My grandfather, Samuel J. Roush, loved photography.  It was not at all unusual for him to be carrying his 35mm camera and a generous supply of film and accessories.  He spent hours sorting and organizing the 35mm slides developed from those shots.  And the family spent hours gathered in the family room, watching carousel after carousel of slides projected onto a portable movie screen from a slide projector that smelled like heat and burning dust.

After my grandmother passed away in 2013, the collection of slides came to me.  I had no idea what I would do with them.  I just knew I wanted them to be kept somewhere.

A few months later, I found the ION Film2SD.  I purchased a used one online, after doing some research on the price for having a commercial service transfer 35mm slides to digital format.

I am more than pleased with the results from the device.  I am also very pleased with my decision to do the transfers myself.  Besides saving a lot of money, I get the joy of going through each slide myself, handling them, seeing each image as it appears.  I don’t know when the last time some of these slides saw the light of day.

The first carousel starts with pictures from 1966.  As I complete the transfers, I will post full carousels for anyone to see.  I will also try to type in the descriptions for the slides (usually just a few words) that my grandmother hand-wrote for each carousel.  Right now, I’m using Picasa Web Albums to store the images.  If space becomes an issue later on, I may have to move them somewhere else.

I hope you enjoy them.

** Update – On a recent thrift store trip, I found a Kodak Carousel 800 slide projector.  It came in the original carrying case, with an extra bulb.  The price tag on it was $39.99, but it was half price that day.  I haven’t completely checked it over to see if the slide advance works.  If it doesn’t, I’ll have to spend about $15 in parts to get it working again.  Seeing the slides on my computer screen is very cool.  But, there is something buried deep in my memories that will greatly enjoy seeing some of these slides from a real projector again. **