Devices to Convert 35mm Slides to CD

Dedicated Film Scanners

• Film scanners are external devices that you connect to a desktop or laptop computer. Place slides and film strips into carrier trays and are insert them into the film scanner. The scanner reads the slide and converts the information it collects from the scan into a digital file. The file is then saved to the computer's hard drive.

Flatbed Scanners

• While they are best known for scanning prints and documents, some flatbed scanners come with adapters and carrier trays that allow you to scan slides. The image quality is not as good as you get with dedicated film scanners. However, the price of a flatbed scanner is considerably less than film scanners.

Digital Camera &Slide Copier

• Film scanners and flatbed scanners each contain a digital sensor and processor just like those found in digital cameras. You can use you digital camera to essentially take a picture of the slide. By attaching a slide copier to the front of the lens on your digital camera, you can easily convert slides to digital files as easy as you would take a picture. Slide copiers allow light to pass through the front of the copier so the slide is illuminated as it sits in a holder. The camera lens focuses on the slide and the picture is taken. When using this method to scan slides be sure to set the white balance to match the light source being used.

CD Burner

• Once the all of the slides have been converted into digital files, you will need a CD burner and software to save the scanned slides to the CD. Most home computers come with an optical burner drive. These drives take data and add it to the CD. When you are scanning slides keep the size of the folders less than the capacity of the CD. CD's have 682 MB of storage capacity. By keeping the folder under this size you can save one folder to one CD.