The Four Most Important Reasons to Scan Old Slides
Slides, trays of slides, boxes of slides, slide projectors, light bulbs for slide projectors…all of these things seem like items from a gone-by era. And truthfully they are.
I remember my grandparents pulling out the slide projector and screen after a family vacation or at a family gathering and enduring hours (ok, I was 5 so it was probably more like 20 minutes) of click-click, picture-picture, blah-blah-blah. Now as an adult I would give anything to go back to those days and listen closely to my grandparents as they told stories of their slides which, in actuality, were the stories of their lives. Now all my grandparents are gone but what I do have is their slides and other photos, the visual documentation of lives richly led.
A few years ago my aunt showed up at our annual beach vacation with two leather valises containing over 2,000 of my grandparent’s slides. I spent many a happy hour scanning those slides and rediscovering photographic gems that I have never seen before.
After I finished I went through the digital images with my mom and aunt to identify people and places and learn the stories of vacations, friends, and first homes. Now they each have copies of these treasured family memories as well.
4 reasons you need to scan your old slides nowClick To TweetDoes your family have boxes and trays of slides just sitting in the closet or the attic? It is really important that you have them scanned and digitized now and here is why.
Your slides are rapidly deteriorating
Slides are made of a transparent piece of film encased in a rigid paper square. If moisture gets into the storage box, the slides can develop mold or mildew on the film which can create weird yellow and purple splotches both visible to the eye and on a digital copy. Eventually mold and mild will eventually eat right through the film. Heat can loosen the glue on the paper sleeves so that the film just falls out. Light can cause the images to fade, just as dirt and dust can scratch the surface of the film.
Whatever you do, however you store your slides and photos, do NOT keep them in the garage or attic or any other place with unregulated temperature and humidity changes. You might open the box to find slides so mildewed that you can’t do anything with them.
Your slides take up so much space
If your grandparents’ slides are being stored in the original bulky projector trays, they take up so much room. When I received my grandparent’s slides, they were in rectangular projector trays in paper boxes in 2 valises. The paper boxes were dusty and musty. They were not something I wanted to hold on to.
After scanning the slides, I removed them from these trays and put them in an archival-quality slide storage box like this one from Archival Methods. Now instead of taking up the space of two medium-sized suitcases, they are in a box the size of a boot box. I am currently doing a similar project with my mom and dad’s slide and have rescued the slides from bundles wrapped in rubber bands. They now live in their own Archival Methods slide storage box as well.
Wouldn’t you like to reclaim some of your storage space?
Entire generations haven’t seen your slides
Of the 2,000 slides I scanned, I had only ever seen a handful of these images which date from the 1950s until the early 1980s. Considering that I was born in the early 1970s, most of these images pre-dated me. I was so tickled to see images of my grandparents in the 1950s looking like they had just stepped out of an episode of Mad Men. Now I can share these pictures with my entire family. Generations to come will know more about my grandparents, thanks to this project.
The stories on the slides are getting lost
Recently I scanned my parent’s slides. Dating from the early 1960s until the late 1970s these images shared with me a side of my parents I had never known. Dan and Joni as a young married couple, as young parents to me, their first child. I have even gotten to see pictures of myself I had never seen before. The stories told in these images are precious to me and I am so thankful that now the stories can be told and remembered.
What are you going to do with your family slides?
My recommendations are #1 be sure you are storing them in a safe location and then #2 have them digitized as soon as you possibly can. You can send them away to a reputable vendor like Fotobridge, find a photo organizer/scanner like me or even do it yourself with a good photo and slide scanner.
Do you have old slides hiding in your closet? How many do you think you have? Let me know in the comments.
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Connect with Good Life Photo Solutions
Instagram • Good Life Photo Solutions
Facebook • Good Life Photo Solutions
Pinterest • Good Life Photo Solutions
Sign up for our newsletter
Email us. I’d love your feedback and questions! [email protected]
Want to Know More?
If you want to work with a photo organizer near you to help you organize and preserve your photos, contact us or visit The Photo Managers to find one in your area.
*This post may contain affiliate links. This means if you purchase from a link, I may receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting my small business. See my disclosure policy for full details.
Soon no one will remember who those people are in the slides. This is a big project but so worth it to take on. Great suggestions.
What you describe sitting around watching slides with the family after vacations and travel adventures is so familiar. It was a family ritual that I miss. When I cleared out and closed up my parents’ home, I had to handle all of the media, including trays and trays of slide carousels. There were thousands of slides, which were carefully labeled and organized by my dad. I opted to digitize many of them and the rest I gave to my brother, who wanted certain categories that were less meaningful to the entire family. I’m glad we preserved those images.
Great tips, Andi! I have done this and feel so much better knowing that the family archives have been preserved.
Great tips, Andi! I never had slides. But, had a client who took a ton of them. So, she purchased the slide machine so her husband could go through them and transfer/get rid of them before their downsizing move. I found that storing them in a basement is also not a good idea. It can get wet and result in moldy slides. It’s so upsetting when you open a box and realize all the stuff is moldy.
Great points. The stories need to be preserved and with the technology we have today they can be. It’s so important to make time for this project.
My dad scanned his slides (1960-1974) a few years ago. He then put them on CDs and gave each of us a set, complete with an index. I’m so pleased to have them. I still need to scan my own slides.
I’m going through this with my parents right now. I also have fond memories of getting out the projector and looking at photos… a very fun tradition that we have lost. We also used to watch the old movies. I don’t think it is in their budget to purchase the scanner, but I know I can source this out to a vendor. It’s a shame to have them wasting away in boxes, and as you say, I want to capture their stories with the images. Once they are gone none of us will know the story behind the image!
Technology changes so quickly that soon even things we use today will be obsolete. Good idea to digitize all sorts of things, including slides. I don’t have very many slides but this was just the nudge I needed to do something with them.
This evening I just found this site on Pinterest. For many, many years I took slides, some B&W photos, and colored prints; also I have the same from other family members who are no longer living. Some B&W prints may go back into the latter 1890’s as well as the early 1900’s up thru the early 2000’s. In more recent years, I have understood that B&W photos sometimes far outlast slides and colored prints, depending on all storage conditions. Fortunately, none of my slides were stored in either the basement or attic, but I have found other prints, usually B&W that were stored in the attic. Now they aren’t. Can glass negatives be printed by using an All-in-One printer or scanned to my laptop?
Joan, it sounds as if you have a wonderful collection. All-in-One Printers/scanners can’t scan slides because slides (and negatives) require a backlight to become visible. Most 35mm slides can be scanned at home with a dedicated photo scanner such as the Epson Perfection V600 (http://amzn.to/2FzEpZG), which also scans negatives, print photos and documents. Glass negatives require most specialized knowledge and equipment so for those I suggest you find a professional who can help you. Everpresent is one of the vendors I would suggest investigating. (https://everpresent.com/scanning-glass-negatives/)
I found this article that may be helpful to you. https://blog.townswebarchiving.com/2015/01/how-to-digitise-glass-plate-negatives
Good luck and have fun preserving all that history!
[…] slides will have a date stamped on the paper or plastic mount. But remember that this is the developing […]
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Andi, great article. Do you know any way to skan a Viewmaster image? My grandfather had a special camera which used unique film for Viewmaater images. He mounted many of them himself I don’t know him he did this but I have quite a few reels. I have a scanner with Carriers for slides and negatives. Obviously that will not work for the Viewmaster positive slide images. Any ideas?
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Slides are easy to scan. I have a couple thousand printed photos from 1928-1960 that are in serious need of preservation. So many are poorly mounted and poorly taken. I have barely started to scratch the surface. So many people have very few pictures of them.