Transferring slides and negatives to digital?

Question

My mom has alot of slides and negatives and i want to make them digital so i can store them on a cd and on my external hd. I have the canon mp830 i think is the name and it doesn't have a tray where you can put slides or negatives to scan. How can I do this. what do i need to get?

Answer 1

Scanning slides and negatives requires a GOOD dedicated film scanner. You CAN do it with some flatbed scanners that are also designed to scan slides / negatives, but the results are not very good. (These scanners have an additional light in the lid, it is not just a matter of having some kind of tray or holder for the slides). A quality negative / slide scanner will cost several hundred to a couple thousand dollars, plus scanning is almost an art unto itself. It takes very good software, (Silverfast is the best), and lots of time and practice to get good at it. Plus, it is VERY time consuming.

By far your best bet is to have this work outsourced to places that are set up to do this all the time. The best quality to cost ratio for slide / negative scanning is Scan Cafe. They use the very good Nikon film scanners.

Take my word for it, you do not want to get into scanning lots of slides and negatives with no experience plus having to buy proper equipment.

http://www.scancafe.com/

steve

PS... I have used Scan Cafe myself several times, never any problems and the scans are terrific.

Answer 2

I got a Canon  Canoscan liDE 600F scanner and I bought it to copy heaps of slides because it scans slides direct to digital. If you dont want to upgrade scanners try to find someone with one.  

Answer 3

Scan Cafe is wonderful for this.  I scan all my negatives on my own and it is quite a pain.  It takes about 1/2 an hour to scan 12 frames and get them all dust free and adjusted properly.  It's really not something you should take on on your own.  You can also contact a local photo store that handles film.  In my experience, that can be very expensive (up to $1 a frame).  It depends on how much you have.