I have many slides from years ago and have enjoyed viewing them from time to time. But I always came away wishing I had them on disc, a CD, Flash Drive, or whatever so that I could see them more often. In those days, slides were much cheaper than prints, so I took a lot of them. Checking on line for transfer services, I found that they seemed pretty expensive, and wanting to be frugal, I worked out a way to do the transfers myself. I have a scanner but don't have the slide attachment for it, and it seemed when I did use the scanner, it took a very long time. This instructable solves that problem as well, as the copying goes quite rapidly.
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First, a slide projector. I have one that I have had for years, so cost was nil. Next, a diffuser element, which for me is a sheet of white acrylic. It came off of a light box I use, so no cost here, either. I tried to get by with using plain white paper, but paper has fibers in it and gives a definite pattern to the projections. We need a holder for the diffuser, in this case simply a piece of two by four with a groove cut in it. I did this on the table saw, which makes it very easy to do. Two small clamps to hold a piece of wood which is the slide holder. A black piece of paper is cut to accommodate the slide being copied, and prevents light reflecting back and forth and affecting your shot. A tripod, and a camera.
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I'm spending this Easter with my Mum (only next week now) so will rummage through the attic while I'm there. She will love to have all those images on a cd. Really looking forward to this project!!.
Thaks so much
B'on
I have the slide frame for my Epson 4490 but have not done anything with it because the Tiiiiiiiime involved in scanning.
BTW - Have you tried projecting the slides and photographing them off the screen?? You could use the slide trays and really speed up the copy process.
Keep Inventing,
Flotubr
When you project the slide, you are looking at a second generation image, a copy of the original slide and there is a loose of light because you are seeing the reflection of the light beams in the screen. Also, you can't exactly centre the camera to take an undistorted image because the exact centre viewpoint is taken by the projector itself.
When you use the method described here, you are taking a photo directly from the original slide so you obtain a second generation copy, not third and this is as best as you can get with ANY method.
Essentially, you are doing the same a slide scanner does except you are taking the whole image at once instead of line by line with the scanning head (and this is why the scanner has much higher resolution).
If you set your "scanning studio" right and use a good digital camera, you can match the quality of a home or office slide scanner.
Also, if your camera has a remote controller (be it a cabled one or, much better, an infra-red or radio one), use it since this will avoid any vibration in the image from the action of the finger on the shutter button. All semi-professional and up SLR cameras have an input for a remote controller or can be controlled from the USB port. Many consumer cameras have an infra-red controller.
After getting the movie into the camera, if your camera can't get the video directly onto DVD, you would save them to your computer and then onto DVD with DVD burning software- at which point, you could edit all those shots of people with their heads cut off out of frame!<grin>
I bought a commercial video transfer unit on ebay pretty cheaply, I think I paid about $10.00 for it. It's not fancy, but works on the same principle as this. There are openings for the slide and movie projector to shoot their image into and a screen for the image, which is then copied by a digital camera (still or movie) shooting the screen.
Copying a movie seems to be easier and less time consuming than copying slides. Once you got the projector and camera set up and running, you could go do something else while the film is being copied. Slides need to be photographed 1 at a time, which would tie you down while you are doing it. It would be great if the process could be automated. I came up with the idea of shooting the slides with a video camera and then using a software program ro convert the movie into stills.
DVDvideosoft has a free program that will take each frame of a film or video and convert them into JPGs. You can set the program to convert the whole movie, or it can be set to convert frames at intervals you set, like every 10th frame. Once I get my unit set up and running, I will see if it works.
There are Instructables on how to transfer old movies to DVD and articles on the subject on wikihow and e-how.
FYI, DVDvideosoft has a lor of free audio and video programs, you can check them out:
http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/
They have great technical support as well. I speak from personal experience and I use thier programs a lot for converting video formats, quick video cutting, and audio work..