How can I Scan Transparencies/slides?

Ok, I know this is BIG HUGE ask, but its my dads 70th next month and I want to do a photobook for hiom. Unfortunately most of his photos are on slides or transparencies

I know I can buy a special scanner but they are not exactly cheap and I am SKINT!! I have a Canoscan 90 Scanner with navigator ex-canoscan lide 90. I did read about making a 3d triangle out of white paper and placing it over the slide so that the light reflects off the paper and goes back through the transparency but its not great eg no colour on colour slides.

I have Photoscape as my editing software as Photoshop died when my hard disc a death and although I am nearly 100% sure I had a trial version that didnt have all the elements but I cant find it again.

Anyways if anyone has any tips/tricks etc PLEASE PLEASE can you let me know - Many thanks

Yes you need a special slide scanner. You might be able to find some places that scan them for you tho, at a cost. Try some local printing/graphics companies?

Thanks Azz. I have phoned round and it would be just as cheap to buy the scanner! I hoped there was one of those tricks that isn't well known! But it seems I'll have to admit defeat

Its a shame as the quality doesn't have to be brilliant either just enough to establish who/what is in photo, I have hasd a wee bit of success with the backlighter option in photoscape but the colour is still missing. Ah well...thanks for the reply

set the camera up (tripod) with the slide at the right distance (fixed) and right light behind it and photograh it. This was just with daylight thru the window.

As a very rough idea to demonstrate I did this with hand held camera and slide but set up properly it would be a lot clearer if both were in a fixed position. Photograph it and then you have a digital copy to play with.
Free cheap and easy method



Bazza

Great idea, thank you for that.

will give it a try tomorrow when there's more sunlight!!

My scanner will do transparencies have you checked that yours will not? Mind you it is not that good but possible, there are some examples on my 52 challenge a couple of weeks ago, I was having a clear out and scanned them before I binned them.

http://www.yophotographer.com/page.php?t=6839&page=6
If that worked it is post no 60

Thanks Snapper - yours turned out really well. I have attached some examples of my attempts however when I googled the model etc it says it is not suitable so hardly surprising the results I got. I have about 70 or so I need to do so will give it a bash tomorrow if there is decent sunlight







Obviously I know it doesnt help that the slides are damaged and scartched

That is a shame that they are damaged, if the method suggested does not work you could try, if you have a slide projector and screen showing them and photographing the screen we sometimes have to reproduce old films to DVD in that way and it works well enough. Once you have the image in digital form you can work on it to improve most things not sure about the last shot though it looks like you have been grooming the dog over it

You would be able to work on the first two and get them to a pretty good standard in photoshop or one off the other processors.

The bit in bold made me laugh out loud!!

I have been having a hunt about to see what prices there are on net for this sort of thing and seems £32 for 100. There are probably about 10 or so that are as poor quality as the third one and some that are really good. I will definitely try the suggested methods with the "good" ones and then maybe see if somewhere can do the bad ones with Image enhancers etc.

I have till june 7th but the photobook itselfsays to allow 14 days (we got one done for grandpa and it was great)

I don't have a projector but OH might be able to "borrow" one from his work if I asked nicely

Thanks for all the ideas they are greatly appreciated

I did have a good slide scanner but scanning at hi-res with clever dust removal software takes an age. Very slow going through the slide collection and I have hundreds. I bought my scanner, in fact had 3 in total, and sold all at almost the price I bought them for. I sold my last one two years or so back but at the time they were very popular and loads of people wanted them. What i am trying to say is you could buy one and you are likely to get much of your cash back but you appear a bit time limited to mess around buying and scanning.