Scanning or photographing slides ?

Around 15years ago, I had scanned some slides with my Nikon Coolscan 4000 ED filmscanner and Silverfast software. So far I was pretty content with the results I could get from my Nambia slides :

https://www.wjaekel-foto.de/photo-trip/namibia/

I still have ten thousands of slides archived but don't intend to digitalize all of them, of course. Nevertheless, there is a considerable number of images from the pre-digital age that is worth to transfer (and keep) because I probably will not get to the locations anymore or the places have changed considerably in the meantime (i.e. glaciers). As an alternative for scanning the slides by myself which is very time consuming I'm thinking of charging a lab with that work. Doing it by myself would require a learning curve again to manage the excellent but demanding Silverfast Software including all the new settings and upgraded options. But of course, I could tweak and optimize each scan individually. Anyways, I have found two labs so far that look competent and have got good ratings but have different approaches :

#1 : They scan the slides with the Nikon Coolscan 5000 (which is similar to my predecessor Nikon 4000 but faster) and they also use the Silverfast Scansoftware , i.e for removing dust and scratches etc. You always get 2 files per slide - an original scan and an edited ("optimized") one in PS. I called them for the color space of the files. The default is sRGB but they seem to optionally offer aRGB, too, though their reaction was a bit confusing. You also can get Tiff-Files (8bit) instead of Jpegs if you want.
Given the price of 0,35 €/scan you cannot expect an individual setting and tweaking of each scan, though, as I did it in the past. The procedure will probably be automatic for the most part .

#2 : They photograph the slides with a FF Sony camera resulting in 6000x 4000 px per file. I forgot to ask which macro lens is used, though. They advertise their DRO ( "Dynamic Range Optimizer") technique. You can order Jpegs, PSD, Tiffs or Sony Araw-files. At default you get Jpeg, though. However, if you want psd, tiff or raw it costs 0,70 €/file which is double the price of lab 1. Getting a raw file to work with is a big advantage, but it sums up to a considerably higher price if you order 300 to 500 files or even more. And photographing the slides doesn't remove possible dust and tiny scratches, of course, or even enhances that. So you have to clone that out afterwards.

To make a long story short - I'm interested in the experiences of other photogs regarding the two approaches, especially if someone has compared both strategies. Of course, I have seen some previous discussions here on scanning slides but I'm unsure which route to go. For posting small images on the web, there's perhaps not much of a difference in quality. But I want to get the best results in the first step for archiving and maybe printing. Downgrading always is easy, of course.

Thank you very much in advance
Wolfgang

I've not tried either service, but recently started scanning my own slides using a Nikon ES-2 Digitizing adapter mounted on a Sony 50mm macro, on my A7R3. The Nikon adapter will work with any brand 50-60mm 1:1 macro (via step up or down rings) on any brand digital body. With a little practice, results are every bit as good as my Nikon Coolscan 4000, which I just sold. The adapter is not perfect, but I can digitize and import 36 images into lightroom in about 30 minutes, ending up with 35-40MP images. 

The actual scanning is relatively quick vs. deciding which slides to capture and cleaning up the resulting files. 

Best, Dave

I scanned a lot of slides using a Coolscan 5000 and the NikonScan software with a workaround to get the original 32 bit driver to work on a 64 bit Win 7-10 computer.  The results are good as the ICE - dust and scratch removal, ROC - Fading correction, GEM - grain removal work fairly well in this software.  If any of these scan providers offer these services it is well worth the cost as cleaning up dust spots is very time comsuming as an after scan endevor.   I would recomend that you get the slides scanned as a TIFF file as you will always lose file info every time you convert the JPEG file to another file format.   I never did any color correction during the scan as it was much easier to that in LR or C1.

I think you have to ask yourself, what am I going to do with the results? Sure, its nice to have the RAW files to process, but have you finished processing all the images that you would like to from your trip/outing? There is also a big investment in time in just sorting through tens of thousands of slides. I sorted through 30 year's worth of slides a couple of years ago before we moved house; I've still got a sh-t load - so much to do, so little time.

Personally I would want them in the most malleable state possible, that means either RAW files or 16 bit TIF files.

Hi,

I started scanning my slides with my Epson Perfection V800 Pro Scanner. But with the amount of slides I have, it was going to take a lot of time. I realized I would only use about 5% of what I was scanning. Now I scan slides as I need them. It saves a lot of time by not scanning slides I will never use.

Have Fun,
Jeff