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  • Dave Johnson's expert tips promise to enhance your expertise with your digital camera, scanner, printer, and image editing software.
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Digital Focus: File Formats and Image Compression

Dave Johnson

Q&A: Recommendations for Inexpensive Slide Scanning

Can you suggest any tricks for converting slides to digital format without buying an expensive slide scanner? Can I project them onto a screen and photograph them? I have several thousand slides of my family and of trips all over the world that I would like to convert.

--Richard Aronson, Kalamazoo, Michigan

You don't have to spend a lot of money, Richard, but I do suggest that you buy a scanner. You can get a flatbed scanner with a transparency adapter for just $100; Canon's CanoScan 4200F, for instance, includes a transparency adapter and costs between $75 and $100.

Read "Put Your Film Into Your PC" for more about scanners with slide and film adapters.

Photographing slides projected onto a wall or screen is fraught with difficulties. It's hard to get uniform sharpness and proper exposure, for starters, and the resolution will be lacking. Trust me: It's well worth investing in a scanner to preserve family memories.

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