A basic understanding of Slide Scanners

So many people have a vast collection of images kept on slides, stored away somewhere that they may never get out into the light of day and be enjoyed. The only time people tend to get out the old slide collection is likely to be on very occasional family gatherings in which the dusty projector is wheeled out only to find that the slides have deteriorated in quality and become washed out or damaged. Of course this is all to do with the format in which they are kept, which unfortunately can be a very fragile and inconvenient way of storing such precious memories.



So what do you do? Well the best thing to do would be to use a device called a slide scanner which will digitalize your slides and film turning them into a flexible and easily manageable format in which you can print, store, send and edit the images without any problems. A slide scanner is a specialist scanner that will be able to scan slides and filmstrip with a lot more ease and accuracy than conventional flatbed scanners. Although it is possible to use a flatbed it will often be far too tricky unless using a high end flatbed with built in adaptors. With a dedicated slide scanner you will get a product designed for the job with features like, adaptors to aid batch processing, capability of higher resolution scans and specialised software to make the most of each format.



For most people a basic slide scanner would suit their needs, with prices around £60 this will get you a product capable of producing images for small printing jobs and web sharing that will be perfect for home projects. If you want to get a bit more serious about preserving your collection and actually want to improve and enhance the images then there are scanners that will do this. Look out for features such as Infra-red cleaning in which a separate infra-red bulb is shone through the slides to pick up areas of dust and damage which are automatically fixed by the software. Digital ICE is one such feature often found on better scanners, more features to look out for would be ROC Colour correction and GEM Grain reduction. Both of these are software biased enhancements that can be selected before scanning.



When you look at the more advanced scanners you will start to see hard ware improvements like high quality LED light sources and sensors being used as well as automatic slide feeders. If you are conducting a large scanning job then an automatic feeder is recommended as it can save you hours of time feeding slides by hand. Just ensure that you use the same type of mounted slides when scanning a batch; for example all plastic mounted, as you will often need to set the thickness gauge for the whole batch.



When you do start to compare the different scanners on the market make sure you check for a few key elements. It is essential to ensure the scanner is compatible with your format of film, so check that your slides are in a supported format as often with less common sizes like 127 the top and bottom end up being cropped. Most people will have 35mm format slides as this is by far the most popular and almost all slide scanners will be optimised for this size.





To read more on the subject of slide scanners along with tips and guides try Slide Scanner Review