What to Do With Old Slides: 20 Ideas to Keep, Upcycle or Pass Them On

Somewhere in many Hong Kong homes there is a shoebox of 35mm slides: a parent's trip to Japan in the seventies, a wedding banquet, a beach day at Repulse Bay, all in little plastic or card frames that nobody has held up to the light for years. Without a projector they are hard to look at, and in a small flat they take up space. Before you decide what to do with them, here are 20 ideas, from keeping and sharing them to turning them into something new or letting them go responsibly.

Most of the ideas below involve cutting, gluing, selling or giving slides away. Once a slide leaves your hands or goes under the scissors, the picture on it is gone. So whatever you plan, save a digital copy of the images you care about first. Then the physical slides become free to use however you like.

Scanning turns each slide into a file you can open on a phone, a laptop or a TV. You can do it at home with a flatbed scanner that has a transparency lid or a small film scanner, but feeding hundreds of slides one by one takes many evenings. Capture HK scans slides from HK$6 each and delivers high-resolution JPGs with dust and colour correction, so faded or speckled images come back cleaner than the originals look today.

Load the scans onto a USB, plug it into the TV and run them as a slideshow after a festive dinner. Older relatives usually start telling the stories behind each picture within minutes, which is half the fun.

If siblings and cousins now live in Toronto, London or Sydney, a shared Google Photos album lets everyone see the same pictures and add names and dates in the comments.

A digital photo frame on a shelf shows dozens of old slides in turn, without taking any more space than a single framed print.

Choose the best fifty or so scans, arrange them by decade or by trip, and order a photo book. It gives grandparents something to flip through without a screen.

Slides often show relatives at ages nobody else has pictures of. Crop faces from the scans and lay them out generation by generation, on paper or in a free family-tree app.

Street signs, shop fronts, cars and clothing in the background can help date a picture or pin down where a family lived. Compare them with old maps or photos of the same district to fill in gaps.

Pick a slide at random and write what you remember about that day, or ask a parent to tell the story while you record it on your phone. Over time this becomes a memoir in short pieces.

Slides are meant to be seen with light behind them. A shallow box with an LED panel and a sheet of frosted acrylic turns a row of slides into a glowing wall piece.

String slides together with small jump rings or clear thread and hang them in a window. When the afternoon sun comes through, the colours show on the wall.

Join slides edge to edge with small binder clips or wire to wrap a simple lamp frame. Use an LED bulb, which stays cool, so the film is not heated.

A single slide in a metal bezel makes a pendant or keyring. Small frames with a meaningful scene, a grandparent's house or a first car, make good gifts for family members.

Lay slides in a grid under a glass desk top or inside clear resin coasters. They stay flat and visible and are protected from spills.

Print a favourite scan on card stock at a photo printing shop or a kiosk and write your message on the back. A picture of the recipient as a child is hard to beat.

Many students have never seen a slide. A handful of them, a loupe and a torch make a simple lesson on how film photography worked, and the pictures themselves can start a conversation about how Hong Kong has changed.

Seal a few slides with a letter and a USB of the scans in an air-tight box with silica gel, and agree on a year to open it together.

Sort the slides by person and hand each relative the ones they appear in, perhaps with a USB copy of the full set so nobody misses out.

Some collectors buy old slides, especially clear shots of street scenes, transport, events or well-known places. Listing them in batches on a local marketplace such as Carousell is the easiest route. Ordinary family pictures usually sell for very little, so do this to find them a home rather than to make money.

If your slides show old Hong Kong streets, villages, harbour views or public events, a local history society, a university library or a heritage organisation may be interested. Contact them first and ask what they accept before sending anything.

If you have decided to part with slides after scanning, separate the mounts from the film. Plastic and card mounts may be accepted by community recycling points such as GREEN@COMMUNITY stations; check what they take before you drop anything off. The film itself is usually not recyclable, so ask your local collection point how they want it handled.

Hong Kong's humidity is hard on slides. Mould grows across the film surface in damp months and can eat into the image permanently. Keep them in a dry cabinet or an air-tight box with silica gel that you replace regularly, away from outside walls and windows that get wet in typhoon season. Archival slide pages or the original plastic boxes are better than loose piles in a drawer.

Whatever you choose from this list, a digital copy means the pictures outlive the slides. Capture HK scans slides and negatives in Central and Lai Chi Kok, returns your originals, and delivers the files on USB or to Google Photos. See prices and details on our slides and negatives page, or get a free quote for your box.