I wanted to report on my experience of sending slides off to a remote company to have them scanned. I have 100,000 slides in my office and since I haven’t used them or even looked at them in several years I decided it was time to either get rid of them all (more on that later) or at least scan the ones I might use later. So I went through a few filing drawers and picked 726 images and sent them to the Scan Cafe. I chose the highest resolution in TIFF format. It took about 8 weeks (I was in no hurry) and cost about 60 cents/slide total.
The result? I am very happy. First I would never have taken the time to scan 726 images myself so to have these images now at my fingertips is wonderful. The images were cleaned and well scanned. With the Scan Cafe you get to preview and approve the scans before you pay for them. I approved them all and was not disappointed. Overall they are maybe a third to half a stop dark and some are flipped horizontally but otherwise they are, with 30 seconds of additional processing on part, ready to go. They came back on CDs so they are easy to download into my computer. As soon as I get back to my office I am going to root around for another 7 or 8 hundred and send them off again.
What am I going to do with the rest of the thousands of my slides still in filing drawers? Well, the only thing I can think of is to eventually make a big pile in the driveway and set them ablaze. Nobody wants them and they are taking up space so up in flames they go! I’m not quite there yet but I’m close.
If anybody want a few thousands slides I’ll post when the pyre is to be lit. But be careful, some of my really old ones probably deserve to be torched!
Thanks for the report David, Maybe I will get the motivation to look through mine too. I am sure my fire will be a lot larger than yours will be. LOL.
Getting rid of old slides is just one of the things on my winter to-do list. The one I’ve had going since last century….
I figure that if I can get rid of about half my slides that will leave room for more wine 🙂
David – i searched for Slide Cafe, but could not find a link. I did find a place called Scan Cafe – is that the same place? I am looking for a place to scan old slides like you did.
Sorry everyone, I made a mistake on the name of the scanning company- it is the ScanCafe as everyone has pointed out to me.