Have your Rock Island slides digitized and scanned onto dvd for free
Over
slides scanned
Home Page Sample Images About Me / Contact Information
I
have created this website to "advertise" this free service that I am offering to
anyone who would like to have their Rock Island Railroad slides scanned onto a
disk (DVD). The disks can be used on your computer. The images will be saved as
.jpeg files and arranged by locomotive type and number. You could also have
prints made from the DVD.
When you have your slides scanned, you are creating a digital image that will no longer accumulate dust, get misplaced, scratched, fade, or change color over time. One of the biggest problems I have noticed with slides is the accumulation of dust, lint, etc. No matter what precautions you take, it is virtually impossible to prevent these tiny particles from finding their way onto your slides. Since the light won't pass through these particles, it creates black specks when scanned or projected. Before I scan each slide, I use compressed air at a low pressure to remove all dust and debris from each individual slide one at a time. This eliminates most of the black specks that would otherwise appear.
Even
if you have a small slide collection it can be
difficult to locate the one slide that you are looking for. When I
scan the slides each one gets an individual filename that will serve as a way to
organize and locate the image you are looking for. For example, a slide taken
of GP38-2 #4353 at Blue Island on June, 30th 1980 by Jim Claflin would be named:
GP38-2-4353-BLUEISLAND-6-30-80-CLAFLIN. This organizes all of your slides by locomotive type, then locomotive number, then location, date, and
photographer. I have my computer setup so that if I am looking for the above
mentioned locomotive, I would open up the folder that houses my scans and type
"GP38-2-4353." This brings up a sample image of that locomotive. Then I click on
the sample to see a larger version that fits my screen, and click again to see it in the larger full-size view.
When you have your slides scanned you are getting your image "locked in" so that you are assured that the digital image will not be scratched, fade, or change colors regardless of what happens to the slides. Kodak warns on their boxes "Since color dyes may in time change, this film will not be replaced for, or otherwise warranted against, any change in color." Some slides fade to a pink or blue color over time. The scanning software that I use has many adjustments that can be made to adjust the image and restore faded color. Surprisingly, the scanner does an excellent job of restoring the original color for faded slides. There are also many other adjustments that can be made such as: contrast, sharpness, etc.
The scanned image will be of much greater quality than what you would get from a projector. I scan the slides at 400% and 600 pixels per inch. This makes the actual full-size image about 2.5x's the size of my 17 inch monitor. The whole image is originally visible on the monitor screen, but you can click it to view it actual size, which will make the image much larger, and still have great image quality.
By
having your slides scanned to disk, you are also creating a backup of your
collection. From the disk you can copy the images to your computer or create
other discs for safekeeping.
I can scan ordinary 35mm slides, and larger slides also. If you measure the film part of the slide (not the mount) I can scan film that is as large as 50mm (appx. 2 in.) I have scanned over 7.341 slides as of January 2014.
If you are interested in having your slides scanned or have any questions, please click here for my contact information and to read more about me.
Thank you for your interest. Please check out the sample page below.
Home Page Sample Images About Me / Contact Information
Sample images are taken from my personal collection. Photographers are unknown and not marked.
Site last updated on 2/3/2014
