There’s something almost sacred about mounted slides. Hold one up to the light and the world inside reveals itself with astonishing clarity — colours that glow, shadows that stay clean, and a quiet depth that feels closer to memory like a well known scent.
Especially with historic emulsions like Kodachrome. Kodachrome was so beloved they literally made a movie about it — "Kodachrome" (2017), with Ed Harris, Jason Sudeikis, and Elizabeth Olsen — and honestly, if you’ve ever seen a Kodachrome slide on a good projector, you know it deserved all the drama. But Kodachrome wasn't the only big player on the block, Kodak Ektachrome played along too and even had a revival as Kodak Ektachrome E100 in 2018, mainly thanks to the motion picture industry. Other noteworthy emulsions that still catch film photographers eyes these days are films like Fujifilms Velvia 50 & 100 and Provia 100 (which you can still buy, if you're lucky).
For decades, slide film wasn’t just an artistic choice; it was how people preserved their lives. Millions of family holidays, school plays, road trips, weddings, everyday stories and every kind of professional photography was recorded on tiny frames of reversal film. Today, those images sit in boxes and carousels all over the world, waiting to be seen properly again.
And this is exactly why camera scanning is the best way to scan your film.
Flatbed scanners can do the job (extremely slow), but slides quickly reveal their limits. Sharpness falls apart at the edges, colours shift, dense shadows get muddy, and the overall look feels softer than what you remember from projection nights. Slide film is inherently sharp and fine-grained — and flatbeds rarely do it justice.
Camera scanning, on the other hand, brings that clarity back.
A good macro lens can focus precisely on the film surface, capturing every detail and every subtle transition in colour. Shooting in RAW means you keep all the information the slide has to offer, and modern sensors handle the density range of transparency film beautifully. The result is a digital file that finally feels like your slide again — crisp, vibrant, and alive.
This is exactly why we designed the VALOI Slide Adapter for mounted slides up to 4mm thick. So whether you're using the easy35, easy120, or VALOI 360 each system has a slide adapter, making it possible to digitise slides with the same high precision you’re used to for negatives. Just push one slide in — the next one moves the previous one out. No fiddling, no fingerprints, no frustration. Whether it's a handful of favourites or a thousand-slide family archive, the workflow stays smooth. And guess what? If you come from the analog days of slide film, you probably already know how to scan it, since you’ve most likely copied your slides before using repro techniques.
Our easy35, easy120 and the CineStill CS Lite also feature adjustable light temperature, which is crucial for slides. Transparency film is incredibly sensitive to colour shifts, and the right illumination keeps whites neutral, tones accurate, and the beloved “slide look” fully intact.
And here’s something many people don’t realise:
Properly stored slides can last 70 to 100+ years with surprisingly little fading. Kodachrome, in particular, is famously stable — part of why those colours still hit so hard decades later. But even long-lasting film deserves a digital backup. Scanning keeps your archive safe from humidity, decay, accidental damage, and the slow but inevitable march of time. Archivists consider digitisation not just useful, but good preservation practice. Even the infamous Magnum agency uses a VALOI 360 for camera scanning.
How much slide film was shot worldwide?
It’s hard to know exactly, but Kodak alone sold hundreds of millions of rolls during the peak decades. Slides were the global standard for recording life. That’s a lot of memories still sitting in closets and basements, waiting to be rediscovered.
Camera scanning gives these images the treatment they deserve.
It honours the sharpness, respects the grain, preserves the colour, and restores the brightness slide photographers remember from projection nights. It’s not just about digitising — it’s about bringing something back to life.
If you want your slides to look the way they were meant to, camera scanning is the clearest path. And with a setup built for purpose — the VALOI Slide Adapter together with the easy35, easy120, or 360 — the process becomes fast, satisfying, and genuinely fun.
Your slides have stories in them. Let’s bring them into the light again.
