hy_goldfarb Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 I have about 7500 slides I';d like to put on CDs or DVDs? Does anyone have eny experience on how to do it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nikos Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 This question ought to be in the digital darkroom forum. In any case, what you really ought to do is buy a good and fast slide scanner. You can get this job done for you by a good lab, too, but for that kind of volume it's more cost-efficient to get your own scanner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qtluong Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 I've done it with a Nikon LS4000 with the SF-200 automatic loader. Most of them are on this <a href = "http://www.terragalleria.com"> stock photography website</a>. The only other cost-effective option is to use a 8x10 flatbed with transparency adapter and scan directly slide pages, however that won't produce the same quality. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil_parker Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 Better sign up for your vacation time now :) If you figure at least 3 minutes a slide, (assuming you have a fast scanner and scan at a lower resolution and don't use ICE or anything or do any tweaks) - then you better set aside about ten 40 hour weeks... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
beauh44 Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 I thought this *was* the Digital Darkroom Forum?!? Anyhow... Hy, if you thought about doing this yourself, at home, well... everyone's right; it'll take a long, long time to scan 7500 slides. Probably longer than you'd be willing to spend unless you happen to be doing life without parole. An expensive alternative would be to have a lab do it, but we're talkin' very expensive. I've heard it said that time is money, and that many slides will take a heap of one or both. As for how to do it, you'd simply need the scanner and PC with a CD and/or DVD burner. Scan, save the file, burn it to disk. Repeat 7499 times. Best wishes . . . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven_clark Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 It woudn't surprise me if in the end the cheapest approach involved multiple computers and scanners just for the sake of bandwidth. Not that you could afford that all by yourself but say if you have 4 friends with scanners and split it five ways... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
efusco Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 Hy, Is this just something you thought you'd like to do or is it something you need to do? What resolution/end use were you planning. As has been aluded to, the time investment for a project such as this is enormous. When I bought my Nikon 4000ED and SF-200 I had just under 4000 slides--I scanned them at 150 dpi (just creating thumbnails for indexing)--each set of 50 took about 45 minutes to scan--when I was at top efficiency and sitting by the scanner with little else to do I could immediately switch out and start scanning the next batch of 50 and I would number and put each into a slide-file as I went so it was just under an hour for every 50 slides. Most of the time I had other things taking my attention. I have about 5500 now and they're all scanned, but I keep up as I go so even a long trip usually doesn't amount to more than a few hours over a couple days to get them done. I scan at high res only when I need to for a specific need. Safely giving each slide 10 minutes for a high res scan (probably closer to 20 actually) that's 6/hour=1250 hours = 52 24-hour days of continuous scanning....I hope you don't have a job or family!! I realize you asked what options are available, I'm sure there are commercial facilities that can/will do that volume and will probably give a volume discount of some kind, but to high-res scan and burn 7500 slides even at $1/slide is a huge expense for most of us--and I bet it'll be a lot closer to $5/slide. I'd say you need to reassess your plan/desire to scan all those slides. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ellis_vener_photography Posted July 11, 2003 Share Posted July 11, 2003 Hi Hy, What is your goal with the scans? Are you scanning with the einteent of being able to print relatively large (11x14 at full resolution), or are you scanning for presentation n a webpage at say 4x6 @ 96ppi, or are you just wanting thumbhnails to set up a catalog?<P>With that many slides you might want to consider finding a lab that does decent Kodak PhotoCD scans. Yes there are still some out there that use this technology. The consideration is: are they really making good scans for you? Some labs do & some labs do not. You might pay between $1.00 to $2.00 per slide. That is a lot of money, but to do it your self will take a good scanner, (roughly $1,000) and lots and lots and lots of time. You might be spending about 5-20 minutes per scan, so let's say an average of 12 minutes per scan X 7500 slides = 1500 hours of scanning, plus burn time. And that is before you start considering captioning, keywording & setting up the database so you can find a particular slide. and that also isn't taking into account the learning curve necessary for being able to make good usable scans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brainbubba_motornapkins Posted July 11, 2003 Share Posted July 11, 2003 Spend some time going through the slides, I bet you can winnow out >50% on the first pass. You may be better off archivally (if that's your primary goal) just keeping the slides stored... archivally. Scan them on an as-needed basis, not wholesale. There will always be better/cheaper/faster scanning technologies in the future. Perhaps in a few years you will be able to get the whole library scanned to super high res in a day or so and burned onto some super-duper dvd disk for a couple hundred bucks. The demand is certainly going to be there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marshall Posted July 11, 2003 Share Posted July 11, 2003 Wrestling with this question right now trying to help someone digitally index 30k+ slides into Hindsight's software. Some days we think it'd be easier to re-shoot them all digitally! One quick note: today, DVD's don't seem to be as stable as CD's, so despite the gain in storage quantity, it may not be a safe move. CD's aren't exactly long-term archival, either, but they may last long enough to get you to a good next generation... Now let's see, 12 minutes x 7500 slides = 1500 hours x whatever-your-hourly-rate-might-be vs. 7500 x a buck or two per slide. The indexing time, especially if you'd like stock-agency-like cross-referencing so you can find anything later, shouldn't be underestimated. Ack. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
andrei_lau1 Posted July 12, 2003 Share Posted July 12, 2003 I guess the best solution at this moment of time is to use Nikon ED4000 and SF200 auto feeder. So you can put 50 slides each time before you go to bed and allow it auto scan, 6 month later you may find that all your 7500 slide converted to digital. Of course, you will need to spend additional time everyday to do Photoshop, cataloging and burning into DVD. Go to search previous threads to find way to overcome the jamming problem of SF200. This may be the viable option to get the job done while still freeing you for somethings else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim_vanblaricom Posted July 13, 2003 Share Posted July 13, 2003 Call me crazy, I did just this. Coincidently about 7500 slides as well. Here's what I did and then what I'd do different. I bought a Nikon Coolscan IV and scanned 7500 slides with ICE on in TIFF @ 1200 DPI, file size is 6.29mb. Due to cropping, etc, this works out to 40 some CDs. I made duplicate CDs and store the second copy at work in case the house burns down. This is good enough resolution to print nicely at 11X14. Scan time is a little over 2 minutes per slide, it took me 18 months. Yep 18 months. Of course I didn't do this 10 hours a day, every day, but any time I was on the computer I was feeding the Coolscan and that was often 6 hours a day. It sucked and I hated it about 6 months into the project. To do it again, if a Coolscan 4000 plus auto loader was $5,000 it would be worth it. I would also do more research (and plan on possibly reburning) into archaivability of CDs, I understand Kodak makes a CD that has a significantly longer life than the standard Best Buy 100 pack for thirty cents after rebate CDs. These are really the only things I'd do different. Anything I want to put on my walls or publish, rescanning at higher resolution is insignificant in time compared to the total time invested in your best work. Scanning at 4000 dpi of course would be nice, but unless you own TDK, unreasonable. Good Luck. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim_vanblaricom Posted July 13, 2003 Share Posted July 13, 2003 One more thing, I also, using the batch file feature in PS, made JPEGS of everything (around 250KB each) and 7500 slides fits on 3 cds for just simple viewing. That was the easy part ;-)! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kelly_flanigan1 Posted July 13, 2003 Share Posted July 13, 2003 Have a system that one can be on Photo.net; and still scan!!!! :)......Scanning can be a HUGE time sink hole; I have about 8 scanners; it is well worth doing some time estimates; before starting a big project... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
steven_dusk1 Posted July 15, 2003 Share Posted July 15, 2003 Kodak's latest HR500 professional scanner will do upto 500 scans an hour at 128MB each and has digital ICE for dust removal and a automatic slide carousel. Why not get a part time job at a Kodak lab and then convince the boss to let you do some scanning in your own time! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sk_arts Posted August 6, 2003 Share Posted August 6, 2003 <<Scanning can be a HUGE time sink hole>> Just for fun i calculated how long it would take to scan 7,500 images on a Leaf with 15 minute exposures. If you stayed up all night, it would take 156 days and 3 hours. Cheers! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tholte Posted August 6, 2003 Share Posted August 6, 2003 I do not believe that Ralph Gibson, Keith Carter, Ernst Haas, Robert Frank, Danny Lyon, Dianne Arbus and Richard Avedon collectively would have 7500 slides worth scanning and saving. This is my opinion and I am sticking to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sk_arts Posted August 6, 2003 Share Posted August 6, 2003 <<I do not believe that Ralph Gibson, Keith Carter, Ernst Haas, Robert Frank, Danny Lyon, Dianne Arbus and Richard Avedon collectively would have 7500 slides worth scanning and saving.>> I have never been crazy about the shoot bazzilions of frames and hope one will look half way decent aproach. It's like ten thousand monkeys typing on ten thousand typerwriters for ten thousand years then edit down ten thousand pages and you'll have War and Peace. I average 8-12 images/day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
struan_gray Posted August 7, 2003 Share Posted August 7, 2003 Buy a decent slide duplicator like the Bowens Illumintran units on eBay, and rent a Canon EOS1Ds with a macro lens. Time per slide goes down dramatically, but you still have to do the catalogueing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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