Check them now and again, Andie. The last "secret" project my father did back in the family room was transferring those same types of slides onto VCR tapes, with music and narratives. He told me he was going to do it, but I didn't know he had. The reason was that slide film is a gelatin base and he said that if exposed to humidity, they'll eventually get mold on them and that can't be repaired. Years later, to entertain my mother, I went in to his VCR stash and found some labeled family pictures. I thought they were the old movies he'd transposed, but they weren't. It was the slide shows. Four VCR tapes worth. I nearly broke down, as he never told us, even on his deathbed he'd finished it and he left them there for us to find down the road. It was as if he came back from the other side and ws sitting in the room with us as we watched them. I got to the third tape and had to stop to recuperate. It was so emotional. I haven't seen it yet, and now need to go through that whole library of tapes to find it again. There were some slides he transferred already with their quality highly compromised from mold. He got to them just in the nick of time. I suppose he knew if he didn't do it, they'd never get done. Now, with VCR media about antiquated, I need to get my son to transfer them over to DVDs so I can send a set to all my family. If one wants to keep family heirloom pictures into the future, the best way to do it is to make sure they are spread around in the form of copies all across a family. All's it takes is one generation who don't care, and they are lost to the descendants forever.

You need a scanner which can scan slides and negatives. Most of the ones which are called photo scanners will work, I used the Epson Perfection 1660 Photo to do mine. It cost around $80 when I bought it. A regular scanner will not work. To scan slides and negatives they have to be backlit. For editing the pictures after scanning something like adobe photoshop elements or corel paint shop pro is nice, but you may have other photo editing software on your computer that will work. If you have a dvd writer on your computer you should have everything else you need. There was a thread about this not long ago. You should find it if you do a search. Dont expect to finish the project in a hurry because it will take some time.

I don't know where exactly you live, but most cities of any size have small companies that convert tapes and movies to DVDs all the time, and some of them can do some cleanup of the image so that it looks better on the DVD. You can find them by looking in the Yellow Pages of the phone book, or online if you want to send it off. Look under headings like "videotape" or "videotape conversion" or "audiovisual services" and the like. However, you may have a special problem with that visual noise, and it may or may not be able to be removed. I hate to tell you this, but, if that sound track is the source of the image degradation, it may have permanently corrupted the visual recording, and it may not be able to be restored to a clear picture. Two last thoughts... First, sometimes the type of lines you describe are actually just a tape tracking error, and can be made to disappear by adjusting the tracking control on the VCR. Have you tried that? Second, do you have access to the old film? It might be better to start with that and have it converted directly to DVD.

Yes, you can use a digital camera to convert slides to digital files. It depends on what accessories your camera manufacturer offers. A few years ago when Nikon was selling their 900 series, they also offered a slide conversion kit. The camera mounted to the kit and the kit had a backlight to illuminate the slides. The slides would be saved to whatever format the camera supported, and at camera supported resolution. I have a cousin who at one time did commerical photography for advertisments. He had shots from around the world at exotic locations - including models. He convertered about 3000 slides using his Nikon. So, it depends on what accessories are offered. A fast way to transfer the photos to disk or other storage media is to insert a large capacity memory card into the camera, say 1 GB or more and shoot away. When the card is full, pull the card and place into a card reader and copy the photos to the storage media of your choice. While you at the task, it is advisable to check you work. Review the slides before copying to permanent media to see if adjustments in exposure, etc. are needed. The copy process will faithfully copy dirt and scratches as well. If you have MicroSoft Office 2000 or other, you may have a viewer hidden away. To find this viewer, got to Programs> Microsoft Office Tools > MicroSoft Photo Editor. It's not a full featured editor, but what it does, it does well, and works great for reviewing. A caveat: While the camera memory card is in the reader, do not perform any operation that writes back to the camera card other than simple deletion. Each camera manufacturer has their own propertiary formatting scheme, and that can be fouled if you perform a "write" to the card with anything else except the camera. Storage Media: You should give some thought to the choice of final storage media. For example, 10 years later, will equipemnt be available to read the media? How permanent is the media? Maybe it would be wise to set up a calendar to remind yo to copy the media every 5 years or so. I do not advise depending on thumb drives, although these have improved greatly over the past 5 years. Thunb drives are great for temporary storage, but these do have a limited life. Each junction can withstand about 10,000 rewrites before these fail. Memroy cards these days employ 'leveling' schemes to level out the wear over the entire card, not just the front end of the card. This scheme has improved life by a goodly factor, but someday, a jucntion will eventually fail and that file will be damaged. If the damage occurs in the directory, the entire card may be lost. I am not privy to the internals of today's cards, but in the beginning, these cards had an internal, keep-alive battery that was good for about 10 years. I have been tussling with this storage problem and do not have a satisfactory solution for long term storage of sensitive documents. The best that I have at the moment is external hard drives and CDs and DVDs. Nothing yet matches the old time technology of well processed photos. For example, I have several dagurreotypes (tin types) from which I have made acceptable copies. These images were over 150 years old. I also have photos that are over 100 years old that have proven useful in my genealogical research. So far, digital storage can not match this record.