The Good Olde Days of Film

Back in the 80s and 90s, I was an avid film photographer. I used a lot of slide film because it fit in with my career at that point. Slides were good for giving presentations. They weren't however so great for sharing with friends and family. Slide projectors might be common in the corporate and academic worlds, but they were harder to find out in the "real" world.

For the last 25 years I have lugged binders full of slide sheets with me. One slide isn't heavy. Several thousand slides in archival plastic sheets, contained within binders... they are heavy. So this past year I looked into digital transfer options. It ain't cheap. I finally settled on an outfit called ScanCafe in California. Thirty cents a slide didn't sound too bad so I sent 100 slides down as a test. I wasn't impressed. By the time you added shipping, the American exchange rate and more shipping... well... it ended up being more like $1/slide. And the quality wasn't the greatest. So I shelved the idea of converting my slides to digital.

Until last week. My sister was here for a visit and we got to talking about our slide collections - she too had been an avid slide photographer back in the 80s and 90s. We talked about the possibility of buying a slide scanner and sharing the cost. After we had scanned all of our slides, we could sell the scanner again on Craigslist.

I looked into the cost of scanners. You could get a basic one for under $150 but... the quality wasn't the greatest. If you wanted good quality, you were looking at about $1000 for a scanner... and another $500 for a slide tray that could be fed through the scanner so you didn't have to spend hours feeding the thing a new slide every 5 or 10 minutes.

A bit more searching and I came across a Canadian company in Delta, BC. They charged $0.29/slide and there wouldn't be outrageous shipping fees or an American exchange rate. A 500 box of slides would cost $145. The quality was good - it should be with a $50,000 slide scanner! That sounded affordable and convenient!

So I just spent the last couple of hours doing a quick flip through my slide albums thinning them out. I did a pretty good job and have reduced the number of slides from about 2000 to a rough 1500. I might do another go-through at some point and see if I can get it down to 1000 slides.

I don't want to add up the cost of my love affair with slide film but...

• slide film cost
• slide film processing
• plastic slide sleeves
• binders
• moving (15 times)
• scanning to digital

I'm hoping that this will be it. I've wanted to do this for years, so it will be nice to clear some physical, as well as some psychic space with this project. Added bonus - I can share the digital images with friends and family and show them my life from 25 years ago!