Time or Money

We have somewhere upward of 1,000 color slides from our early life, even before we were married. But who has a screen and slide projector to look at them today? We sure don't. I have read that we can get a screen and a projector and show the slides, then take pictures of each image with our digital camera. Recently, we joined Costco and they will copy the slides and give us two copies on CDs of the digital images. That sounded like a good idea.

We picked up the small cardboard boxes to each contain the slides in batches of 50 for them to work with. But, when I figured what it would cost--at 22 cents each, 1000 slides would cost $999.78--we started to second guess that method. John went on Amazon.com and found a machine for $99 that would produce digital images from the slides. $99 versus $999 sounded pretty good. This week,I have begun the process.

Here I am, copying slides. Each row in that box contains 100 slides. I am trying to copy 200 a day. Once I got the process down, it goes fairly quickly. I insert one slide at a time, push save, then insert another. It is fun to see pictures of our childhood and of our children when they were young. We have photos of both sons playing in the lawn sprinkler on a hot day, as well as pictures for lots of camping trips with family and friends. We have slides from a trip to California John took as a young boy with his parents and brother. So far, I have copies about 700 slides. When I finish the box of slides you see in the photo, I will copy 150+ slides my parents took when I was young.

After I finish digitizing these slides, we will be able to copy images to CDs and share them with family members who are pictured in them. I am also digitizing old photos and then forwarding the originals to the people seen in them. I also back up all these digital files, keeping 3 separate copies so they aren't lost. Isn't modern technology wonderful?