Creating a process for digitizing slides

I mentioned in a past post that I was going to start my picture wrangling process with slides. My father, great uncle and husband developed most of their pre-digital era pictures as slides. I have fond memories of  my dad setting up the old slide projector and screen in the living room for a family slide show. It turns out that one reason for developing their photos as slides is that transmissive media such as slides and negatives are much higher resolution than print photos. I will explain what that means and why it matters in my next post. For now, the important thing is that they will produce better quality digital pictures than the prints will (mostly) and they are somewhat better organized which makes it easier for me to put a dent in my mountain of family photos.

The collected slides - my starting place

After weeding through most, though probably not all, of my stashed boxes of pictures, I have isolated the two Rubbermaid totes and an old cardboard box of slides that you see above. I have also worked to set up a dedicated workspace on my dining room table.  Which will be convenient until we have guests but I will cross that bridge later.  

The Set Up 

I have an old laptop that I am dedicating to this project connected to the photo scanner, an overhead ring light and a magnifier to allow me to preview slides and hopefully set aside those that are duplicates or of poor quality.  The ring light set up was an Amazon purchase and cost me about $30. 

It has a bracket for holding a phone camera for lighted overhead pictures.  The focusing loupe provides up to 10X magnification and cost about $10.  If you have access to an old light box or slide reviewer, you may find it equally as satisfactory.  I do like the light and magnifier because I can easily see the dust and flaws on the slide which would not be as visible on the light box or viewer.

Another thing I am committed to is rigorously tossing any slides that have subjects I just don't care about.  That might be people I can't identify that are not family members, pictures of random places that I am not connected to or things that I simply don't know what their significance is.  I have a couple of plastic bins set up on the table to receive the pictures I am finished scanning and another to receive the ones I plan to throw out.  

Dust blaster, lint free wipes and vinyl gloves 

Other things to have handy include gloves to prevent getting finger prints on the photos, lint free wipes for wiping away smudges as needed and a dust blaster.  The dust blaster is for blowing off dust particles before scanning.  I have learned that I can save myself a great deal of time and trouble if I take these steps before scanning since almost invisible dust and smudges can result in pictures that need quite a bit of editing time or rescanning.  Where possible, I hope to prevent making things any harder than they have to be.

Flatbed Photo Scanner

I have tried to minimize the amount of money I invest in my little photo project but a good quality photo scanner seemed essential.  I described the little film scanner that my father used to start scanning his slides and it is adequate for pictures that I don't intend to enlarge or use on a high definition screen.  But the resolution of the film scanner is only 24 megapixels while the resolution of the flatbed scanner is much higher.  

When shopping for a scanner we selected the Epson Perfection V600 Photo Scanner on the basis of it's moderate cost and good reviews.  In order to scan slides or negatives, brackets that hold the media in place are provided and the cover of the scanner can be modified to allow light to pass through them.  Up to four slides at a time can be held in the bracket and scanned.

The Epson Perfection V600 undergoing inspection

The plastic shield at the top is removed for scanning slides & negatives.

It reveals a window that allows light to pass through the media for scanning.

The bracket holds the slides in place.

This is a pretty efficient set up for processing many slides in one sitting.  Now I just have to make it happen!

Set a Deadline to Finish

Since I am a bit of a procrastinator I will set a target date for finishing this phase of the project with some monthly reminders on my calendar.  I will report back!