How I got my 35 millimetre colour slides ( 1950 vintage) on to my computer

To save the cost of buying an expensive scanner and because I am a handy man who likes experimenting, I thought I would try projecting a colour slide on to a screen (glass beaded) and then photograph the image with my digital camera.

I did it in my basement and left the fluorescent light on. The image I projected was approximately 350mm wide. I set the camera up along side the projector and set the focus so that the image completely filled the “window view finder”, not the “look through one”.

When I transferred the photo on to the computer I was pleasantly surprised because, although it was by no means perfect it was quite good for my first attempt, and with the aid of the computer I was able to enhance it into being very acceptable. One of the problems I encountered was “sparkle” from the glass beaded screen which made the copy look speckled with dust.

I repeated the operation with the fluorescent light off and got a better result but it was still speckled. I next tried an ordinary A4 sheet of computer printing paper as a screen but projected the photo to such a size that it just filled the camera screen when the camera was on full zoom (in fact macro). It worked out that the screen was about 400mm away from the projector lens. The camera was along side the projector and also about 400mm away. They were both on a slight angle from the screen. I turned off all the lights except the projector. This trial was again not perfect but very satisfactory. It required some photo straightening and a little cropping and some enhancing, but when it was finished it looked very good.

My next experiment was to take a photo through the 35mm transparency by back lighting it. I made a transparency holder similar to the one on a slide projector and again used white computer paper as a reflector of the sun on to the back of the photo. This reflector was say 100 mm behind the transparency and angled as one would angle a mirror to reflect as much light as possible behind the photo. I set the camera about 400mm in front of the photo and adjusted the camera (nearly full macro) so that it complete filled the camera screen and then took the photo. I painted the slide holder matt black so that it wouldn’t reflect light and cause a wrong exposure setting, and used a sun umbrella to shade the whole set up except the white paper reflector. I took the photo in full sun in January in Auckland. The result was again not perfect but very pleasing to me never-the-less, and with a bit of enhancing it looked pretty good.

I didn’t change the method at all, but I improved my gear a little, and went on to copy 150 or so photos of a tour I did of the south Island in 1956. Each photo only took about 5 seconds to do…just change the slide and click…. I am more than pleased with the result, and the fact that I now have this tour on my computer to enjoy again and again.

PHOTOS