Scan old school slides to digital?

cunnins4

Hi folks,

My grandad has a tonne of old slides and photos he'd like to put onto a computer to preserve them and to give them to the rest of the family. I've done a bit of reading and it seems that scanning the actual prints isn't as good as scanning the negatives? Is this correct? I have a bog standard all in one printer with a scanner, so I'm assuming this won't do the trick and I need something more specialised? Is there anywhere in Dublin that would do this type of thing? I'm talking about scanning thousands of images, so I'd say it could become quite costly? Could anyone shed some light on what this would cost?

He wants to put some onto a dvd to play at a family function so they will be on a relatively large screen so the better the quality the better!

Any help or suggestions would be most appreciative!

kumate_champ07

It would cost a hell of a lot. those old slides will need to be cleaned and dusted, theres a special spray you can get cheap that cleans them without doing any damage. you're better off buying a scanner and doing them yourself, it will take a long time tho.

a canon 8800f would be a good budget film scanner, it does a separate scan for dust and dirt and then subtracts that from the normal scan so you dont have to go into photoshop and spend 5mins on each image cleaning them.

what you could do is buy a nikon film scanner and when youre done sell it on if you wont have any need for it, the job will then cost you maybe 300-400euro(?) in loss and you would get pro results as long as you know what you're doing.

theres also a place in Rathmines i think called the lightroom and you rent a mac/pc and scanner per hr.

kumate_champ07

the images you see on the tv screen will be less than 2mp, you will get very nice 7mp images from a canon 8800f, but mp/res isnt important

DMAX is the important spec u look for in a film scanner. and speed too if you will be doing alot.