Tasks that need to be performed prior to scanning 35mm slides

The SlideSnap Pro is a combination of a modified Kodak Carousel slide projector plus a high resolution camera coupled to the projector by a control box.  The original illuminator of the projector is replaced by an LED array light source for even lighting. In addition, the lens of the projector is removed, allowing the camera which is outfitted with a macro lens to directly capture the image of the illuminated the slide. For more information about this scanner, please see our SlideSnap Pro page.  To read an article about the practical view of scanning resolutions, please see: Resolving Resolution.

Prior to scanning slides, Carousel trays must be loaded with 35mm slides in a precise orientation.

Arranging Slides in Trays

For economy slide scanning, one of the tasks that the customer takes responsibility for is arranging slides in the proper order and orientation in Carousel trays.  If you don't already have your slides in Carousel trays, we have a lot of empty Carousel trays that we can loan you to put your slides into.

Note: If you are bringing Carousel trays that have been used with a Carousel projector to project slides on a screen, the slides will be in the trays upside down and backwards. You will need to do two things to get them in the proper orientation:

1. You will need to rotate every slide 180º so that as you look at the slide when it is fed into the projector, letters on signs would be readable, not reversed.
   
   
2. In addition, when scanned, every slide must be in landscape orientation because the camera which is used can only shoot in one orientation, landscape. So, every slide that is in portrait mode must be rotated 90º.  It is helpful to rotate the entire tray of slides 90º in the same direction.

Here is another way to describe the second step above:
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​Slides should be placed in order so that if you look from the top down on the carousel in the above illustration, the slides at 7 o'clock come before the ones at 8 o'clock in the sequence of slides.  Slides should all be placed in the landscape orientation and have their tops or left sides be headed upwards.  Also make sure that the slide is correctly viewed from the front as shown (not reversed so that the letters PQR are reversed).  Once you figure out the right up/down, left/right, front/back for a particular brand of 35mm slide processing, it should be the same for all slides produced by that particular photo finishing processor.