Preserving Memories with the Kodak Film ‘N Slide

After I graduated from high school, I worked at a drug store called Long’s Drugs (now called CVS) where I mostly worked in the photo department developing film and printing pictures for customers. It was one of the coolest jobs. My biggest fail was not taking advantage of employee privileges and discounts at the time to scan all my film negatives and saving them to CDs before leaving there. Thankfully, my husband made my Christmas dreams come true by gifting me the Kodak Film ‘N Slide so I can do that in the comfort of my home!

I’m sure there’s many of us in the same boat: hundreds of memories preserved in time as film negatives and printed photos with no way to do anything with them in a digital age. That’s what’s so amazing about the Kodak Film ‘N Slide. As our families are able to unearth once forgotten film negatives, I’m able to scan at high resolutions to SD cards and modify the photos using software and apps as I see fit. Even photos I took in the early years of my budding photographer goals can now be resurrected and formatted for current trends and stylizing.

How It Works

The Kodak Film ‘N Slide scanner draws power using a USB-C cord and scans film negatives on slide adapters to an SD card. I use the 135MM (more commonly known as 35MM) film adapter to easily glide my negatives into the scanner by hand. The scanner also comes with 50MM, 126MM, and 110MM adapters. Once the photo is perfectly centered in the viewing screen, I push the capture button and the photo is saved to the SD card.

Editing Solutions

So you’ve scanned your film negatives, but now what? I love to use Photoshop and Lightroom to edit my scanned photos. A lot of the pictures from when I was a tiny tot weren’t taken with the best lighting, and it’s obvious that the film wasn’t loaded or developed correctly on most of them.

A lot of those edits have proven to be better edited in Photoshop. Lightroom is a great app to use with color graded after the fact. Both softwares have free versions that have the basics you’ll need to get the most out of your scanned photos, including options for mobile. A Color Story is great app available for both Apple and Android that can help you apply really aesthetically please tones to your photos.

Is It Worth the Investment?

I’ll admit that one of the reasons I had been putting off purchasing the Kodak Film ‘N Slide was the sticker shock. This scanner is a bit of an investment coming in at $179.99.

But is it worth it? Yes, but only if you’re really going to use it.

I’m such a sentimental sap when it comes to photos. As someone who has a terrible memory, scrapbooking my life has been the best way for me to not only remember precious moments but also acts as a way to preserve family history that I can pass along to my sons. So many family photos have gotten lost along the way over the years. Somehow, the negatives have managed to survive. Now I’m able to preserve hundreds of lost memories to remember and pass on.

Not only that, but it’s doing something that all of the other supposed “tricks” and “hacks” and “budget scanners” can’t do: provide high resolution scans of the negatives to make editing, sharing and printing that much better. Suddenly, these aren’t photos of yesteryear — these are current formatted files for today. If you’re doing a similar volume of scanning, this is absolutely more economical than sending out all of your memories and hoping that nothing happens to your box in transit or post-arrival.

I can’t wait to put together digital scrapbooks of mine and Mike’s childhood that was can one day look back on with our kids (and maybe even grandkids one day, if we’re lucky)! In the meantime, I’m going to enjoying scanning my way down memory lane and forcing our family to search every nook and cranny for negatives in their homes. This is officially my new personality trait and my new favorite pastime. Be on the lookout on my Instagram for my uploaded scans and my Kodak Film ‘N Slide reel!