OK, so my brother's upcoming wedding has prompted me to prod my parents to get out their old pictures. However, they are all slides... some of them "mini" slides. I want to make a digital slideshow for my brother, but moreover, I figure it's a good time to just scan all their slides.

Now, my parents have a slide scanner, but it's 6 yrs old. I'm currently using it, but it's slow, has a native rez of 1800 dpi, and as I've found out.... a max color depth of only 16 bit. I'm really quite underwhelmed by it.

So the question is: do I get a new scanner, or pay someone to convert all the slides? I'm talking like 1000 - 1500 slides in all. I have no idea how much that'd cost.

Really, the resolution is OK by me, but the color depth blows. I think most people wouldn't notice, but I do.

Any recommendations? I don't wanna buy some $1000 scanner, either...

Thanks in advance...

 

For the wedding you might want to pick out the keepers and work on those.

for 1500 slides you probably want an automated process.
the ugliest part will be organizing and naming.... ugh.

I have to play with ours.
It has a slide adapter but we've never played with it.

 

as I think about this a little more...

16 bits for each color should easily do the job.
what format did you scan too?

if it was JPEG that is half of the problem.

you need to go to a raw format tiff nef or equivalent to not loose it in compression.

 

No, I'm doing raw (tif) files, and going to convert later. But I can't select anything higher than 16 bit on the scanner window, and I'm noticing things like skin and t-shirts that have one color but subtle shading differences just don't look right.

The wedding is in Sept, so there's no real rush. I specifically got an early start, anticipating this to be a real pain.