I know that we are off topic here but, I've got over 20,000 slides myself, and somewhat less in the negative department. would you mind telling me what scanner that you ended up getting? I'm thinking of doing the same thing myself.
I wanted an automatic scanner that I could load a roll of film and go do something else. The descent scanners that can do this are limited. Only two are current, one from Braun and another from Pacific Image, but both have gone out of production due to parts shortages over the last year. Many electronic components out of China have seen disruptions. (My neighbor works for an integrated circuit maker in Portland and their business has gone off the charts over the last year because there is high demand for parts that used to come out of China but are in short supply.)
I searched further and found that the Nikon Coolscan 5000 still has a great reputation even though it went out of production in 2009. There is an optional auto slide feeder SF-210 (there is also an SF-200 that will work). The last drivers only support Windows Vista or the Mac OS current about that time, but a company named Vuescan makes a driver and software that supports a wide range of old scanners.
I bought a Coolscan and SF-210 on Ebay and they are working fine. The Coolscan's faceplate doesn't stay on which was why it was cheap, but it works. I'm about 7000 slides in with no problems. The SF-210 needs some tricks to make sure it feeds correctly and still has trouble feeding or ejecting slides sometimes, but resetting it and starting it up again does the job. I have a retired work PC running the scans and Vuescan does the job quite well.
Nilkon's reputation for making durable equipment is not lost on their scanners. They are every bit as reliable as the Nikon F series cameras were. The Coolscan is fast too, about a minute to do a 4000 dpi scan with ICE (dust and scratch removal).
When I'm done I plan to sell the scanner on. I will need to get a good flatbed scanner after the slides are done. There are file cabinets full of 4X5 negatives as well as a fair number of 120mm negatives (as well as two boxes of 120mm slides I've found thus far).
First off: Great Car! Love the graphics!
Great story! Cars should be about great experiences.
Re: Film vs. Digital (I’m a professional photographer who started on film, moved to digital in it’s infancy, and worked with legendary photographers who did the same.)
There is something primal about film, just like the vinyl LP. Many people enjoy the traditional experience.
Digital photography opened huge markets for photography. We can now take hundreds of photos on spec or on a budget job that would be cost prohibitive on film.
Aside from large format film for creative, or archival historical purposes, everything can be done on digital. It does require a new bag of tricks for data management, image sorting, editing and presentation.
For the average person, having an virtually unlimited capacity camera with them at all times is a huge advantage. If you don’t have the camera with you, you can’t take the picture.
Looking forward to seeing your new photos when they come back from the lab!
Analog has a certain charm. I also remember my father talking about an ISO 10 film that had no grain he could ever see. He could make almost unlimited size prints with it. I can't recall if it was a C-41 or Ektachrome slide film.
My father had a Kodak dealership and beta tested film for Kodak. The reps like talking to him because he was an artist with the soul of an engineer. He liked getting down into the weeds of the technical details.
The reps were telling him back in the early 1990s that Kodak was in trouble. The company knew digital was coming, but they had no idea how to surf the change. Film has such a massive supply chain between the film itself, the processing supplies for the film, paper for prints, processing supplies for the paper, and other support items. i have a storage locker with my parents' stuff and a lot of it is photographic related. 8 boxes alone are slides. The file cabinets with the negatives take up a space about 3 ft high and 6 feet long.
With digital the only supplies you need beyond the camera itself is a few extra media cards. When I'm done I'll probably need a 2 TB drive to send to my sister with all the slide scans, but an SSD drive fits in a shirt pocket. I'm storing them on my NAS (Network Attached Storage) system here. His entire slide collection will fit on about 1/8th of a drive in the system (16TB drives).
The car industry is headed for a similar cliff as Kodak and they are struggling like Kodak did with the changes coming. Electric cars need less support than ICE and have many conveniences over ICE. Once consumers figure that out demand for ICE will fall through the floor and there will be high demand for cars the traditional automakers can't make in volume yet.
