Slide to Digital Image Conversion

[Old Engineer]

I have been making slideshows and copying them to DVDs so I can copy the DVDs and give a set of family pictures to each member of my family. I start by placing the slides by date and subject in a slide carousel, then I photograph them successively when projected on a movie screen with my slide projector. I have used one or the other of my 50mm f1.4 or my 18-55 on Pentax K10D. Either lens works well.

After getting the shots on the memory card I use a slideshow program on my Nero program to put them on DVD, and with Nero I caption each one for identification.

The captioning takes a little time, but like the farmer said when asked if it didn't take a lot of time when he fed his hogs acorns by holding each hog up to a limb on an oak tree, "the hog, he doan mine, he gots all the time in the worl." I am retired just like those hogs.

The DVD quality is not too great, but is as good as the slides if viewed with the projector. The process is all very simple.

If you have the equipment already, I think youmight give this method a try.

Old Engineer

[Alan T]

Old Engineer wrote:

.....I photograph them successively when projected on a movie screen with my slide projector.

I used this method successfully to begin this type of project a few years ago. (Having seen the digital writing on the wall, so to speak, ho,ho!.)

Sadly, I was hopelessly short-sighted in the recording medium I used. It was analogue Video8 camcorder tapes, shot as slide shows with commentary on my Hi8 camcorder, and backed up on VHS tapes. I have two working Video8-playing and two VHS-playing machines to keep me going while I start all over again on tens of thousands of colour slides of our family over the last 30 years.

Cautious people will make sure they use many different recording media for their digital images, as each medium will inevitably become extinct in a few years. Eventually your & your family's life history will all fit on a chip, but it'll be a different chip & reader every 5 years or less.

[Wingman]

Old Engineer, thanks for your advice. I have a Ektachrome Projector and had thought of photographing the projected images, but was concerned about the resolution; but based on your experience, I ought to consider it. For now, I am using a light box and my Pentax Optio in Super Macro Mode which allows me to get almost a full frame. There is some barrel distortion, but I crop it out. I must admit that the resolution of the images is not quite as sharp as the transparencies themselves. I have been shooting in TIFF...here is a sample. Jay

[penolta]

Another alternativeisthe so-called "High Definition Digital Duplicator" imported under the Opteka and Bower labels, and are available on ebay. It contains one optical element which is removable and useable as a 10X close-up lens adapter (plus lens); it attaches to any digital camera thataccepts a threaded filter/lens shade via a threaded adapter ring. On an SLR a zoom lens is recommendedwhich encompassesthe 80-120 range. It has a 52 mm thread andcan besupplied with any step-up or step-down ring needed for the lens of choice. It is somewhat superior to the ones that mount directly on the camera bodyin thatit allowsall camera functions available with the lens. It is convenient for occasional duplication as there isno extensive set-up required as there is with some other systems. I have used it (the Opteka) with the Tamron 28-200 with satisfactory results - the avatar to the left (and the previous one with the leaping dolphin) were digitized from ISO 400 Ektachromes by rephotography through this duplicator.

[Monza76]

I have a zoom duplicator which was designed for a 35mm SLR, the problem is that the crop factor, caused by the reduced size sensor, results in the loss of some of the original slide's image. The camera takes a crop from the slide equal to the sensor size so unless the slide has a little leeway for cropping it will not duplicate very well..

Ira

[Gumnut]

this is rather interesting
i have thousands of slides and scanning is just so slow

i will have to see if i can knock up some way of photographing them to se how that turns out

[jachol]

Works a treat Gumnut, when I started I had 3 shoeboxes full of transparencies, still a few to go. ... Jack.

[nhmom]

penolta wrote:

Another alternativeisthe so-called "High Definition Digital Duplicator" imported under the Opteka and Bower labels, and are available on ebay. It contains one optical element which is removable and useable as a 10X close-up lens adapter (plus lens); it attaches to any digital camera thataccepts a threaded filter/lens shade via a threaded adapter ring. On an SLR a zoom lens is recommendedwhich encompassesthe 80-120 range. It has a 52 mm thread andcan besupplied with any step-up or step-down ring needed for the lens of choice. It is somewhat superior to the ones that mount directly on the camera bodyin thatit allowsall camera functions available with the lens. It is convenient for occasional duplication as there isno extensive set-up required as there is with some other systems. I have used it (the Opteka) with the Tamron 28-200 with satisfactory results - the avatar to the left (and the previous one with the leaping dolphin) were digitized from ISO 400 Ektachromes by rephotography through this duplicator.

Can you provide a link to one on e-bay? I dida search but a whole assortment of things comes up and I'm not sure which is what you are talking about.

This whole topics sounds quiet interesting as I've been struggling with my slide attachment on my scanner. Sometimes works, sometimes cuts edges of the slides, sometimes comes out so dark you can barely see the image. I have boxes of these to scan and keep putting it off.

Thanks, Patty

[jachol]

Hi Patty,
Try a search for "slide copier" on Ebay, results can sometimes be specific to a particular model of camera. Hope this helps ... Jack

[Wingman]

Patty,

Here is a link I found on e-bay. I'm planning on getting one to try.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Opteka-Slide-Dup...QQcmdZViewItem

Jay