Tonight with friends one told me he had copied slides to camera with an attachment to the lens. This was like a "backlit slide viewer" but attached to the camera lens.  Do you know of such a device and how well it works?

I have a decent scanner and believe me, even with the scanner doing a good job trying to copy slides is a pain.   I have old slides from my deceased father and some are losing quality over the years.  Any suggestions?

Thanks.       TomDart.

My husband has one of these and is using it right now, and he loves it.  He has scanned in all of our slides from when our kids were little and it is great to have them as digiatal pictures.  He bought it on amazon.com and it is called a Digital Duplicator made by Opteka.  His came with a 52 mm thread and an adapter that adapts to a 67 mm.  He can use it with both his Nikon D80 and his Cannon A Series with a 52 mm Cannon Adapter.

If you have any additonal questions, feel free to ask.

Yes I have a set of Bellows and this has a slide adapter for it I can produce some superb results with that but as yet can only do this on my Canon F and A1 film cameras I am looking for a EOS adapter for it...  Though I  would imagine it would not be hard to make  such a device to copy slides in the same way..  The main advantage over scanning is the speed.. And the quality seems better.. If the slides are faded you may have to use Photoshop to restore them..

Attached Link: Pacific Image Prime Film 1800u 35mm Film Scanner $79

Quoting from the adorama.com listing ...

The PrimeFilm 1800 series captures such excellent image detail from
both positive slides and negative filmstrips, you can retouch any image
exactly the way you want it.

The PrimeFilm 1800 series captures 1800 dots per inch(dpi) giving you
3 times the resolution of the average desktop scanner. For graphics
professionals, this means that you can enlarge images to approx.
20 cm x 13 cm (7.8" x 5.1") and still maintain the 1:1 300 dpi resolution
sufficient for color separation and offset printing.

--
Martin

Attached Link: Nikon slide copier user comments

You will lose sharpness by using a digital camera do to the Anti-alias filter. You're best off using a dedicated film/slide scanner because you get the full results right away.

It would be great if you could rent one of these. Unless you shoot slides on a regular basis, I bet most people would use it once to digitize their slide archives then never use it again.

Matt

Matt, you spoke my position exactly!  I will not be shooting slides in any reasonable future time. These are old ones, a one time deal.       Tom.

Photographing a photograph(or transparency, or begative) will make the contrast higher, saturation higher, and you'll lose details in the highlights and deep shadows. I used to do a lot of copywork - not with the kind that attaches as a long lens you backlight, but the results are similar.

You can compensate for this by using a higher ISO. I realize this doesn't sound like good advice (grain, etc.) but by lowering the contrast you'll save more of your highlights and shadows.

Sadly, the tedious scanning of each slide will give you better results - time consuming, but much better.

Good luck-
-Lew ;-)

Thanks...since this will be pretty much a one time deal...scanning is likely the way to go.   Tom.

TomDart said, 

since this will be pretty much a one time deal...scanning is likely the way to go.
Since the unit I mentioned is capable of film scanning, you would also be
able to continue to use a35mm camera along with any specialized lens,
bellows, etc.

--
Martin

If you are a do-it-yourself'er, put your work gloves on and start building...

http://patenteux.com/SlideDuplication/

or

http://www.philjern.net/DUPER/index.html

Matt

Great info..just got back in town today.  Thanks! Tom.