taking photos of slides

[crisgal]

is it possible to take a photo of a projected image, and get a half decent image?
I have an elderly neighbour who has travelled the world and has some amazing slides. I would love to get them made into photos for her but haven't much money to get it done professionally.

[Clanad]

This device is inexpensive but you do have to have a good digital camera... We have one here in the U.S., I'd expect they're available in the U.K.
Alternately, photo shops will convert them for you but I have no idea of the cost...
Good luck!

http://www.shotcopy.com/copyslides.htm

[ChuckFickens]

Slide scanning services in the UK seem to be between 30p and about 75p from what I've seen after a brief search (prices go down for large quantities)

You could buy a slide scanner, which cost about £50 but you would be limited to only ever being able to use it for scanning slides.

http://www.amazon.co....qid=1273579142&sr=8-5

Or you could buy a flat bed scanner with slide capabilities, which although a little more to start with can be used for scanning normal paper which widens it's usage potential.

http://www.amazon.co....id=1273579142&sr=8-11

Keep in mind that scanning a large amount of slides yourself is going to be time consuming, so now you have to weigh up how many slides you have against cost and your time to figure out if it's best to get them done for you or buy the equipment yourself.

[Greedyfly]

You should be able to take the slides to a dispensary shop also, we recently had one done which was about 30 years old I think it only cost a couple of pounds.

[Wak]

If you have the time to spare then you could always try this:-

Obtain a piece of pure white, thin glass and secure a slide to it with masking tape.
(Masking tape is made of paper and can be removed easily).
Use a digital camera which has the close up facility and mount it on a suitable tripod for stability.
Place and support the glass near a window on a bright day so as to obtain the correct colour temperature of the daylight, set up the tripod so as to fill the camera screen with a close-up shot and take the photo. Take care NOT to use the flash on the camera.
It might even be possible to tape the slides onto an old type glass TV or monitor screen (not digital) if you can adjust it to show a pure white screen but possibly the daylight would be the better option.

You would only have to try this once to find out if it is feasible or practically possible to do with the equipment you have and the cost would be minimal for the piece of glass.

Just a thought!!

[vulcan]

I am in the middle of transferring my slides to digital. As there are between 4 & 5 thousand, getting them copied in a laboratory was going to be very expensive.
The cheap versions of copiers aren't very good and the good one's are too expensive.
I have been projecting my slides onto a matt white wall and mounting my camera[Nikon] on a tripod.The results have been good and an added advantage is cropping can be done at the same time. The colour is as true as the original slide and the only downside is it's time consuming, but I recently retired so that isn't a problem.

[MalcolmY]

Yes. I have done precisely this. The trick is to ensure that the projected image is as undistorted as possible by getting the projector lined up squre to the sceen (or wall). Then mount the still camera on a tripod as close as possible to the projector. If you have some decent photo editing software - I use PaintShop Pro Photo X2 - you can easily correct any slight distortion or colour inaccuracies. Once you are set up you can progress quite quickly through a box of slides. Then save the new digi photos to your computer and copy them onto a disc.

[crisgal]

thanks for all the tips. I have been given a large viewer, and i think i can take a pic from it.
♥

[karenmac60]

Check with your local library - we have scanners with slide scanning facilities for use with the public pcs at no charge.

[crisgal]

ooh, that's very interesting! I'll have a look!