In a recent clean up I realized it was about time to find a viable
method of digitizing my old slides.
There are a few thousand of them, and so it will take a while. Just think, if it takes one minute to stick each one of them into a scanner and get a good scan, adjust colour, framing and save it away with a meaningful name (pretty fast, really) that’s more than 50hrs of work.
I’m not that interested/dedicated to pull that off for the next several months
After much thinking, I decided to acquire some equipment and set up a “project and photograph” scheme that is coming to fruition now, and seems to work. It's mostly made possible with some free software called "Sofortbild" and a used Nikon D60 I picked up on ebay. I probably could have saved $50-100 and got an older D40, but I was happier with some of the features that the D60 had to get me quickly to a decent resolution, JPEG image on my disk.
It took much setup effort, to get the white-balance selection and exposure right, then work out how I would frame and capture both landscape and portrait images without constant re-jigging. But I've got a reasonable process now and can do several images per minute when I'm on a roll. Shooting in a ‘tethered’ setup makes it easy to sit back and work efficiently. Without seeing the image on a large screen you'd really have no idea if you got something directly 'keepable,' so that's a key piece to the puzzle.
So as part of this #MyOldSlides project, I’m sharing a few pics from each batch to Twitter with that hashtag, and will endeavour to put some up here as well. To start off, these are some shots from the early 90’s.
There are a few thousand of them, and so it will take a while. Just think, if it takes one minute to stick each one of them into a scanner and get a good scan, adjust colour, framing and save it away with a meaningful name (pretty fast, really) that’s more than 50hrs of work.
I’m not that interested/dedicated to pull that off for the next several months
After much thinking, I decided to acquire some equipment and set up a “project and photograph” scheme that is coming to fruition now, and seems to work. It's mostly made possible with some free software called "Sofortbild" and a used Nikon D60 I picked up on ebay. I probably could have saved $50-100 and got an older D40, but I was happier with some of the features that the D60 had to get me quickly to a decent resolution, JPEG image on my disk.
It took much setup effort, to get the white-balance selection and exposure right, then work out how I would frame and capture both landscape and portrait images without constant re-jigging. But I've got a reasonable process now and can do several images per minute when I'm on a roll. Shooting in a ‘tethered’ setup makes it easy to sit back and work efficiently. Without seeing the image on a large screen you'd really have no idea if you got something directly 'keepable,' so that's a key piece to the puzzle.
So as part of this #MyOldSlides project, I’m sharing a few pics from each batch to Twitter with that hashtag, and will endeavour to put some up here as well. To start off, these are some shots from the early 90’s.
The dog picture is one of popular dissent, initially we both claimed photo credit on this great shot, but I'm willing to credit it to K who has taken many great pics too, so I'm happy to capitulate and if nothing more I was at least standing in the same spot as the photographer when it was taken :)
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| Photo by @skatem - I'm sure of it, and will swear to such in a court of law. |
