[Mike Tyson]

Evening all.

It's my dad's 70th this year, and as a present I'd love to get a bunch of his old slides converted to digital format. Him and pal hopped on their motorbikes, and rode overland from Keswick to Australia in 1969. The slides are therefore very old, and have a priceless sentimental value, so I don't fancy doing it myself and wondered if anyone had any experience of companies who may offer the service I'm after?

Have googled and seen a few out there, but figured this kind of thing could have been encountered by some UKB members perhaps.

[dave]

I'd have a word with someone like Peak Imaging.

[kc]

Are you worried about damaging them?

I have scanned loads of my grandparents slided from the 50/60s and it has not harmed them. Just gently blow and brush the dust away and hold them by the card frames.
Got to have a scanner and the software to correct the faded images though.

[Johnny Brown]

Peak imaging are pricey and not amazing, for small numbers of high quality scans I'd look at an independent drum scanner operator like me or Tim Parkin.

mr-scan.co.uk are supposed to be good and much, much cheaper for large numbers.

The main risk with either is losing them in the post.

[cofe]

Johnny has done some very good scans for us, including for the cover of this from a 35mm.

We've used Peak plenty too. They're 'fine', but no better. Professional service, consumer-level scanning. We've tended to send them slides that are especially dirty or dusty - especially old card-mounted chromes. Not used them for a bit, I'll probably send the next lot somewhere else. Always send using Special Delivery (or equivalent) and pay for the same return service.

[duncan]

I have a slide scanner, results can been good if the originals are in decent shape.

Softwear on my w7/64 machine needs updating as Nikon no longer support. Simplest solution seems to be to buy third party scanning softwear but I'm interested in other's views on this.

Mike, I might be able to help, what sort of numbers are you thinking of? I have very limited knowledge or experience in digital image manipulation though, JB and others are likely to do a better job.

Mum, Scotland, 1950s (not her car!).

[cofe]

I have a slide scanner, results can been good if the originals are in decent shape.

This is the crux when deciding whether they need to go to a lab or someone who really knows what they're doing/can handle dirty/scratched film.

Softwear on my w7/64 machine needs updating as Nikon no longer support. Simplest solution seems to be to buy third party scanning softwear but I'm interested in other's views on this.

I'm running Nikon software for a Coolscan IV on 64-bit Windows 8. Might have been a workaround like this one. Was previously running it on 64-bit Windows 7 with a similar workaround.

[dave]

Drum scanning could be affordable if they can get em all on a full drum but as you're paying for their time some places won't remount- i.e they will get stripped out of the mount and then sent back to you loose. If they're old card mounts then the mounts may well not survive the process. So someone running a pro graphic arts flatbed would probably be the best bet for mounted slides as they can probably fit dozens on the bed and batch scan in one pass. The will give better results with any underexposed slides too.

If you're not bothered about getting absolute maximum resolution then actually somewhere running a decent Epson flatbed well calibrated and set up can get you decent results for a batch of mounted slides as again you can do a few on the bed at once - mine came with a grid to do a bed full of mounted slides.

[cofe]

Worth noting that Peak will take film out of card chromes, scan then re-mount in plastic mounts. I think the first step is important if you want a good clean scan from a chrome.

[Mike Tyson]

 

Great info, thanks a lot. I'll be in touch with a few of you once I have a spare moment.

[Johnny Brown]

Softwear on my w7/64 machine needs updating as Nikon no longer support. Simplest solution seems to be to buy third party scanning softwear but I'm interested in other's views on this.

I had my Nikon scanner running on W7/64 but the ICE wasn't working properly. In the end I had to set up a dual boot with XP to run my drum scanners, and Nikon scan runs great on that. I did trial both Silverfast and Viewscan but didn't get on with either.