From the moment I bought my slide scanner, a Minolta Scan Dual II, in 2000, I thought, “There must be a quicker way to digitalize slides and negatives.”

The problem with my scanner was that it took about 5 minutes to scan a slide or negative at its highest resolution. It also scanned some dust, no matter how well I cleaned the slide, so more time was spent cleaning a slide in Photoshop after scanning it. At the time I didn't have any software for the scanner to reduce dust.

My Einstein Moment

I think everybody has, at least a few times in his or her life, an “Einstein moment.” I think this was one of mine and I’d like to share it with you. I thought, “Why not place a slide on my light box and make a photo of it with my digital camera?”

The lightbox I use is a MEDALight LP-2000 with cold cathode lamp, which has a perfect, bright white light (5000K daylight).

How?

This is how I do it. Put your DLSR camera on a tripod. If your camera has a mirror lockup setting, enable it so you won’t have vibrations from the mirror going up and down. Use a remote switch or the self-timer so you don't have to touch the camera

The aperture setting is not so important – you should have plenty of depth of field because the slide will be flat. For my lightbox and camera combination, I get the best results with a shutter speed of 0.3 – 0.5 seconds.

I tried several lenses, from wide angle to telephoto, but I’ve had the best results with a macro lens. A macro lens is optimized for high-magnification photography and lets you get very close to the slide – about 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 cm). I use the Tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro.

I always put a lens hood around the slide, to shield it from glare and reflections from windows and room lights.

Adjustments

You will have to edit your “photo of a photo” a little bit in Photoshop. I sometimes take the photo with a bit of the slide mount visible around the edges, which must be cropped away. Some dust spot removal may also be needed, but much less than on an image scanned with a slide scanner.

You may also do regular editing like sharpening, levels and contrast, depending how you like your images to look.

Copying B&W or Color Negatives

This method also works for negatives. After you’ve photographed a negative, open the image in Photoshop and select Image\Adjustments\Invert (or Ctrl-i ). This will change the negative image to a positive – it's really easy. You can then edit the image to your taste.

RAW or JPEG?

I have mostly use this method with JPEG files; I don't have much experience copying with RAW. The few photos I took using RAW seemed to need many more adjustments to achieve the same, or worse, results than a JPEG.

Prints

I have made some prints from digital slide copies, with about the same quality results as taking the slide itself to a photo store. The big advantage is that the people at the photo lab can’t lose or damage your precious slide. The costs are lower as well.

Costs and Benefits

I know that buying a genuine macro lens is a big investment, but so is buying a slide scanner. And the slide scanner is only made for scanning, while a macro lens is also useful for photographing insects, people, and other subjects.

I hope you are satisfied with the results from using this simple and quick method. It's a great excuse to see your old slides again, if you haven’t looked at them since switching to digital!

If you have further questions about copying slides with your digital SLR, please don't hesitate to ask!