The 11 Best Slide Viewers in 2024 – Reviewed & Buying Guide

To prevent images immortalized on your old slides from deteriorating over time, you can solve the problem by digitizing them.

Of course, if you are a professional photographer, you are forced to focus on a scanner that ensures very high performance, an expense that is useless if you do not do this activity.

Let’s see what are the characteristics that the best scanner for slides and negatives must-have.

Here we are providing the best slide viewer for you that are listed below.

What to Look for Before Buying Slide Viewer?

1. Termination

Those who decide to digitize their slides or films, whether they are years old or new, have an interest first of all that the digital copy of the analogical support is not only faithful to the original down to the last detail, but in many cases also that its quality is improved by the photo editing technologies available today.

This is why the first and most important feature of a slide scanner is the resolution it is capable of: the higher the resolution, the more detailed and faithful to the original our scans.

Slide scanner several factors contribute to determining the resolution of a scanner, or the type of lamp or photographic sensor used and the number of PPE (dots per inch). Let’s consider these two characteristics separately.

Ccd Lamp

The best quality slide scanners are those that use a lamp that is very similar to those found on flatbed scanners, but much smaller. The use of these lamps allows us to reach a much higher resolution than the use of a photographic sensor, as we will see, but involves a considerable lengthening of the scanning times. Just like in “normal” scanners, in fact, the higher the scan resolution we select, the slower the lamp in the acquisition.

This is also because, in many cases, slide scanners of this type carry out multiple scans of the same film at different exposures., which are used to compose the final image to widen the dynamic contrast as much as possible (of which we speak a little below).

The best slide scanners, in addition to the normal white light lamp, also mount an infrared one: this is typically activated after the end of “normal” scans and is used to accurately detect scratches, stains, specks of dust and other defects of the film.

A simple software processing then takes care of correcting the imperfections thus detected.

Sensor

Before talking about the characteristics of the sensor it is appropriate to briefly explain how a slide scanner equipped with a photographic sensor instead of a lamp works.

The principle is very simple: an LED light source illuminates the slide or film that we want to digitize, and the light beam is imprinted on a photographic sensor located on the opposite side of the lamp.

Sensor slide scanner is the same as a camera, except that instead of natural light there is an artificial light source, and the image is created when light passes through the film.

The photographic sensors, therefore, are the same as the CMOS sensors that are used in digital cameras. CMOS sensors are cheap and quick to process the image.

However, they have the annoying tendency, especially when the number of pixels contained in them is high, to generate a lot of “noise”.

By “noise” we mean the formation of grains in particular in the darker areas of an image, a problem from which the lamps are much less afflicted.
Photosensors are common in low-end slide scanners.

Pixel slide scanner number of pixels contained on a sensor is also important. The similarity with digital cameras also continues in this respect, given that the number of pixels is expressed in mp (megapixels) and can range from 5 Mpofu to the cheapest slide scanners in the 14 of the mid-range models.

DpI

The most immediate expression of the resolution of a slide scanner is the PPE, or the linear points present in a stretch of the image one inch long (2.54 cm). As you can easily guess, a high number of PPE translates into greater detail and definition of the image, therefore in a more faithful translation of the original in digital format. The photo below can give an idea of ​​the differences (click to enlarge):

DPI slide scanner however, a small note must be made regarding the resolution expressed in DPI: this can be referred to as “optical resolution”, or “software resolution”, or else the number of PPE can be followed by the wording “interpolated/interpolated”.

Optical Resolution

It is good to underline that these names are not synonymous: the optical resolution indicates the number of DPI obtained without further graphic processing, in short, that of the image as it is impressed on the sensor or detected by the lamp.

Software Resolution/interpolation

When we instead read “software resolution” or encounter a reference to interpolation we must take into account that these denominations refer to the image reworked to increase its resolution.

What usually happens is that the image is more or less doubled in size, thus widening the “meshes” of the points that make it up. The points that remain “empty” are filled by a software that “guesses”, based on the color of the surrounding points, which color should be inserted to fill the spaces.

Although the interpolation software is now very advanced and produces pleasant results, it is commonly accepted opinion that they cannot rival an optical resolution equal to DPI (3600 interpolated DPI are not perfectly equivalent to 3600 optical DPI).

Dynamic Contrast

There is at least one other parameter that plays a role in the good translation of a film-to-digital image: dynamic contrast.

This is a value expressed on a logarithmic scale that usually in slide scanners does not exceed a value of 4.0 (but more commonly oscillates between 3.5 and 3.8) which can give us an idea of ​​how dark the blacks captured and reproduced by the scanner will be.

The closer the value approaches 4.0, the more intense the black will be.

However, attention must be paid to how manufacturers express the dynamic contrast of their scanners: the correct wording is always “dynamic contrast”, while we must be wary when we find “Dmax” indicated.

Dmax only indicates the maximum density of the film that the scanner can process, which corresponds precisely to the darkest “black” that can be reproduced.

However, density measurement usually takes place in conditions that are very different from normal scanning, i.e. by maximizing the brightness of the lamp and thus losing most of the light tones. For this reason dynamic contrast is a better indicator of the real rendering of dark tones.

2. Formats

It is no less important to consider which types of films a slide scanner can scan, given that the possibility of converting other analog media to digital in addition to the slides also means being able to preserve negatives of various formats.

Scanner slides input formats we then intend to rework the scans obtained with a graphic software, we will also be interested in knowing what the available output formats are, therefore the file formats in which we can translate our analog films. So let’s consider both the input and output formats.

Input Formats

A first characteristic to consider is precisely if the scanner can scan only slides or it also foresees the scanning of negatives. When a negative scan function is present, this is usually also accompanied by an automatic conversion function, which translates the negative autonomously into a positive one.

Dimensions

All slide scanners can scan 35mm side slides. In many cases, however, the scanner is also compatible with other supports, among which the most common is undoubtedly the 35 mm photographic film.

Beyond these, other less common formats are:

Slides 110: smaller than 35 mm, the image is 13 x 17 mm large

• Slides 126: 26 mm square slides on each side
• Film 110: negatives developed from old 110 cartridges, containing 13 x 17 mm images
• Film 126: negatives developed from old 126 cartridges, containing 26mm square side images
• Super 8: cinematic film with 8mm wide frames

Loaders

Inserting slides or films into the scanner can be done in several ways. The simpler models of scanner for slides foresee the manual insertion of the slides one by one and the manual sliding of the films.

Very often, however, special supports are supplied with the scanner on which to mount a certain number of slides (usually four) or a piece of film. The support is then inserted into the entrance slot and scanning can be done manually or automatically.

Slide scanner scan media high-end slide scanners are the most efficient, as they allow you to use magazines classics for slides that can contain even a hundred. Scanning is automated in these slide scanners.

Output Formats

The output format, i.e. the type of file in which the analog original is converted, is important to consider about the use we must make of our photo.

Compressed and low-resolution formats are suitable for online uploading, while high-resolution uncompressed formats are ideal for advanced photo editing.

All slide scanners produce compressed images in .jpg format, almost always with the possibility of choosing between different levels of resolution. The more advanced models also allow conversion to other compressed formats, such as .jp2.

If we are interested in uncompressed formats, we will have to look for a slide scanner explicitly capable of producing images in .tiff format. Not being compressed, files in this format have a considerably greater weight than .jpg files, but have the advantage of reproducing precisely all the pixels generated by the sensor.

It is also interesting to note that some models also offer the possibility of converting the image directly into formats for photo editing, for example in .psd for processing in Photoshop.

3. Functions

Another very interesting aspect to evaluate in a slide scanner are the functions it has. These devices do not always simply scan and translate our slides or negatives into digital format, in fact almost always others are added to this operation, whether automated or not.

These operations naturally concern the improvement of the acquired images, and we can distinguish them between automated functions and “on board” photo editing.

Automated Functions

In many cases, often even in the cheapest slide scanners, there are some automated correction functions.

The most common of these is the automatic correction of colors and exposure, two useful retouches in particular when we are scanning very old slides and colors now altered by time.

Two other automatic functions quite common in medium-high end devices are the cancellation of scratches and dust.

The presence of a dust cleaning function does not mean, however, that we can avoid dusting our slides before scanning them: this preliminary step is indeed always recommended to optimize the result.

Onboard Photo Editing

When we talk about “on board” photo editing we refer to all those operations that can be performed on the scanned images directly on the slide scanner, without the aid of a computer.

Not all slide scanners offer this possibility, indeed some are completely devoid of display and therefore do not show even a small preview of the scan.

When the display and onboard retouching options are present, however, these can be more or less extended. In the most common cases we can carry out the same changes described above, i.e. the correction of colors and exposure, the cancellation of scratches and cleaning from dust.

All these actions can be performed both manually, image by image, and automatically for all slides.

Software Provided

Almost always, a slide scanner is supplied with software for processing the scanned images, to be installed naturally on your computer. The quality of this software is highly variable, greatly oscillating the number of operations that can be performed on images.

SilverFast slide scanner simplest software does not go beyond the simple four basic functions that we have already exposed, while the best ones allow a truly profound level of intervention.

In some cases, some manufacturers offer high-quality software such as SilverFast together with their slide scanners, which is rightly considered one of the best software of this type (the screenshot above shows this software in action).

The level of control over the image is very wide and detailed, giving great satisfaction especially to those who are already experts in photomanipulation.

4. Connectivity and Memory

Finally, the last considerations we can make before purchasing a slide scanner relate to how the scans work and save.

There are some differences between the various slide scanner models on the market which depend substantially on the mode of operation of each one, that is to say, depending on whether the scanner can operate autonomously or must be connected to a computer.

Stand-Alone Slide Scanner

Among the most common and inexpensive slide scanners we find the “stand-alone” ones, usually very compact models that preferably operate autonomously, without requiring connection to a computer.

Stand-alone slide scanner this type of slide scanner always has a small integrated display with a keypad for viewing the scan preview and for making some “on board” corrections. Of course the scans made and retouched must also be saved, for this reason the “stand-alone” slide scanners are equipped with an internal memory or, more often, with an SD or MicroSD card slot.

Peripheral Slide Scanner

On the contrary, often the best quality slide scanners need the USB connection to a computer to function. This is because these are usually larger devices, capable of automatically loading even a large number of slides.

Peripheral slide scanner most cases only a few tweaks are available “on board”, while a rather sophisticated photographic editing software allows us to complete the work on the computer. Even saving the scans, therefore, takes place on the computer’s hard drive.