On 20 Nov 2007 in soc.genealogy.computing, jesse mc wrote: > Is there a way that doesn't cost an arm & leg to transfer slides to > my computer? I have many-many slides I'd like to post on my web > site. As with everything else in this life, there's a cost/convenience/quality tradeoff. The way I see it: - As Lesley points out, many fairly inexpensive scanners have slide adapters built right in. I have an HP Scanjet 3970 with this feature; if memory serves, I paid about US$100 for it a few years back. Upside: cheap Downside: the scans aren't all that good, and if you want to print them along with displaying them on the web, you'll be disappointed in the results. Plus they're fairly labor intensive. - Buy a (dedicated) slide scanner. I haven't looked at them in a bit, though I suspect that I'll eventually wind up with one. (Between my wife and I, we have a back catalog of 20-odd years each of slides, plus about 15 years of negatives.) Upside: high quality scans Downside: more expensive; still labor intensive. I understand that there's a fair amount of setup and tweaking to get really good scans - Do some editing beforehand, and take them to a service bureau near you. Take a small sample first to see the quality of the work you'll get. Edit down before you take slides for scanning so that you're only paying their rates for slides you really want. Upside: no hardware to buy, less technical aptitude Downside: expensive on a per unit basis, so you'll have to use some discretion as to how many you have done this way. And you'll have to put in the effort to select which images you want scanned. -- Joe Makowiec http://makowiec.org/ Email: http://makowiec.org/contact/?Joe