Quote:
Originally Posted by Wayne Maybury
Tony
This sounds like a fun project. However as a total amateur, this also sounds quite complex. I have many 35mm slides taken 20 to 30 years ago as well as lots of prints (with the negatives). I recently purchased a Nikon D3000 and I have been taking digitals photos. I will be retiring within the next year and I thought that it would be fun to convert the slides and prints into digital photographs.
I have read your post but I don't really understand the process but of course I have not looked into this as yet. A friend has been taking digital photos of his prints but it looks like you are talking about a much better process. Can you give me a brief explanation how this works and what is the cost?
Wayne
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You have two different problems.
Capturing negatives requires a film scanner. At one time there were many out there, but most have been discontinued. Minolta made a pretty good one but it only did 35mm. Nikon's Coolscan 5000 is a good choice for 35mm only and it has an automated slide loader that really helps the process that the Coolscan 9000 lacks because it also processes medium format (120 roll film in various frame sizes). I'm going to claim that the 5000's automated loader isn't too helpful since I'm finding I want to tweek the exposure on each frame anyway so 5 at a time is OK.
For prints it's different. I suppose taking digital photos of the prints is one way. Way back when I used to do that for doing restoration. I'd place the original photo on a flat surface with a frame above it (they actually made these) and use a film specially designed for this purpose - very low ISO and very small grain for B&W and what was called internegative film for color. Then you'd fix the flaws in the print in the darkroom. You can do the same thing with prints and digital camera except your darkroom is Photoshop. It's not the method I would prefer.
For prints instead I would (and do and will for some we don't have negatives for) use a flatbed scanner. They have incredible resolution these days, and with the scanner software will offer color and fading restoration that will do wonders. My flatbed is old and not supported on Windows 7 but the VueScan software does support it with the same basic workflow as the film scanner so I get the benefit of the same color correction and fading restoration that I get with the film.
Once you decide on a scanning strategy you then have to figure out how to manage the digital data. I haven't completely figured that out yet. But one thing is to remember that storage is cheap. I'm scanning for archiving, meaning the scanner captures at the highest resolution. All scans are saved in both TIFF and JPG format. I'll archive the TIFF files onto a DVD since they can be used in Photoshop later and keep the JPGs on the hard drive for viewing. The slides (and negatives) along with the DVD and a "contact sheet" are going into 3-ring binder sized storage sleeves. A binder really won't work because of the sizes but there are hanging folder storage systems that will work.
No matter what, remember that the digital storage is now your "repository" but is not safe. I will be buying a network attached storage device that supports RAID and use RAID1 (Mirroring). Periodically I will synchronize the set and pull one of the drives and put it into the safety deposit box and replace it in the raid set.
Physical indexing is one thing but also indexing of the digital data. I've not done that in the past (and I have at least a terabyte already of just digital photos taken with my D100 and D700). I will be using one of the indexing systems from Adobe - don't know which one yet - and start with the scanning data. I'll merge the pure digital stuff into this data base later.
It's a daunting task, and before I'm even close to being done cars will eat into the time I can dedicate. This weekend I've got to pull the radiator on the Cobra to get a rock-ding-leak fixed and that's going to take approximately 4 rolls of film down time
Good luck!
P.S. I'm looking at photos and slides from the early 70's that I forgot I even had! It's a hoot! One thing I'll have to try to remember is why in the photography class in college I decided to take a roll of the nude model with infrared slide film. Very difficult to scan.