Sunday, October 19, 2008

Viewing the Slides and Negatives

I had a wonderful day, out and about in the perfect weather. I picked up the slide and negative viewer, came home and installed it. Then I spent a couple enjoyable hours looking at slides. Ah the memories!

I've only made a dent. I estimated I had 300 but 500 appears to be more likely. So far I've found some slides which I believe my college roommates would pay to have destroyed. :)

I'd say the device works pretty well. The slides are old and definitely have deteriorated to some extent. But I can view them and determine if I want to save the picture or toss with ease. It comes with photo editing software called Photo Impression, version 6. I am not a photo editing expert, looks decent.

Negatives are a different story. Pre 35mm negatives come in an assortment of sizes. The plastic negative holder is designed for 35mm negatives both in size and spacing. This can probably be overcome with some dedication. The bigger problem is while I can see the negative on my screen the software often gives error messages trying to copy the negative. I don't know enough about the software to determine why but I will see if I have the same problem with another software.

Instructions are minuscule but the device is fairly mechanical -- you put the slides or negatives into the appropriate holder and manually push it through. I can hear a little click when it is centered over a slide. Presumably that is true for the negatives too although I haven't gotten to any negatives that are really the "right" size so I haven't used that notification. You have to give it a minute to provide a digital image on your computer screen. You can push a button on the device to save the image. After that it is all up to the software -- this is where it says it can't get the image on many of the negatives I've tried so far.

No comments: