Years ago, 35mm film cameras were the "latest and greatest," and many people archived their favorite photographs on 35mm slides. This may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but viewing and storing these slides usually turned out to be more effort than expected. The problem many people ended up with was having hundreds, and possibly thousands, of slides and a broken slide projector. Even with a working projector, setting up a slide projector for a slide show can take a lot of time.

With today's digital image technology, you can scan 35mm slides and conveniently store them on CD's and DVD's. There's no slide projector to drag out of the closet and no slide carousels to fill with slides. Once you scan your 35mm slides and transfer the images to a CD or DVD, all you need is a computer or DVD player to view your pictures.

When you decide to scan 35mm slides, your first step should be determining which slides you want to preserve. Pick out the best shots to scan. It may be tempting to scan every slide you own, but this will probably result in your spending more time and money on the project than you intended. Eliminating near-duplicate slides and slides you don't need to keep in your collection will save you time and money later on.

If you have a large number of slides to scan, you'll want a dependable slide scanner. A high quality scanner can run in the thousands of dollars. There are some less expensive models, but remember that "you get what you pay for." Lower end scanners only allow you to view the scanned images. You will not be able to make prints with these scanners. There are professional photography services that scan 35mm slides, and this may be your best option. Their work is guaranteed, and you won't need to worry about what you're going to do with an expensive slide scanner once your project is completed. Professional 35mm scanning services are able to remove dust, scratches, and other blemishes from the slides, giving you enhanced images.

Make sure your scanner's software is user-friendly and can handle what you want it to do. Good scanner software will allow you to make color adjustments to your images before you scan your 35mm slides. A common customer complaint is that the scanner software is difficult to set up and even more difficult to use. If you're unable to use the scanner software, you can use Adobe Photoshop, but your images will not be as clear.

If your goal is to preserve your 35mm slide photographs as professional-grade images with minimal time and effort, look for a professional photography service that will scan 35mm slides. The digital images from your scanned slides will have a higher resolution, or sharpness, than images scanned from a home scanner. These services can also remove scratches and other marks from the images, giving you a high-quality image to view and print.