Retirement Project advice

[leco]

After what seems like a lifetime in educational IT I now find myself officially retired. To stave off perpetual ennui, and daytime TV, I thought it time for a long term project. Namely turning my vast collection of 35mm slides (and photographs) into digital images.

 

Now for my problem/challenge, whilst I might have been an avid photographer I have never been a digital one. What kit would I need to even start on the task? I obviously need a scanner, but which one? Is specialist software required? I know there are photographic geeks out there, can you give me some advice please? Your suggestions would be most welcome.

[GrumbleDook]

You can get some decent combined scanners and 35mm slide scanner. Depending on how many you are doing you might want to look at some slide scanners where you can pre-load a number of slides (Plustek and Agfa do some cheapish ones).

 

Pretty sure Which? did a mag on this earlier in the year.

 

Sorry I can't be more help.

[witch]

this might make interesting reading while you wait for those who know to reply..

 

Comparing Methods to Transfer Slides to Digital

[Dos_Box]

I got a great one from Aldi last year. Scanned negs and slides direct to an SD card. Fast, cheap and with great image quality.

In fact, it was this one: ION|FILM 2 SD|SCANNER, FILM/SLIDE, TO SD CARD | CPC only £30 cheaper!

[TechSupp]

Just done a job (well a year ago anyway) of converting all my father in laws slides, about 300. I did'nt want to pay about 50p a slide for someone else to do it so I managed to buy a seconhand Minolta DimageScan IV Slide/35mm negative Scanner (wich be careful if getting one, drivers are only available for XP). It did a brilliant job, about 5 slides at a time. It came with a version of photoshop but googling around the best scanner softwrae to use was VueScan. Really easy to use and all sorts of options to play with on colour, dust removal etc. I dodnt have the knowledge to fiddle with image settings so I just left the defaults and was very impressed with the quality for slides that were between 40 and 50 years old, stunning colour on most of them. If you have XP you should pick up a reasonable one. I paid £70 second hand and when I had finished ended up getting £130 on ebay for it!!!!!

[laserblazer]

Have a great retirement leco. I was hoping to do the same soon but then we blew all our savings, so I'll have to do a few more years.

[Andrew_C]

I bought a Nikon Coolscan4 at work. Stunning results, tedious to use, and probably VERY old technology now. Takes too long for each slide to just sit and do it, but not long enough to do anything else. Very dull.

[teejay]

Depends on the quality you want. If you are looking at very high quality results then have a look around for a second hand Nikon Coolscan with Digital Ice Cubed. Check it's USB as some older ones are SCSI.

Have a great retirement :-)

[beeswax]

Now that you have some time on your hands, why not try MSc in E-learning at the University of Edinburgh ? Have a long(?) & happy retirement.

[leco]

Thanks for the good wishes and suggestions. I'll follow them all up and let you know what I'm going to do.

@beeswax - good thought, though it would obviously depend on the cost. My pension is not very large:(

[teejay]

It's funny though, this was my dads 'first project' when he retired 10 years, so we clubbed together and bought him a slide scanner. Think he got about 50 done and then decided 'lifes too short' and got on with other stuff. He still does a few now and again, like last week when it was snowing, so get the odd tech support phone call as he can't remember how to use the scanner.

[beeswax]

@beeswax - good thought, though it would obviously depend on the cost. My pension is not very large:(

 

I think it is in the region of £5K. You can attempt the course in 12-18 months, but you'd have to be doing it full time to achieve that. I was given a timescale of 60 months, which would take me very close to retirement age myself, and I'm not sure if I could handle the stress again.

[leco]

I think it is in the region of £5K. You can attempt the course in 12-18 months, but you'd have to be doing it full time to achieve that. I was given a timescale of 60 months, which would take me very close to retirement age myself, and I'm not sure if I could handle the stress again.

Whilst I now have more time to dedicate to the work the stress, as I remember, was not necessarily all to do with time constraints. As teejay points out life may be too short and to what end? Still just the research of any project takes up space:)

[SpuffMonkey]

Best of luck with that - you're lucky you've 35mm slides - they are easier to deal with - I've recently done 100s of my Dad's slides - which 2.25 in square - I couldn't find any automated system for them and had to do them individually - *sigh*

[leco]

Best of luck with that - you're lucky you've 35mm slides - they are easier to deal with - I've recently done 100s of my Dad's slides - which 2.25 in square - I couldn't find any automated system for them and had to do them individually - *sigh*

Oh yes I have some of those also but thankfully not many.

[SpuffMonkey]

Oh yes I have some of those also but thankfully not many.

 

Yeah - they are lovely quality - being so big - but my Dad was in the Merchant Navy for quite a while and theres a limit to the number of pictures of 1950's Cape Town, Singapore, Hong Kong, Aden, Dar es Salaam harbours & beaches that I can stay focussed for...

[leco]

I feel your strain ... my dad's pictures are much the same area, except they are of air fields.