So glad to find this technique. I am now the keeper of the archive since my mom downsized. My dad was an avid photographer and has hundreds of slides. Will definitely be giving this a try!

I'm really glad that you mentioned making sure to clean the slides. A few years ago, I decided to scan all of my family's old negatives. I have a scanner that has an attachment for scanning slides and negatives and figured this would be a good use of the down time between Christmas and New Years. I spent countless hours setting up an assembly line to scan all of them. When I was done, I converted all of the negatives to positive images and scaled them up. At this point I could see just how dusty they were! Software can remove some of the dust but starting clean is much better.

Brilliant idea. Well done. You do realise that wifey has now found a job for me: or so she thinks. Pull a long face, sigh loudly and happily nip to the workshop and play. Thanks Kenny, I've just spent three hours thoroughly enjoying my self.

Thank you! Our dad was a photographer, he took many and had them as slides. I’ve searched in our area, and no one had the process of converting slides into prints. So, THIS video is greatly appreciated!

Kenny, your shop made box looks like it works better, faster, and easier than my commercial version. I might have to build your version plus there is the added benefit of getting to smell the rubber cement.. lol. Great idea and outcome.

Amazing! I thought I might have to spend a lot of money to buy a projector or something but this is perfect. Took a couple of hours and around $12 USD (things are a lot more expensive in NZ but still cheap and fun to build). And it actually works! I'll have fun going through the rest of my mothers collection and I'm sure she is going to be super surprised and very happy when I show her her digitized slides from back in the 60s and 70s. Much appreciated :)

Hey Kenny, cool project. Another thing to try for the light diffuser is to move the diffuser away from the slide itself. This will ensure that the camera can't focus on the surface of the diffuser and the slide at the same time. It will make the box taller, but it will make a difference.

Hi Kenny, thank you so much for doing this project, it helped me out greatly. I also had issues with the light diffuser. What worked for me was not using a diffuser on the box, and (1) putting the frosted plastic sheet on the floor, and using it as a reflected light source (I attached a small flashlight to my belt, pointed at the sheet, so my hands were freed up to feed/retrieve the slides). What worked even better was instead to (2) use my Mac browser to bring up a white screen as the light source (which of course didn't need to be diffused). Placed the box onto it, and voila. All set to feed slides. This allows one to sit on a couch for the digitization, which was more comfortable than sitting at my desk to do it - easier on the back! Thanks again for your wonderful video.

If only I had seen this before ordering a scanner. A thought to add to this ingenious make: if the phone camera is oriented with its aspect to match that of your largest slide visual dimension (in this case, a 35 mm rectangle with the longest side matching the longest on the camera), then when you zoom to fill the screen, your resolution will be optimised.

Well done, my dear! Cutting mats and file folder fronts are my best bet for light diffusion. A friend left me a box of slides years ago, and I bet I could get this accomplished for him. He just lost his ability to walk, and I bet he would love to see his old art work again while I physical therapy and such.

I added a heavy can to the inside of the box, so it can sit over the edge of the table without falling off, and didn't put in a light diffuser but rather diffused the light coming in. Also, I didn't do as good a job at cutting so my box was a bit wonky and let light in - so I taped the edges in black duct tape and it keeps the light in and looks nicer, too! Great design, thanks!

Genius! Thank you for this exceptional video. I really appreciate that this technique does not damage the slides.

I congratulate him. Your solution is very interesting. I did it with a florescent lamp ceiling and controlled the pixel diffusion. The only thing I couldn't do was use a remote control for the phone. But it was better than with an expensive scanner or macro camera. Thank you and continue giving economic ideas to the poor.

Very clever! And very useful as I have boxes of slides from my childhood and early years of marriage. Thanks Ken!

Cool project Ken, my brother went to school for photography, he made a light box and used my light board that I have its a box with 2 fluorescent tubes (bulbs) with a white plastic board to defuse the light with a dimmer switch, for my brother it works great, he would look at slides and film strips after developing them, the light board worked out for my brother, thanks Ken be safe

Thank you so much for making it easy to convert All My Loving family memories. My entire family is sending joyful blessings your way 😇

Really good video thanks, possibly another way to diffuse the light could be the side of a white plastic milk carton - it works as a great diffuser too.

Thank you, this is brilliant, I will be making a box this weekend

Fantastic idea! Beautifully executed video! I plan to get started on this tomorrow. I have approximately 2.2K slides that were taken by my father scanning the 50's to the 80's. My wife had given me a slide/negative scanner for Christmas a few years back and, I just discovered a serious shortcoming when converting slides! It has a built in, non-adjustable crop factor that results in a lot of chopped off heads. So, your brilliant idea will help save the day (with no maimed or missing body parts). Thanks!!

Thank you Kenny. I have a lot my Dad took when he was in Korea and through the mid 60's.

Brilliant idea! I think I have a couple of old accessories from my 35mm camera that might help the lighting problem. The next thing is...where did I stash it years ago. The camera doesn't work, but all the other stuff does. That box is simple enough to make. Great show! Take care!

Cool idea! Gonna do this but with a DSLR to have them all in an SD card. Just picked up 4 mystery boxes of slides. Must be over 6,000 slides

Is important to point that you don´t get the full resolution from the slide. The people are a little blurry because you would need a lens (or project in the wall with the old projectors) to have all the information in the photo.

Thanks Kenny from down under, just about to convert several hundred slides that are getting over 40 years old now, have looked at commercial but will copy your design. Thanks

Great setup! I've recently played with digitizing old family slides that are up to 60 years old. What I wasn't prepared for was how deteriorated they were! :( Many have a very red color that I can improve somewhat, but moral of the story - they don't last forever. Do them sooner rather than later!

This is wonderful, Kenny! Saves big $$. I can still hear the distinctive click as the slides were moved. Still handsome 📸🎥

Kenny rhis is a great idea and very creative on your part. I plan to start making mine next week. I'll be 73 in April so YES I have slides I've always wanted to convert to digital. Now because of you I can! Peace be with you Kenny and thanks again!

Thanks for this video Kenny, I made your design and it worked like a charm. My addition was to add a white foam core light box as the light source that worked great. Thanks again .

Very good, thanks I have a load of slides from my days in the navy so I am grateful.

Magic! I need to scan a couple of slides. This should give me a chance to try to digitise them. The shop bought ones are too costly for only 2! Cross your fingers for me that this works. I have lots of foam board anyway, so...

The cost of having slides converted is astronomical, I’ll be giving this a shot.

Many thanks. I will be giving this a go tomorrow. Phil, UK

I have a somewhat related interest in digitally processing a small collection of glass negatives (about 100 yr. old). The response I received on a professional photography forum was to use indirect light instead of direct light with a diffuser. In other words, arrange a remote flash to reflect off a curved white poster board or the like and mask the negative plate so no light comes in over the edge. Also, I would use my dslr camera instead of a smartphone. The number of megapixels is just one factor pertaining to image quality. The size of the CMOS light sensor is another. I already have an LED light board. It gives fairly acceptable results, but not as bright as I really need.

Very cool, I don’t have any slides but I enjoyed watching you make it happen. It is always cool to see the process in action and the trial and error like at the end.

This was an excellent video! You are a genius! I will follow these instructions to a T. Thank you!

Really cool. This guy knows his stuff!

I use one of the white plastic bags you get from the grocery store…PERFECT diffuser

Awesome can't wait to do this!!

Brilliant? You can use a flatbed scanner with slide attachment - both Canon and Epson make them, but they have not been updated in years and prices can be high because of limited supply. Scanners are very slow and finicky to load the slides in the holder. About the only advantage is they can also scan negatives, but they suffer from the same problems with dust contamination which is almost impossible to solve consistently. I've already scanned my collection of slides but going to give this a try to see if the results improve.

We had 1000+ color slides we wanted to convert to digital images. We got bids from $750 to over $1200. So I 3D printed an adapter that fit over my macro lens to hold the slides at the proper distance away. I used my computer monitor for a light source since using software I could "dial" in a color to make up for some bad slides otherwise a white screen was perfect. It only took 5 or 10 seconds per slide once I got going.

Thanks I'll giving this a try

white plexyglass is perfect

Like you, I have a good number of slides. Must work on this. Thanks.

Brilliant idea! 👍 But, you can use a flatbed scanner.

Brilliant. If you drop the diffuser a good 10 inches below your box it will be beyond the depth of field. So gey rid of your in focus imperfections

Add the Photomyne App to this equation and you have a really nice workflow. It’s great without it but I’m going to build one of these boxes to get best quality possible. Thanks for the help!

Very well thought out.

Very cool! Will try it. Thank you!

Yes indeed remember bring the family over and doing what you are saying ..thanks

A really interesting project. I don't think I've got any of my old slides.

Looks great Kenny 👍

Very good! Thanks!

Just move the diffused light source an inch (25mm) away from the slide. A really good diffuser is a piece of opal Perspex, scrap pieces available from most glaziers or sign makers.

very nice thank you for sharing

I found that a peice cut from a gallon milk container works great as a diffuser

I still have the white & diffuser from an old TV I will try out for this and see how that works.

I would use 3M double sided tape for the slide holder. The color of the light coming through the slide is important too. Too warm or too cool will skew color. I would say 5500k.

Thank you so much.....so helpful

im going to try your idea and I'm going to use the Sun as my light

Good idea... congrats¡¡¡

This is great. I have hundreds of slides, if not thousands. I have a photo scanner but I'm not pleased with the size of the scans on the slides. My Iphone X's photos are 12 megapixels. My Nikon D5200 is 24 megapixels. I'm going to build something similar to this where I can use my Nikon. For the diffusion, I think I will build the inside of the box out of white foam core with a daylight light source which isn't directly in line with the slide. LED's might work as well as a daylight light bulb. I'm afraid, even the plastic you finally used to diffuse the light, is going to show up in enlargements of the slides once they are digitized. If the white foam core is four or five inches behind the slide, it should fall out of focus and the slick white backing on the foam core shouldn't show any kind of grain or imperfections.

Thanks! Very useful. Please, what phone do you have? The camera version would be important I would think. I have iPhone 8SE.

Very nice work, however the mistake you made with the light source was, it was too close to the slide, ahowing all the grain and puip in the paper. If you use a spacer of maybe a half inch or so, it should work fine.

I have slides and negatives might need a separate carrier for the negatives

Very good idea! So in the end what light did you finally use to show the slide?

Would paper vellum work? I recall using it to draw architecture plans. It might be smoother than your dollar-store plastic sheet. I know this is two years later than your filming, and any newbie might want to try paper vellum and comment on your results.

Hi, thanks for a a great video! Don't have a dollar store where I live, so have to buy foam core online. Whats thickness in mm do you recommend, so it won't be too thin?

Very informative video but I missed the exact light source: type of bulb, wattage, light fixture? Thanks, Steve

Frosted glass used to be the go to for light diffusion.

Great video! Have you negatives to se if the results are as good?

.it Will Be Sunday December 18,2022.🌕.

should retitle to "Converting Slides to Digital Images using mobile phone" would be easier for people to find and more hits.!!

This will work but it does not compare to the quality you will get with a quality flat bed scanner that has film scanning hardware. Please be aware that if you are going to buy one there are some cheap ones that dont do as good a job as the cell phone camera

Perfeito, mas poderia ter uma tradução. Mas valeu pela ideia.

Hey Kenny, I'm going to try this. I bought a cheap scanner about 10 years ago and I've never been happy with the quality of the images it takes. My 40 yr. old slides I think are in very good condition and I hope to get great results. Question about the depth of your box: that is the measurement of 5 5/8". Is that the minimal distance that your camera focused the best, plus adding the thickness of the two pieces of foam core? Thanks, Marie

Brillant solution.....I have a slide project I need to get converted, this will work great, thank you very much !!! LarryC

Does the foam have to be black? I have a light box to photograph items to sell. Would that work for anything ?

5 is better than 4 is what she said 😂

I'm afraid that this method will provide only the poorest digital image quality imaginable. To achieve a quality that matches the original slides you will need a digital camera with a proper macro lens of fixed focal length - no zoom lens! Nice try, though!

horrible

stop taking drugs.