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Our public library has a machine/device that converts slides to digital files.
You should also check your local photo shop as they likely offer this service
Agree. My scanner was purchased 5 years ago to assist with my mother's legacy of 100-year-old photos, negatives of all types, and other documents. Besides, you would have to install the scanner, etc., etc., which I know you wouldn't be thrilled about!I would prefer not to buy a new piece of equipment, which would soon be in the pile to take to our yearly electronics recycling event.
A local pharmacy chain in my area, which has a photo service, has a scanning service. How about Walmart or similar? I'm sure you can find companies on the internet, where you need to send your slides away, but you might be understandably nervous about losing them.I am having a hard time even finding a local photo shop
It makes a lot of sense to give this a trial.Our library does indeed offer this service.
Actually you will eventually lose everything digitalized but nothing on celluloid if stored properly. That's why some even make negative copies from their most loved digital photos. Just saying (as a professional). Moving pictures are 125 years old and we can still see the originalsHowever you do it, you have got to get them digital, or you will lose them forever.
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It would be cheaper and better quality if you send it to an online service provider. I have hundreds of slides and super 8 reels that I need to send offIn an unusual burst of energy, yesterday I decided to clean out a few drawers. Lo and behold, two of them are filled with slides. For whatever reason, all of the pictures I took during the years I lived in Spain (70-71, 72-73, and 76-77) are slides. I would really love to be able to see them and wonder if any of the forum tech angels would could recommend a way to do it. I would be happy to buy a piece of equipment if that is the best way, but my goal would be to get them on my computer as photos. A little online searching leaves me with a million options and no way to evaluate.
Sorry for this off-camino topic. So I will bring it a little closer to the camino by saying — wouldn’t it be nice to see pictures of Santiago from 1970?!
Thank you for providing an estimate ($0.25) of the scanning cost per slide. To scan all of mine in will come to over $1,500! Now I have to see how many of the slides are worth scanning in. I went to the only good photo shop in town and they don't currently have one available for sale. They expect to get some in latter on in August, but they reccomended one and said to get it on line. I have it on order, now all I have to do is scan a bunch of slides in with my $160 scanner. The time it takes might be a killer.I have been facing the same. I triaged old family slides using light table, ordered/arranged them per instructions, then had a professional service convert them to jpeg in bulk--cost about $0.25 each. Cost shared with 2 siblings. I use Picasa to put in tags but not sure yet how to use on retrieval. Also paid to have all the old VHS converted to mpg. But boy, are the hard and time consuming to edit down to useful scenes.
My Epson scanner is good, but very slow with setup etc for 4 slides at a time. But I use it as I find small stashes of old slides. Not too worried abut quality since few will be blown up to 11x14 for anybodies walls.
Now in the midst of what to do to leave behind a 'story' and not just a pile of family detritus. In hindsight I already was too kind on triage--what descendants really want to see 20 Thanksgiving dinner photos.
So far I have done one 20 minute multimedia (Pinnacle and MovieMaker), slide and movie clip show with music of her favorite family songs as sound. Was for wife's life from birth until post college and consumed better part of 3 weeks time.
Much depends on what one wants to do by way of leavings for posterity--and I have not fully decided that yet.
But I do know that kids and grandkids are not interested in a detailed story of my 340+ days on caminos. So I struggle to find a way to tell my camino story in under 30 minutes!! I am now thinking a multimedia show plus a dictated (just got going with DragonNaturallySpeaking) storyline.
For both my father and father-in-laws autobiography, I just scanned into *.pdf to make them safer and easy to disseminate.
Good project for this no-camino lockdown; lots of laughter and tears as I triage camino photos. (I am still clinging to all the mushroom/fungi photos mainly from France!!)
There are services that will scan for you. I’ve used www.scandigital.com. They did a nice job. Another is www.scancafe.com. There may be businesses providing scanning services in your area.In an unusual burst of energy, yesterday I decided to clean out a few drawers. Lo and behold, two of them are filled with slides. For whatever reason, all of the pictures I took during the years I lived in Spain (70-71, 72-73, and 76-77) are slides. I would really love to be able to see them and wonder if any of the forum tech angels would could recommend a way to do it. I would be happy to buy a piece of equipment if that is the best way, but my goal would be to get them on my computer as photos. A little online searching leaves me with a million options and no way to evaluate.
Sorry for this off-camino topic. So I will bring it a little closer to the camino by saying — wouldn’t it be nice to see pictures of Santiago from 1970?!
I was going to suggest something like this viewer (I have a couple of similar models) until I saw the 2020 price: $46, on sale!I think the best thing to do is cull before I worry about scanning.
Google offers 15 GB of free storage of whatever data you choose, photos or documents. They will also store an unlimited number of photos, but they’ll reduce the file size. All free. But you have to choose what you want. 15 GB or unlimited with reduce file size. And of course, as you point out, you can pay for more, but I assume all that will disappear if you ever stop paying. You can also post up to 1000 photos free on Flickr, as long as they’re under 200 MB in file size.I pay Google 1.99 a month for 100 GB of storage. They have some free storage option and I don't know what it is.
Twenty - Five years ago I worked on a project for digitising the document library of an aircraft manufacturer so they did not have worry about their document store going up in flames. The outcome of the project was that they would still have to maintain their paper and microfiche document store since no magnetic or optical media could be guaranteed to be safe. I backup my digital media files to "data Safe" DVDs however there is no guarantee from any manufacturer. There is usually a description concerning their estimated life expectancy.Actually you will eventually lose everything digitalized but nothing on celluloid if stored properly. That's why some even make negative copies from their most loved digital photos. Just saying (as a professional). Moving pictures are 125 years old and we can still see the originals
Wise manTwenty - Five years ago I worked on a project for digitising the document library of an aircraft manufacturer so they did not have worry about their document store going up in flames. The outcome of the project was that they would still have to maintain their paper and microfiche document store since no magnetic or optical media could be guaranteed to be safe. I backup my digital media files to "data Safe" DVDs however there is no guarantee from any manufacturer. There is usually a description concerning their estimated life expectancy.
BTW I still use 110 Roll film in my medium format camera and get it developed the old fashioned way from a mail order phot lab. I then scan it on my ancient Epson slide scanner and print on my ancient Kodak printer.
There are fairly inexpensive slide and negative scanners available that you can hook up to your computer to do this. If the slides are good you will get pretty good results . Even if the slides are dusty/ mouldy the software that comes with the scanner often has a “cleanup” feature to help repair them.In an unusual burst of energy, yesterday I decided to clean out a few drawers. Lo and behold, two of them are filled with slides. For whatever reason, all of the pictures I took during the years I lived in Spain (70-71, 72-73, and 76-77) are slides. I would really love to be able to see them and wonder if any of the forum tech angels would could recommend a way to do it. I would be happy to buy a piece of equipment if that is the best way, but my goal would be to get them on my computer as photos. A little online searching leaves me with a million options and no way to evaluate.
Sorry for this off-camino topic. So I will bring it a little closer to the camino by saying — wouldn’t it be nice to see pictures of Santiago from 1970?!
With redundant storage on different cloud services in different regions, you are probably fairly safe that the ones and zeroes that represent your digital files will have a long life expectancy. The individual drives may not be guaranteed to be safe, but there will be enough redundant storage to cover you should any individual store fail, and to transfer the content onto something new. And if it starts looking like our electronic infrastructure is going away, you can always print them onto paper again. Of course, that's if you can still read the ones and zeroes because the software to do so is still available (think of trying to open a Wordstar document today). The ability to read the files is likely to be a bigger long term risk than the degradation of the media.Twenty - Five years ago I worked on a project for digitising the document library of an aircraft manufacturer so they did not have worry about their document store going up in flames. The outcome of the project was that they would still have to maintain their paper and microfiche document store since no magnetic or optical media could be guaranteed to be safe. I backup my digital media files to "data Safe" DVDs however there is no guarantee from any manufacturer. There is usually a description concerning their estimated life expectancy.
BTW I still use 110 Roll film in my medium format camera and get it developed the old fashioned way from a mail order phot lab. I then scan it on my ancient Epson slide scanner and print on my ancient Kodak printer.
I have had a wide and varied career in IT/Telecoms and I helped set up the Cloud Storage as a Service (SaaS) infrastructure for a number of the bigger players. The nature of the SaaS product should mean that data is available when components fail and the designated alternate backup takes over. This also assumes you are continuing to pay the fees.With redundant storage on different cloud services in different regions, you are probably fairly safe that the ones and zeroes that represent your digital files will have a long life expectancy. The individual drives may not be guaranteed to be safe, but there will be enough redundant storage to cover you should any individual store fail, and to transfer the content onto something new. And if it starts looking like our electronic infrastructure is going away, you can always print them onto paper again. Of course, that's if you can still read the ones and zeroes because the software to do so is still available (think of trying to open a Wordstar document today). The ability to read the files is likely to be a bigger long term risk than the degradation of the media.
The other big problem with older files is having software that will support them. It used to be that Microsoft's word program couldn't work with files generated with previous revs of the software. It could work with files 1 or 2 revs old, but not with revs 5 or 6 revs back. Then some software has an unusual format and when they go out of business recovering the file gets difficult.I have had a wide and varied career in IT/Telecoms and I helped set up the Cloud Storage as a Service (SaaS) infrastructure for a number of the bigger players. The nature of the SaaS product should mean that data is available when components fail and the designated alternate backup takes over. This also assumes you are continuing to pay the fees.
I am paranoid, I keep my important data on a raid array. I then mirror the ultra important stuff on one raid system to a second raid array. I also periodically back up my data to offline HDDs and have archives of data on Datasafe DVDs. This used to be called hierarchical storage management (HSM).
I can still retrieve photos/scans of childrens schoolwork to embarrass my adult kids when thy discuss plans for my nursing home.
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