Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Converting slides to DVD

This is topic Converting slides to DVD in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by John T. Hendrickson, Jr (Member # 849) on 11-19-2013, 02:31 PM:

Hi folks. Have not posted in quite a while, since the theater where I was projection manager went out of business and the new company gave everyone of any worth the heave ho. (sound familiar?

Now that I am totally retired with time on my hands, I started getting my 16mm home movies and slides converted to DVD. The 16mm worked out fine. Slides are another story.

Of the eight orders that came back, three of them are horrendous. When comparing them to the originals, colors are really wacked out. Grays are blue or black, soft cream comes out white. Depending on the shade, reds are either orange or pink, and skin colors often appear red. Where some slides are dark to begin with, they come out all red.

Sort of reminds me of the old days when you would get a reel of the feature where the color timing was out of wack. Perhaps that has happened here?

Would appreciate any advise you could give me. I'm going to contact the people who did the work and demand a re-do. Would it be wrong to say they had a color timing problem with their equipment. Just want to be prepared if they give me any problems.

Posted by Richard P. May (Member # 3598) on 11-19-2013, 04:52 PM:

I have done a great many slides to computer memory, then output to DVD for viewing, with considerable success. I'd guess the place that did yours just set them up automatically, and copied every one with the same setting.
Since slide exposures vary, they need individual care. You should select a vendor that will do this, and guarantee results.
With available software, a great deal of adjustment is available.
If you want to do it yourself, and the cost of a scanner is worth it, it will be tantamount to a new hobby, but with satisfying results.
I have a Canon flatbed scanner, which cost about $200.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 11-19-2013, 05:35 PM:

There is a company called DVD Your Memories that will scan and load slides onto a CD or a jump drive for you. They claim to remove dust and can do color correction and touchups as well. I used them a few years ago to convert some old Betamax(!) tapes to avi files on an external hard drive -- they did a fine job and the results were excellent, and they were fast. I've never used them for slide conversion but wouldn't hesitate to recommend them.

www.dvdyourmemories.com

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 11-19-2013, 07:49 PM:

quote: Richard P. May
If you want to do it yourself, and the cost of a scanner is worth it, it will be tantamount to a new hobby, but with satisfying results.
I have a Canon flatbed scanner, which cost about $200.

Agreed completely. Each image will be different. Kodachromes won't have any colour fading, but the dyes will be so dense that grading the scan properly will take time and care (and a decent monitor to do it on will really help). Ektachromes will almost certainly be dye faded, but once corrected it should be relatively easy to get some good detail out of them.

But the bottom line is, to get a nice result, the choice of hardware and software is less important than the time you're willing to put in. That having been said, my father-in-law also has a $200-ish Canon, and when I was talking him through it (in preparation for him doing a ton of old Kodachromes and Ektachromes dating back to the '60s), I was very impressed with the colour correction features in the bundled software. The one-click correct (for both dye fading and contrast/brightness/gamma) did a pretty nice job on all the test images we played with, and then 2-5 minutes of manual tweaking after that often enhanced it further.

Posted by Scott Norwood (Member # 30) on 11-22-2013, 09:43 AM:

I have an Epson V500 that works well. Also costs about $200. It comes with software that does an acceptable job of auto-correcting for things like color fading and under/over exposure.

A purpose-built slide scanner would be more expensive, but would produce better results if quality is critical.

Check with your local camera store/photo lab. Many of these places will provide scanning services, although the cost will vary widely (and will likely correlate loosely with quality). The most cost-effective approach might be to scan everything yourself and then take the very best slides in to be professionally scanned at high resolution.