Finally Digitizing my Slide/Negative archives..any hints/tips/experiences to share?

Having been taking slides since I was 10 years old and only going Digital at the age of 34 I have several thousand slides and negatives that have been sat unseen in the attic for years. A few months I bought an Epson V800 scanner and have started the long process of scanning all my analogue back catalogue!!!

So far it's been a slow process of learning by trial and error (eg 6 boxes scanned with the slide holder on the wrong height setting.. grrr!) but also one of fasination and revelation at seeing images that haven't seen the light of day for 20+ years in some cases!

Anyone got any experiences of doing similar to share - and any hints/tips to share too?

Look forward to hearing and I'll share a couple of images when I can

Are you scanning emulsion "up" or "down"?

It's been too long since I've done any scanning, but it makes a subtle difference. I think you want e up, or away from the light.

I'm scanning the slides face down to the scanner bed ... no real issues with the quailty of the scans.. I'm scanning as much to enjoy them as to replace the slides so am scanning to JPG to save on space, rather than TIFF.... scanning at the v800 native resolution of 4800 dpi is giving good results now I'veplayed around with the settings. I'm scanning in batches of 12 using auto settings for USM and SRD.

Are you saying I might get better by scanning face up and flipping them in LR?

EOSAddict wrote in post #18470927
Are you saying I might get better by scanning face up and flipping them in LR?

Doing it one way vs the other did seem to make a difference but I can't remember which way was better.

Let me get some more coffee in me and it might come to me.

I've scanned my slides a couple of years ago. I used a Reflecta filmscanner, also sold as Braun . It works as a projector, that is the slides are in a tray and the scanner works the whole tray (36 slides). I used Vuescan software. For info about the scanners www.filmscanner.info and the software Vuescan at www.hamrick.com.
I'm happy with the results.

The v800 is a flatbed scanner but has a second light in the lid to get proper transparency scanning @ 4800 dpi. I'm sing Silverfast software which seems to be doing the job. Had some issues with scratch removal on Kodachrome so had to turn it off (found out later its an issue with Koda emulsions).

Here's one fresh off the scanner from 1992 with just the white/black points and WB adjusted in LR

Aletsch Glacier, Bernese Oberland, Switzerland

that's a good looking scan, and shot.

after a few cups of strong, cheap coffee i was thinking that emulsion down (nearest the CCD) was the way to go. A few searches seemed to confirm my faded memory. Essentially, the emulsion being the color layer would be best represented if the colors did not have to pass through the film base.

probably a subtle difference but one that might be worth looking into.

I've scanned hundreds of slides and negatives with the Canon 8800F with great results. It's surprising how good stuff looks from 40 to 60 years ago. My old Nikon film cameras must have been pretty good.

Only problem that I ran into was removing dirt and scratches after scanning, pretty time consuming. A good noise reduction program works great on film grain.

I have become my familie's defacto archivist and have over the years compiles thousands (if not 10s of thousands) of slides, negatives, pictures. For the slides and negatives I started using a flatbed but it was such a slow laborious process that I switched to using my 5DII and the 100mm macro lens. I started with a light table and tripod setup similar to this. I have since hacked together a copy adapter that screws into the front of my 100mm macro lens similar to this one by Opteka. It's much faster, a few seconds per image, and the quality is as good if not better than the flatbed.

Left Handed Brisket wrote in post #18470975
i was thinking that emulsion down (nearest the CCD) was the way to go. A few searches seemed to confirm my faded memory. Essentially, the emulsion being the color layer would be best represented if the colors did not have to pass through the film base..

But consider that flatbed scanner software is set up for taking a rightreading image against the glass, to scan for photocopy or PDF or color print JPG, so it makes a lot of sense that the color transparency also be right reading as seen by the CCD., and the edge frame numbers are seen (by the CCD) as right-reading also, so emulsion is away from the CCD

I scanned a couple of thousand slides and negatives over a couple of years. I used a flat bed scanner. I used high resolution and saved to .tif when I thought appropriate. I found that slides, generally, did not seem as good as they seemed to looked projected. And quite a few of 30 year old color negatives had a significant green tint. So don't tarry.

I can offer some tips to clean up dust and scratches...

I use a simple technique to quickly clean up white dust and scratches.

In Photoshop I make a duplicate layer.
Next select: Filter --> Noise --> Dust & Scratches.
-- I choose a radius of 16 and a Threshold of 5.

Next change the current layer from Normal to Darken.

Next chose - Add Layer Mask, and fill it with black.
-- Now you can use a white paintbrush to quickly paint out the dust and scratches while keeping the details intact!

For dark spots or scratches I use the same technique I use for dusting white scratches from scanned negatives, the only difference is the layer is set to lighten, so now we are dusting away the black dirt and spots.

In Photoshop I make a duplicate layer.
Next select: Filter --> Noise --> Dust & Scratches.
-- I choose a radius of 16 and a Threshold of 5.

Next change the current layer from Normal to lighten.

Next chose - Add Layer Mask, and fill it with black.
-- Now you can use a white paintbrush to quickly paint out the dust and scratches while keeping the details intact!

Chris all you need now is an Arduino to cycle the slide projector, and then fire the camera for you. Or does the system need refocusing for every slide? I never used to have any focus issues between slide when projecting on a large screen, but I could see that slide location in the gate can be a problem. If you don't need to refocus between slides an arduino would probably allow you to scan the whole magazine at not much less than the maximum cycle speed of the projector, so you could probably do a magazine in a couple of minutes, without any intervention by you.

Alan