Scanning 35mm Slides to Digital Doesn't Have to Be a Chore

Ordinarily scanning 35mm slides is not something we think about doing, but maybe we should. Many of us have a few hundred sometimes, even 1000s, of old family 35mm slides hidden in boxes in our basement or garage. Some years ago, taking slides was something just about every family did. Family slide shows of our holidays at the beach or Disney World were a highlight of childhood, and big screen slideshows were our means of sharing favorite memories.

Sadly, nowadays our once-treasured slides may be neglected, dusty, and faded. After a while slides may well become dark and attain a funny blue or red hue. That's not exactly appealing and it likely will continue unless you do something. Even worse, who has a slide projector these days? We don’t even have a means of viewing our old slides anymore. The good news is, by scanning all your old 35mm slides, transparencies and images, you'll be saving them from further destruction, protecting them from future damage and they will be available to a whole new generation.

Issues With Scanning 35mm Slides Yourself

Now that you understand that scanning 35mm slides and photos is critical to their preservation, whether doing it yourself or sending them out becomes a dilemma. If you have even 500 slides and want to do it right, you need the right equipment, and that means buying a scanner. Good quality flat-bed scanners run around two hundred bucks. A professional quality 35mm scanner such as the Nikon Coolscan 5000ED will set you back about $1500. That stings! Plus, what do you do when your slides are fading or the colors have changed, or they're scratched? You'll have to correct the color of each and every image with photo software like Photoshop This involves an additional expenditure for image editing software (Photoshop is costly at about $600+) and you need to know how to make the corrections -- plus be ready to spend about 30-40 hours. Trust me on this: I spent hours and hours scanning old photos for a photo book then one by one editing them in Photoshop. The tedium was beyond belief. I will never make that mistake again.

Benefits of Using a Slide Scanning Service

You'll find that a slide scanning service is a huge time-saver and may save you money in the long run. If you think about it, if you only have time to scan and repair a few photos a week it could take you months to finish. In addition to scanning 35mm slides to digital, scanning services will also scan negatives and prints. All you have to do is package your photos and 35mm slides and mail them off. As part of the service they will remove dust and fingerprints as well as minor scratches and imperfections. Once they’ve converted the 35mm slides and images to digital, they will even do things like cropping, red-eye removal and make color corrections, getting your pictures as close to the original state as possible. Just imagine, those old photos of your mother or grandmother in her pink poodle skirt will have renewed color and vibrancy!

Newly Converted Photos Put on DVDs

Once the scanning of your 35mm slides is completed your original slides will be returned to you along with a DVD(s) of your newly digitized photos. At this point you can get creative with you new photos. Aside from the pleasure of de-cluttering your closet or garage, you can easily sort and date them, send out DVDs of your photos to family and friends, create photo books and family histories, and upload them to online photo sharing sites.

By scanning 35mm slides to digital, you will make sure they will be permanently preserved and safe from natural or man-made disasters.

Valerie Goettsch is webmaster of Digital Photos 101 a resource for photo enthusiasts with reviews of digital cameras and the latest photo services and software. Click here more information on scanning 35mm slides to digital.