The item in the title is what Lady Chance wants for her birthday. Anyone have any info on such technology?
You will need to scan them. Most camera and photo stores can do it. Some flatbed scanners also have optional transparency adapters that will allow you to do it at home.
You can also take a picture of the slide with a digital camera, but getting the illumination and color right can be a hassle.
Yeah, what she wants is some little piece of gear that she can feed the slides in and will thereby generate electronic image files for her hard drive.
I used to have a Minolta dimage duel scan IV and it did a great job at scaning slides and 35mm negs. It was a bit on the slow side but for the price it was excellant and the software that came with it was pretty easy to use.
The results were much better than scaning from a flatbed scanner.
How serious is she looking to get? Most new flatbed scanners come with film holders for 35mm, and mid-level ones have holders for medium format. A film scanner will blow away any flatbed, but you can only scan film with it. Really good film scanners are expensive.
That said, the flatbed Epson 4490 is a good all-around choice. It also has ICE dust/scratch removal, which is a godsend. ICE uses infrared light to detect physical imperfections. It’s better than software dust removal because it’s not fooled by abrupt contrast changes in the image. One of my coworkers uses a 4490 for some of his professional work.
My dad bought a dedicated HP slide scanner to scan all his slides to electronic. I’m not sure how it compares to using a regular flatbed scanner, but it seems like it could also do film negatives. Of course now that he’s finished he’s stuck with a slide scanner 
At the school we have a little gizmo, about the size of a few paperback novels stacked on a desk, which you can load a stack of slides into and it scans them. No idea how much it cost, or anything, but it does a decent job. It automatically feeds them through one at a time, too.
Is she looking for something that’s professional quality, or just for snapshots? If it’s just for snapshots, why is she using slide film in the first place?
For professional quality, I have a Nikon Coolscan V that gives me very impressive results. I can make up to 11x17 prints, with a little sharpening, contrast adjustment, etc. in Photoshop.
She’s not using slides at all. She’s all crazy digital and it costs a fortune, lemme tell you!
No, she inherited what looks to be about 5000 slides when her father died. She wants to get those electronic.
I’m interested in this as well as I have a few hundred from when my mother died. It seems a waste to have them sitting around and not to be able to look at them. I’ll have to look for one of these options so I can give them to my brother and sister.
I was dating a guy who was planning on buying a dedicated slide scanner, and I was hoping to borrow it from him or buy it off of him when he was done. Pity we broke up. I don’t recall which one he was going to buy, but it worked out cheaper and faster than taking them somewhere to be done, and he figured he’d be able to sell it on eBay (or to me) when he was done. I’m in the same situation…thousands of slides taken my my dad over the years, and though we have a slide projector and a screen, watching them that way is very time-consuming. Maybe I can convince my sister and brother to go in on one with me (and then I’d need a more powerful computer) so that we can each have access to this huge collection. I know there are some great slides of Cleveland back in the 40’s, and lots of United Airlines pics, and I’m sure some of the men who were Scouts in his old troop would love a disk of Camporee memories…and I think my mom would enjoy seeing her wedding reception photos again, and my cousins would love some pictures of their moms from back then…
Now we’re getting somewhere. If there are that many, I would suggest you look into having the slides digitized, as opposed to getting a scanner and doing them yourself.
The DIY method is certainly do-able, but it will be very time consuming for such a large number. Good candidate for burnout.
If you google, you can find a number of different services that will digitize slides. And most will give you a break based on the number that you do. The price ranges from around .60 and less, depending on the amount.
I would recommend sending a handful and judging the quality first, then send the whole lot once you’re satisfied.
I have used one of these services, and they did a pretty good job. You can select what resolution (image size) you want. Their name was something like “dig my slides” or something like that, but I don’t have the link with me on my work computer. They do some slide cleanup, and also advertise some image cleanup on the scanned images. Then compile all the images onto CDs for you.
As the keeper of the family slide collection, which my sibs would really like to have digitized, one glitch I’ve run into (and you may be facing the same thing, depending on the age of the slides) is that unless you spend serious $$$$, the slide scanners I could find would handle only 35 mm slides, and I’ve got a bunch of other formats. The real oldie-but-goodies are square, and the 35 mm scanners lop off the top and bottom of the image.
I use a Nikon Super CoolScan 5000 .
I love it.
The do have a batch slide feeder as well as well so you can load up a bunch of slides and check back later.
There are some problem the feeder I her some jams occasionally her is the Fix
There are some less expensive models I am sure. But this is a great scanner and the software that comes with it is great. maybe not as good as Silverfast but still really good. You will have dist and scratch and color issues with those old slide. I guarantee it. If you do it yourself you will need good software for slide scanning if you want nice images.
I agree if you are gonna send them out to send just a few out at a time to see the quality. There are a bunch of shitty companies out there.
My suggestion buy a good dedicated slide scanner. One that has a batch feed option. Take a couple days to get to know it. Then after you are done maybe scan some friend’s old slides for a dinner or some other favor or money then sell it.
It comes down to how much your wife’s time is worth. With that many slides, automation is paramount. It’s also not unlikely that the Coolscan 5000 with feeder that fifty-six mentions could end up costing less than paying for slide scanning services.
If you decide to go with the film scanner, then the Coolscan 5000 is an excellent choice, with great image quality, and accepts the batch feeder, unlike the Coolscan V. I have the 9000, and the color restoration option (ROC), which the 5000 also has, is a real boon when dealing with old slides.