Slides backup & restoration

[nodle]

I think I am going to purchase the Epson Perfection v600 scanner. I have a lot of slides that my parents took of us growing up (apparently slides were the thing back in the day). But I want to start to get them scanned in before something happens to them and we lose them forever. It has some great software that comes with it for removing dust/scratches. Basically photo restoration software. I think @ryanator was into this some if I am not mistaken.

 

[ryanator]

I did some restorative work manually through Photoshop. I wonder how far along the automatic stuff has come along?

 

[nodle]

I did some restorative work manually through Photoshop. I wonder how far along the automatic stuff has come along?

Well the software uses an infrared scan to see the differences between two scans the automatically removes fingerprints, scratches, and dust. I think the software that comes with it is called Digital ICE. I should have it later this week, so I will give an update of how it works.

 

[nodle]

If your interested, I am also going to try out another software which is called Silverfast. This is a German scanning software, which people rave about. It's funny like everything out there on the internet, there are people that get real serious about this stuff. I actually found it interesting of how many people still shoot in 35mm film and then scan their negatives in. Apparently doing it this way has a quality that you can not get anywhere else? I'm not going to dive that deep. I just want to be able to clean up the slides and restore the original color and get them digitally backed up.

 

[ndboarder]

I think 35mm film probably still captures higher quality than anything digital. Old movies on 35mm were re-released on blue ray as 1080p and there wasn't upscaling, might even be 4k (I don't know) - but I know the thing was that the film always captured great detail the tech to display the movies in the resolution and clarity they were captured just never existed.

Similar to how you can take a 35mm negative and print it off at a very large size without losing clarity or getting rough edges. Do that to a digital and you can't get to big before it starts to show

 

[nodle]

I think 35mm film probably still captures higher quality than anything digital. Old movies on 35mm were re-released on blue ray as 1080p and there wasn't upscaling, might even be 4k (I don't know) - but I know the thing was that the film always captured great detail the tech to display the movies in the resolution and clarity they were captured just never existed.Similar to how you can take a 35mm negative and print it off at a very large size without losing clarity or getting rough edges. Do that to a digital and you can't get to big before it starts to show

Interesting thanks @ndboarder !

 

[ndboarder]

well... I had looked into it at some point, without going back to check, it's probably more rampant speculation at this point. A couple quick searches and I see a couple calculated arguments for roughly 18-20 megapixel would be an equivalent to 35mm - depending on the quality of the film and camera that had been used. I'd guess just due to technology there will always be a difference in how the images are perceived, similar to Vinyl vs CD/MP3

 

[nodle]

Sorry guys got stuck working out of town, my scanner arrived yesterday. Hopefully tomorrow I will have time to test it out.

 

[nodle]

Got everything working tonight. I am really impressed on the quality. I mean some of these slides are like from the 70's and the quality is on today's standards. Impressive. I am using the default Epson software, I tried the Silverfast software, but it was way to complex and confusing. The scanning time takes a bit though. Probably about 8-10 minutes for 4 slides at a time, but it having to do color correction and the IR scan, so it's to be expected.

 

[nodle]

Scanning is going great (just time consuming), I am about 200 in so far.