You have a lot of faith in Digital data, I'd keep the original slides somewhere safe, that way they are not at the mercy of a hard drive, that will no doubt fail at some point.

See link for scanning help.

You can also Google "Scan slides to computer" and additional links will be provided.

Some here may have experience doing that too.

Here is a link that might be useful: scan-slides

Hi Zep - thanks for the reply. I guess I don't really understand the thought of keeping the slides vs having them stored electronically. Most of the slides are old; taken from the 1930's or 40's on. They are deteriorating with age. Isn't it better to have them on a computer, perhaps backed up? I really do want to be educated about options as I don't want to lose this history. But storing the actual slides takes up a lot of room that i don't have, in addition to the images deteriorating.

Once I scanned my slides they were disposed of. However, take your time and practise with a few first to get the feel of scanning the slides. With the equipment I had (loaned from a friend so I felt under pressure to get it returned ASAP) I did not do the best possible job. They were adequate as the slides were old and each took close to 3 minutes, a very long time sat twiddling thumbs between actions.

I have an HP Scanjet G4050, and love it. I have scanned thousands of slides (it scans up to 16 at a time), but it's also great for pictures and documents.

I would have a hard time tossing the scanned slides also - but understand your space limitations.

I have an Epson flatbed V200 scanner that I scan slides with. LOVE IT! Love it even more with my new computer that runs so much faster (didn't have any trouble with it working on the new Windows 7 OS either)

My Epson is no longer available, but the V500 is pretty much the same unit.

I looked up both the Epson and the Cano Scan on Amazon. Looks like both will scan 4 slides at once. I have done large batches (hundreds - not thousands though). It take a while, but if you leave a stack, and just swap them out while you are on the computer, you can get a lot done! I like reading the reviews on Amazon - gives great reviews from people that have actually used the unit. Both the Epson and the Canon have lots of reviews. Price is very similar.

I like the Epson flat bed personally. You can scan documents or photos. I find it super handy just to copy a paper when needed. It is NOT an all in one. Just a flat bed scanner. But if I need a copy of a paper, I can just hit "copy" and it will scan and send it to my printer.

I scan at 600dpi - which is plenty. Unless you are going to print somthing wall size, you don't need to use the super high settings. It will just make a huge file and take a long time to scan.

Make sure you have a couple back up sources for you scans if you are going to dispose of the slides. DVD's can go bad - hard drive fail... I would use at least 2 different backup methods.

Here is a scan from a slide from the late 40's or early '50's. Slide had dust and a few scratches.....

{{gwi:1452662}}

I think in this situation you might consider on-line back up too.

I think I'm missing something here about using a flat bed scanner to scan slides, so please correct me.

Are you saying that I can use my flat bed scanner to scan my old slides ? How does the image get copied, doesn't light have to shine THRU it ?

I have a HP 4180 could this scan slides? Thanks

My Epson flatbed scanner has a slide attachement. I remove it from the inside top lid. I can put 4 slides, or a negative strip into it.

When I remove the slide/negative attachment - it opens up an area inside the lid that has a light in it, so a light does shine thought for the scan.

I have tried homemade devices on my old scanner (that did not have the slide capability), and the results were unsatisfactory.

I agree if you are to trash the original media, some sort of back-up is advisable. The amount of data to back up is the key to the solution. Since you haven't done it yet and we don't know how many slides you intend to keep, we don't yet know the amount of space that needs to be backed up. On my home machine, since the numbert of files I want to keep backed up is small, I simply use a thumb drive constantly connected to a USB port in the back of my workstation. I then use Syncback, a very good, free, file copy utility, to copy files to the thumb drive from specified file locations and for specified file types. This is run on a schedule to occur evey night. Naturally, this also means the machine is on 24X7, so it's a little less effective with laptops or desktops that are routinely powered down. Next up would be to use an external hard drive as you backup repository. Many of those are available on the market and can be had for under $100.

I have not scanned slides, I have many and do have the attachment for all of the flat bed scanners I have bought but never have had the urge to take on the project yet. However I get a catalog called Heartland America which has a device specific for that purpose, you may want to look at those. I have ordered from them with good results.
Slide And Negative Scanner

I see several of them here also

Here is a link that might be useful: slide scanner

Ok, I bought the Epson V500 recommended by Iowagirl (thanks!). It is being shipped now; I'll let you know how it works out.

Regarding # of slides, again, it's 10-15,000 (sofaspud, perhaps you weren't asking me that question but the other poster). I hope to be able to discard the actual slides and will absolutely back up the images; thanks for that urging. I'd hate to go to all of that work and have tossed the slides and then lose the images!

I found this set of charts on the web. http://www.slide-scanning.net/html/resolutions___file_size_charts.html

If you went with hi-res 8X10s on everything, we're talking 27MB X 15000 files = 405GB. You will need an external drive to store these. I'd go with a ~750GB drive, which will give you extra expansion space for more backups. A 500GB drive is too close to 405.

I got an Epson Perfection V500 last summer and it is terrific--very high quality images. It was recommended by a friend in the same business I am.

Re the original slides. I cannot urge you strongly enough to save them. You can get archival boxes and just put them somewhere dry and clean. There are many reasons for doing this. Technology is constantly changing and you may find down the road that your images are not as good as the latest technology. Or worse--that new computers may not be able to read digitized images from 2010.

The federal government discarded all the original censuses for, I think, 1910, 1920, 1930 after putting the info on microfilm. Those microfilm images are very poor and some are completely illegible. But because the originals were discarded, there's no way to access the data.

Always save the original.