More pics than I can shake a memory stick at!

[WillCAD]

I have had a great idea for a couple of years now that I am finally getting into.

My grandfather has slides. He has a LOT of slides. He shot slide film at any family function from 1953 to about 1990, and has accumulated over 7000 of them.

My big idea was to convert all of these slides to digital images so that all of my aunts and uncles would easily share them. Because of the huge numbr of them, I knew this would take a long time, but I finally picked them up from Grandpop's house a few weeks ago and began the process.

Fortunately, Grandpop is a very organized man and has all of his slides in carousels, organized roughly by year. This has made the process go much faster, because I don't have to organize them or load them into the carousels (I am using the old "project it on a screen and take a digital picture of it" method).

I'm almost done; I should have them all shot by the end of the week.

Anybody else have some experience with converting slides to digital pics? This has been a fun project for me, because I get to see all of Grandpop's slides again, and because I know that when I finish with the whole shebang I'll be burning them onto DVDs and giving them to my aunts and uncles and some of my cousins as surprise Christmas gifts.

[imagineerwannabe]

Interesting Will. We were going through my father's stuff and found hundred's of pictures. This doesn't include the slides that are still in the attic. I told my sister I wanted to scan them, but thought it would take forever to do this. Your method may actually be faster

The idea of Christmas gifts of DVD's is a great one

[kathleena]

Oh Will I could just give you a great big hug for this one! My dad (OK, so probably the same age as your grandfather) has the exact same thing. All organized, neatly labelled, in either carousels or in slide boxes.

And as I recall, you have a Digital Rebel, correct? I think you had just purchased it when I met you last Dec. I now have my Digital Rebel XT. Sounds like I could follow this process to do my Dads!

How are they coming out? What settings are you using? Flash? Are you able to photo edit them to bring any color shifts back - like the yellowed items? What edits do you need to do? Do you use a manual focus because of the flat background of the screen? Anything else you can tell me?

This is awesome, thanks for posting about this!

[Linda S]

I read an article recently (in Maximum PC I think) about old photos and it talked about scanning slides (and negatives) for best results. I haven't tried it - it was very complicated sounding to me.
If your pics are coming out good (and I imagine they are since you are almost done and I'm sure you've viewed your images), then that's a great way.
If I can find the article I'll let you know what issue it is in.

[MissBianca]

I would love to know how you converted the slides--I'm pretty sure there are a bunch hanging around my parents' house somewhere. I have some old photos that I am going to scan and turn into digital scrapbook pages. I think these formats are a great way to preserve our memories!

Got any funny ones of yous as a kid? :lol:

[Linda S]

About a year ago I did an album for my father-in-law of old photos. And I do mean old - he was 87 at the time and I have some from when his parents were kids. AND I have some of HIS Great Grandparents - so many of the photos were from the early 1900's. I was lucky, hubby's grandmother was good at labeling photos and most were in pretty good shape.

In any case, I put together an album for him - it started with his immediate family - his siblings and him as kids and went from about 1909 through the 30's and had a few of his wedding pictures from 1947. Most of those I either scanned and printed or used photo corners on the originals. I then went back in time to his grandparents and included them - one set at a time and their children.
Did some geanology at the same time and found some seriously cool info.

I like an actual album -I like to look through photo albums at pictures, not just pics on the computer (unlike hubby who is happy to have them all digitally). I like to sit in the living room and browse the album.

Anyway, I gave it to him in the summer - he was in a nursing home with Parkinson's and was recovering from a broken hip and we knew he wouldn't walk or come home again. It was wonderful for him. I kept adding pages as I completed them. He looked at it a lot and I was glad I didn't wait until his birthday or Christmas to give it to him which was my original plan, or wait until it was done (he passed away in December on his 88th birthday at 1 am).

I plan to compete it in sections - going back in time at the end - and adding his life with his wife and kids in the middle. Doing so I found some gut-bustingly funny photos of my husband and his sisters. (And some of my fil that look exactly like my son.) What the heck were we thinking in the 70's?????

[WillCAD]

Oh Will I could just give you a great big hug for this one! My dad (OK, so probably the same age as your grandfather) has the exact same thing. All organized, neatly labelled, in either carousels or in slide boxes.

And as I recall, you have a Digital Rebel, correct? I think you had just purchased it when I met you last Dec. I now have my Digital Rebel XT. Sounds like I could follow this process to do my Dads!

How are they coming out? What settings are you using? Flash? Are you able to photo edit them to bring any color shifts back - like the yellowed items? What edits do you need to do? Do you use a manual focus because of the flat background of the screen? Anything else you can tell me?

This is awesome, thanks for posting about this!

Being just slightly less OCD than Adrian Monk, I worked out my technique through experimentation before starting on Grandpop's slides.

The quality is about equal to what I'd get by scanning a 4x6 print. Scanning with a slide scanner would definitely produce a much better image, but the shear volume of slides makes it nessecary to use this technique, because it goes fast.

There is a slightly odd "transparent" quality (I don't know how else to describe it) that comes from shooting a pic of a brightly projected image, but they are clear and reasonably good quality. I'll post a few of them later as examples.

The basic technique is simple:

1) I set up the projector and screen normally, adjusting to get the image as straight, level, and undistorted as possble.

2) I put my camera on a tripod just behind the projector and slightly higher. The closer the camera is to the projector the better, because shooting from the side or from too high above would result in the image becoming oblique (wider at the bottom than at the top, or wider on one side than the other).

3) Zoom up until the projected image fills the viewfinder. Remember that your viewfinder in the camera actually shows a slightly smaller area than the sensor sees, so after you fil the viewfinder you have to zoom up just a hair more.

4) Use the remote from the projector to advance the slide, and use the remote from my camera to click each pic. Using the remotes prevents either the projector or the camera from shaking, since shaking would blur the image. If you don't have the infrared remote for your Rebel XT, it will only cost you about $25 - it's worth the money!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00004WCIC/002-6347551-1492014

Camera settings:
Resolution-Medium/Fine. I shoot in Medium because I don't think you can get any more resolution out of the projected image than a Medium shot.
ISO-400
White Balance-Tungsten (the bulb in the projector is very yellow, the Tungsten white balance setting compensates for that)
Focus-Manual. I use Auto Focus to get the camera locked in for the first shot, then switch over to manual so that the camera doesn't have to re-focus for each shot.

Other considerations:
Turn off the lights! The darker it is in the room, the more light the camera will get from the projected image.Light in the room will throw off the cameras metering and make your shots come out too dark.

Don't move around too much. Settle in to shoot a single carousel, and keep going till it's done.

Don't look at the slides too much. The more you look at the slides for enjoyment, the longer it will take to shoot them all - shoot now, enjoy later!

BUT - Pay attention! Vertical slides have to be turned horizontal or they will get cut off in the digital picture, so you have to pay attention as you go or you will miss some verticals.

Don't go too fast. Advance slide, pause for a second, click the pic. If you have an auto-focus slide projector, it may make a whirring sound as it focuses. Let it finish; the delay will not only mean that each slide will be focused well before you shoot, but will also allow the camera's buffer to catch up with you. I timed it a couple of times - a carousel of 140 slides takes me about 13 minutes this way.

Format your CF card in the camera before each new carousel of slides to avoid duplicate pics.

Come up with a naming and organizing scheme BEFORE you start shooting. 7000 slides in a single folder is chaos! I have mine divided into folders, one for each carousel, and I have a batch renaming utility that I use to name the files "Car12-001.jpg" instead of the default name that the camera gives it.

After I shoot each carousel, I have a utility that I use to batch rotate all of the verticals back to vertical (you have to turn them horizontal when you shoot or the camera will cut them off). This also gives me an opportunity to briefly skim through the bunch and look for flubs.

I also run a utility called Noise Ninja on them all. Noise Ninja is about $90 and removes noise from digital photos or scans, and sharpens them up at the same time (it does an AWESOME job removing noise and grain from scanned prints!) Noise Ninja also has the bennefit of saving the files with a much better JPG compression than the Digital Rebel has - which means that the size of the files is reduced to 30% of original without losing any quality. For so many slides, the file size issue is very important.

[kathleena]

OCD? OCD?? What is that?? ;) I know nothing about being OCD. :D

Wow - that's a lot of great tips. I think I'm going to try this. I think I do have the infrared. I also have the ability to save in RAW format so I can adjust the white balance and exposure later.

My dad's slides are so old, that the images pop after the heat from the projector lamp sets on them for a few seconds.

I have tried scanning slides and it takes - forrrr-evvvvv-errrrrrrrrr. I would only do it again for some really important, great slides that you wanted the absolute best quality possible.

And that Noise Ninja sounds interesting. I think I'll check it out.

Thanks for the tips again!

[Sheryl]

What a great thing for you to do Will, you really are a sweet guy!

[Linda S]

I have tried scanning slides and it takes - forrrr-evvvvv-errrrrrrrrr.
I imagine so. I put together a DVD/slide show with music for my parents for Christmas this past year. I scanned pictures from when they were kids up through when my brother and I were kids (found a couple of cute 1971 WDW pics!) and included grandkids. About 80 years worth and only the last 4 or so were already digital. It was SLOW and I had a system going by then end and it was STILL slow.

If you had to organize the slides first, it might be just as fast to scan them and then organize them on the computer. Will's lucky they slides are in order AND in carousels.

[mommyfin]

What a very sweet thing to do, Will!
Not only are your older relatives going to be thrilled to see the old pictures again, your making it possible for future generations to enjoy them also!

[WillCAD]

What a very sweet thing to do, Will!
Not only are your older relatives going to be thrilled to see the old pictures again, your making it possible for future generations to enjoy them also!

That was part of the idea. There are kid pics in there of my dad and all of my aunts and uncles, as well as many of my cousins. I think that my cousins will enjoy seeing some pics of their parents, and my cousins' kids and spouses will probably enjoy seeing their kid pics, too.

[Ursulinda]

Will I just did the same thing, with two exceptions. I set the camera in front of the projector, and I used a plane white painted wall instead of a screen, projecting from about 6 feet away from the wall.

I had been mourning the lack of a screen, but the camera guru here at work said my photos probably came out better because I did NOT. His point was that the image on the highly reflective 'pebbly' surface of the screen doesn't photograph as well as the plain flat wall.

[ddoll]

Oh Will, aren't you just the sweetest guy in the world? :wuv:
What an incredibly thoughtful gift. Your aunts and uncles are gonna FLIP over this. And it's an investment that many more people will benefit from for many years.

DH took all his father's home movies and converted them to VHS years ago. It was a huge undertaking but his mother was so thrilled with it, that it was well worth the effort.

He edited bits from all of them and made a video to show at their anniversary party. There wasn't a dry eye in the place. Especially when you get to see those older relatives that have since passed away looking young and vibrant.

[PoohsPal]

Christmas 04 my dh gave me a scanner that can do slides. I thought I was good for doing about 700 of them in a week (4 at a time). Those were all in carousels. Then mom handed me boxes of random slides. Ughh!! I did them, but alter realized that they were liley just the rejects from teh other trips. :eek:

Classics that I found?

My grandfather, who paid mimmal attention to me durign the part of my childhood I remeber, holding both my hands at about 1 yr old as he walked with me in the lake.

One of me on dad's shoulders. My favorite spot in the world as a little girl and this

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b352/PoohsPal/dvc.jpg

Me and my brother on our first trip to DL for their 25th. Talk about rugrats! And, no, he did not like his pic taken!

Now I have to do something with all these pics. WIsh I was older in them and had a clue where they were. The pic above was our last family vacation.

[WillCAD]

Will I just did the same thing, with two exceptions. I set the camera in front of the projector, and I used a plane white painted wall instead of a screen, projecting from about 6 feet away from the wall.

I had been mourning the lack of a screen, but the camera guru here at work said my photos probably came out better because I did NOT. His point was that the image on the highly reflective 'pebbly' surface of the screen doesn't photograph as well as the plain flat wall.

Gee, thanks Linda. You got me thinking too much... :confused:

After reading your post, I tried projecting on a white wall (too pebly, but brighter than the screen), and on the matte side of a sheet of posterboard.

The image on plain white posterboard is so much sharper than the screen, I started over from scratch and have been re-shooting. I'm up to Carousel 21.

Oy, the things we go through when we're so obsessive/compulsive... :rolleyes:

[PoohsPal]

:eek: Good thing I am not obsessive compulsive!

[Ursulinda]

oh, GOSH! Will, I'm so glad I tossed mine and they are well and truly GONE or I'da been doing mine over too, on posterboard!