dated folder in a location of your choosing. If I then transfer them to a portable hard drive I can be looking at them on another machine whilst scanning 12 more.

I did consider the Plustek range which seem to get reasonable reviews although one review suggested it wasn't very good on transparencies, the difference in price between models seems to be largely down to software enhancements.

I also have a Jessop Zoom Slide Duplicator with T2 - OM mounts and did think about getting an OM - M4/3 mount but this article - http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/j...plicator-lens/ - suggests this wouldn't work as the device was designed for 35mm film cameras - the m4/3 sensor would give a 2x magnification if I have read the explanation correctly, not much good. I may use the slide element and cobble up a device to use with the camera but the slide holder semms to be slightly undersize.

I also have a BPM bellows with OM mounts so could go down that route with some OM - m4/3 mounts.

I have tried using the camera and 50mm macro lens and a Reflecta B200 desktop viewer with the magnifier removed and this would seem to be the best compromise at least expense.

Ultimately I suppose it depends what you want to do with them, I don't expect top drawer, professional quality (well not from some of my slides anyway!) but if I can get reasonable images which allow me to access them a little more readily then I will be happy enough.

As for projectors I have a lot of slides in Agfa CS mounts and I have used the 100 and 40 magazines in a Leica P150. This has a hinged adapter on the arm to cope with the thinner slides in the CS magazines which feed fine.. This flips down to accommodate thin slides in normal magazines - Agfa CS, Fujichrome.

Andy

[Snookerman]

Thanks, Andy. I have the same Jessops T2, I think. Worked well on an OM2.
With not being able to get out into the local Peak District to take photos, I think digitising and projecting old ones is a really good thing to do right now.
Let me know in this thread how you get on from here.

[drmarkf]

Just to add that for some of the more contrasty-looking slides that were of particular interest I shot a quick 3 or 5 HDR series, and merged several of the images in post, and this was quite successful at pulling out the maximum dynamic range. This is enormously easier if you’re using a camera to snap individual shots at 1/10s rather than full scans at several minutes a go...