using a digital camera to capture 35mm slides

[kentcr]

I have a Kodak Z7590 that can accept lens accessories. Is there some reasonably priced gadget out there that I can get that will allow me to record the mountains of 35 mm slides I have with my digital camera? I would even be willing to load them one at a time, I just would like to get them in some electronic form.

[digital_nate]

You could just load your 35mm slides in a slide projector and take pictures of the projected image with your camera.

That would probably be the quickest, cheapest and lowest quality way to get it done.

[Coltess]

You may want to stop by your local Walmart and see if they can do it for you. I know they will scan your old negatives to CD for a mere pittance, so they might do slides too.
If they don't you may need to look into buying a scanner, either a dedicated film scanner (Minolta makes some (http://kmpi.konicaminolta.us/eprise/main/kmpi/content/cam/cam_category_pages/DigitalFilmScanners)) or a flatbed scanner with a negative/slide adapter (Epson makes at least one that can do it (http://www.epson.com/cgi-bin/Store/consumer/consDetail.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=yes&oid=46048265)).

[james_sky]

my father built himself a holder gizmo out of wood. there's a slot for the slide, the camera is held in place at a fixed distance. the slide is illuminated from behind using daylight reflected off a piece of white paper. it works better and faster than the slide-scanner attachment for his Epson flatbed, but not better than a dedicated $800 slide-scanner of course.

-- james s.

[freedom1]

Or you could try one of these.
http://www.photosolve.com/main/product/xtendaslide/index.html

[timmciglobal]

Or just buy one of a numerous scanners with slider adapters avalible.

The quality off using one of those systems will be so inferior it's hardly worth the effort.

Tim

[JLV]

I built a jig to hold the slide. It is made from three pieces of wood. The uprights are grooved to hold the slide. I was going to make a more finished jig, but a got a new scanner that scanned slides.

I put two pieces of white paper behind the jig. One is at an angle to help reflect the light back to the slide. My light source is over the paper. When I tried having the light source go directly to the slide, I got hot spots in the photo.

I am attaching two photos to show how its setup. It worked well for me. The scanner is easier.

[Rhys]

Ages ago, I wanted to duplicate slides using a 35mm SLR. I looked at all the expensive ways of doing it and plumped for some extension tubes, my 59mm lens and the carrier from an old eyepiece slide viewer that had broken. I cut the eyepiece off and the white back then aimed through this at a white wall. The carrier was held onto the camera using lollipop sticks and elastic bands. Once the first slide was in focus, focus didn't change much even when slipping slides in and out. I did a dozen or so duplicates like that. I think I had a sheet of muslin around the outside of the lollipop sticks to cut down on reflections. It all worked pretty well.

Using a DSLR the same method could be used. The problem with using slide duplicators on all-in-one compacts is that there's a difference in the format. The slide was composed using a 2:3 format. All the compacts use 4:3 which means you're not using all your pixels or you're cropping the photo. This is why I never did any duplicating with my Nikon 995 and pretty much why I refused to buy any accessories for my all-in-ones.