What is the best slide projector?
Slide projectors have been around for well over a century, providing the opportunity to take images and display them on a bigger screen for clearer viewing.
Photography and film technology have advanced exponentially since they were invented, and nearly all of our pictures and videos today are digitized and captured with smartphones. But there are a lot of slides, negatives and 35-millimeter film stored in basements and attics that can be meaningful to look at and even digitize into a permanent format for future use.
For its high-quality resolution and transportability, the Rybozen LED Illuminated 35 mm Slide Viewer is the best.
What to know before you buy a slide projector
What type of slides do you have?
There are many types of 35 mm slides. Most have a mount size of 2 by 2 inches, but they have different sizes of film transparency. Knowing the kind you have leads to the best projector for you.
- Standard 35 mm slides are 2 by 2 inches and have a transparency film size of 24 by 36 millimeters.
- Half frame 35 mm slides are 2 by 2 inches but have a transparency film size of 18 by 24 millimeters, nearly half of the standard size. It looks much smaller than a standard slide but is easily displayed.
- 126 slides are 2 by 2 inches with a square transparency of 28 x 28 millimeters.
- 127 slides are 2 by 2 inches with a square transparency of 40 x 40 millimeters and fills up the mount more completely than a 126 slide.
- 127 super slides are uncommon, but the transparency is the full 2 x 2 inches of the slide with just the slightest border.
- There also are 110 slides that have a tiny 13 by 17 millimeter transparency. They come in both 2 by 2 and 1 by 1 inch mount sizes.
What can be done with 35 mm films?
Some slide projectors have a built-in scanner that digitizes 35 mm film. The film negatives are fed into the scanner a few frames at a time. The scanner saves the scanned images to a file or computer.