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Slide-o-matic 2000

A project to quickly scan the hundreds of 35mm slides from my parents. Done with a raspberry pi and an old projector.

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After converting all of the old 8mm films from my relatives I turned my attention to the hundreds of 35mm slides sitting in boxes.
I didn't want to pull every slide out and scan them individually but I still wanted decent quality in the scans.
To me the easiest way to do that was to use an existing projector hooked up to a Pi.
I had seen other projects that accomplished this by using cameras running CHDK or other external cameras but I wanted to see if it could be done with the Pi camera.
In the end I got pretty decent quality and the slides are preserved for future generations.

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Dave wrote 04/13/2021 at 19:26 point

@Dan Maloney  if you have all the negatives then something like @Ken Yap did might be the easiest for you. Some of the scanners do a nice job. I did run a couple of slides through a scanner as well and my quality was comparable. If anyone wants a better copy of any of them I will scan them individually.

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Ken Yap wrote 04/12/2021 at 23:14 point

When I did my slides I bought an Epson flatbed scanner that came with a slide holder. It can do 4 slides at a time. Put it next to my desktop and scanned a few thousand slides over the course of many nights while doing other stuff on the computer. It was necessary to take the slides out to brush off the dust with air. I can see the grain in the image so I know I'm getting the maximum detail possible at my chosen resolution, 3200 dpi, a compromise between detail and speed. The software also does shadow enhancement semi-automatically. The scanner also comes with a negative holder that can hold a strip.

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Dave wrote 04/12/2021 at 21:18 point

It sounds like that might be my next project. The family thinks I did such a good job on these I should do the prints as well. I have been looking at the projects for automatic book scanning so I don't have to take them out of the albums. 

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Dan Maloney wrote 04/12/2021 at 20:01 point

My problem is all the print photos I have lying around. Seems like I should scan them, or at least scan the negatives and put the prints in deep storage. Maybe something like this would help.

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