converting slides to digital photos or 8mm video to digital

I wanted to take some of my Dad's slides from his childhood and convert them to digital images to scrapbook. I also want to turn some of my Mom's 8mm film into video.

I googled and found a ton of different companies that will do this.

Who has everybody used?

Its kind of scary to take these family memories and ship them off to some internet company that I've never heard of! They are not replaceable!

I saw that Costco will do the 8mm films into DVD and they said they would put the slides into DVD as well. I want JPEGs of the slides though, not a DVD?!

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

I'll be watching this thread as well. My siblings and I are trying to accomplish the same thing with some of my parents old slides.

my dad bought a reader for the slides that plugged into his computer, and he was able to view and save them that way. I'm pretty sure he got it off of amazon or somewhere similar.

NeverendingJen said:

my dad bought a reader for the slides that plugged into his computer, and he was able to view and save them that way. I'm pretty sure he got it off of amazon or somewhere similar.

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Hmmm. Guessing that would certainly be cheaper. I wonder how time consuming it was?

I know he did my grandmother's boxes of slides in a one week vacation, and she had tons, so it couldn't have taken that long.

I've done it at home with my IL's slides. I use a special scanner with a plastic thingy where I can add 4 slides at a time. Pretty long, as you can guess, but I did it on the side while being on the computer anyway, so not that bad at the end. I still wished there'd be something automatic to change the slide, though, so Jen's suggestion sounds great!

Possibly a local (not a chain) mom and pop type computer store might do the videos to DVD and not have to send them out.

I had over 500 slides of my childhood ... I would recommend doing the slides yourself.
Purchase a scanner that can do slides ... get one that can do MULTIPLE slides at one time ... multiple negatives as well ... saves you a ton of time and fiddling (opening scanner lid, placing and moving slides) ... that way you will have the scanner to do regular pictures as well ... and negatives (I just inherited 4 boxes of family pictures and there are hundreds of negatives in the box!) ... they are different sized than 35mm so the multiple sized negative scanner will be useful!

Some of the dedicated slide scanners have poor reviews so I didn't buy one and now I am glad I didn't as I have had multiple sized negatives to deal with ... and I really like epson's software as it will do some enhancing as I scan ... if you have any other questions ... PM so I be sure to see it ... I have done thousands of negatives over the years ...

OH one benefit of doing it yourself ... you can decide each picture as you scan it ... what dpi you want (i.e. 300/600) and the size of the photo ... ones that I think I might want larger ... I go ahead and scan at the maximum size I might ever use them at (i.e. 12") ...

I sent all our 8mm camcorder video from Idaho to Southtree in Chattanooga, Tennessee. I was very pleased with the finished DVD product, however, it took way longer than their original prediction about when I would get them back, and their "tracking system" they talk about on their website was useless. It recorded that I had paid them (when they received the tapes) and never reported another thing until the order shipped. I called them every two weeks after they had had the tapes for a month. When I called, they would always say that it was in process and that it was a big order. Finally at the 2-1/2 month mark, I finally got my order. It was pretty ridiculous. I wouldn't send them anything I needed done in a timely way ...

Stephanie

I got my photos scanned at scanmyphotos.com about a month ago. I wasn't too pleased with the quality of it, HOWEVER, I knew that I would've never get around scanning on my own, so now, at least I have them scanned to preserve the memory. I was disappointed at the first glance, but now, I don't think they turned out too bad. I noticed too many dust particles and some highlights(or light streaks) in the photos. I have a choice to scan them at home and that didn't happen in all these years, so I can't really complain about someone else doing the work! lol

It took them about a month to get back my photos and DVD.

Here's the sample of the quality if you want to check it out.

abm234 said:

I saw that Costco will do the 8mm films into DVD and they said they would put the slides into DVD as well. I want JPEGs of the slides though, not a DVD?!

Click to expand...

They may be talking about putting the JPEG image files on a DVD storage disk as opposed to a CD, since DVDs can hold quite a bit more data than a CD.

Yes, I think so. I got my pics in JPEGs in DVD.

Thanks everybody for all of the helpful input! This is going to be either a time consuming or expensive project, one of the two!