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scanning and cleaning very old slides
My father recently gave me several LARGE boxes filled with slides taken from his travels all over the globe (literally) while in the Air Force in the 1960s. Many of them have very interesting subjects, but they have been stored for a very long time, and some have a lot of dust and other stuff from years of storage plus being projected in slide trays (many, many years ago). I would like to scan them (most of them anyway) but need to know about how to clean them without damaging them. Most are Kodachrome, but a few are Ektachrome, which seem to suffer from varying degrees of color fade and purple cast of colors. I may wind up having to convert the Extachrome slides to black and white in some cases. Curiously, some of the Extachrome slides from the same time period don't seem to have lost their color. I'm looking at them all on a light table with a loupe right now to avoid projecting them. Is a cleaning brush or canned air the only way to go? I'm wondering if there are any cleaning solutions that can be used, if they are the same or different for Kodachrome versus Extrachrome? Some appear to have some sort of "goo" on them, which might be old fingerprints, or some other substance. I was a tiny little rugrat when these were taken, and have no experience trying to work with slides this old and in such a potentially fragile condition. Any help much appreciated. -- Lefty |
#2
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scanning and cleaning very old slides
On 2006-04-18 22:40:04 -0400, "Ken Hart" said:
"Lefty Bigfoot" wrote in message . net... My father recently gave me several LARGE boxes filled with slides taken from his travels all over the globe (literally) while in the Air Force in the 1960s. Many of them have very interesting subjects, but they have been stored for a very long time, and some have a lot of dust and other stuff from years of storage plus being projected in slide trays (many, many years ago). I would like to scan them (most of them anyway) but need to know about how to clean them without damaging them. Most are Kodachrome, but a few are Ektachrome, which seem to suffer from varying degrees of color fade and purple cast of colors. I may wind up having to convert the Extachrome slides to black and white in some cases. Curiously, some of the Extachrome slides from the same time period don't seem to have lost their color. I'm looking at them all on a light table with a loupe right now to avoid projecting them. Is a cleaning brush or canned air the only way to go? I'm wondering if there are any cleaning solutions that can be used, if they are the same or different for Kodachrome versus Extrachrome? Some appear to have some sort of "goo" on them, which might be old fingerprints, or some other substance. I was a tiny little rugrat when these were taken, and have no experience trying to work with slides this old and in such a potentially fragile condition. Any help much appreciated. -- Lefty #1. Contact Kodak for advice. #2. Scan them before attempting any cleaning, just in case. And use a scanner that has DIGITAL ICE software and Nikon color correction. -- Michael | "He's dead, Jim." |
#3
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scanning and cleaning very old slides
In article ,
"Ken Hart" writes: "Lefty Bigfoot" wrote in message . net... My father recently gave me several LARGE boxes filled with slides taken from his travels all over the globe (literally) while in the Air Force in the 1960s. Many of them have very interesting subjects, but they have been stored for a very long time, and some have a lot of dust and other stuff from years of storage plus being projected in slide trays (many, many years ago). I would like to scan them (most of them anyway) but need to know about how to clean them without damaging them. Most are Kodachrome, but a few are Ektachrome, which seem to suffer from varying degrees of color fade and purple cast of colors. #1. Contact Kodak for advice. #2. Scan them before attempting any cleaning, just in case. Good advice, and if you do #1, I'd certainly take that advice above anything I might say; however, my advice, based on what I've read and doing much the same with old family negatives, is: 1) To remove goo, wash the slides with a dishwashing detergent solution or (better) Kodak Photo Flo (or a similar product from another manufacturer). Photo Flo is the last step in traditional B&W film processing, so you can find it wherever they sell darkroom supplies. 2) If your slides are scratched, look for a scratch remover. This is a liquid that you "paint" over the scratch. It fills in the scratch, making it less visible when making a print or scan. It works wonders if the scratch is on the non-emulsion side of a negative (or presumably a slide). I've never used it on emulsion-side scratches, and I imagine it wouldn't work well on those. 3) A blower brush works well to remove dust that's not gotten stuck on or embedded in the slide or negative. I use one with a squeeze bulb, and I blow a bit of air to dislodge the loosest dust, then brush away anything that remains. Be very gentle removing dust from the emulsion side, though. I've heard of people using compressed air, but I've also seen advice not to use it, since it can blow with enough force to damage the slide/negative. Washing (as in #1) may also help, but I'm not sure if it would do harm or good if the dust has worked its way into the emulsion. 4) Buy a scanner with an infrared channel. When used with appropriate software (which typically comes with the scanner), this feature lets the software digitally correct for dust and scratches. This combination is typically advertised as "digital ICE," although this is a trademarked term, and some software (such as VueScan, http://www.hamrick.com) can use the IR channel but isn't technically digital ICE. Note that digitally removing the defects is never as good as removing or correcting them before scanning, if possible. Note also that the IR channel works well with color negatives (including the new C-41 B&W films) and most slides, less well with Kodachrome slides, and not at all with conventional B&W film. 5) Use scanner software that can correct for fading. VueScan has this feature, although I've never attempted to use it on faded slides, so I don't know how well it works with slides. It seemed to help with some of my older negatives, though. 6) Practice using Photoshop, the GIMP, or other image editing software to correct defects. Tutorials on the Web show you how to do this. (I don't happen to have any URLs handy, though; try a Web search on "Photoshop photo touch-up" or something similar.) You can use tools to copy over dust specks and scratches with nearby undamaged parts of an image to do a better job of removing these defects than the IR channel can achieve, but at far greater time investment. 7) Ideally, store images as TIFFs with as great a color depth as possible and using a lossless compression scheme. This will let you edit the images in the future, convert them to future formats, etc., without losing any quality. Some scanner software lets you save the raw scan data, including the IR channel data. Unfortunately, lossless TIFFs and raw scans are pretty big. JPEGs are smaller, but repeatedly loading and saving JPEGs will result in image degradation, which could cause problems if you want to edit the images in the future (say, to use better dust-removal algorithms or even just to crop an image to make a print) or if future technologies make it desirable to convert the images to some new file format. You'll have to check the file sizes, compare to your storage media's capacity, and decide for yourself how much quality and future editing capability to give up in the interest of conserving your media. 8) Be prepared to spend a lot of time on this project. With my Minolta DiMAGE Scan Elite 5400, each 2700-dpi scan takes about 2-4 minutes, including time to load the carrier, crop the image, etc. Higher resolution scans take more time, lower resolution scans take less time. Add time to touch up the more important images, burn CD-Rs, etc. Other scanners can be faster or slower, and if speed is important, you should look for features like the ability to batch scan as many slides as possible at once. (My Minolta can do 4 slides at once.) Of course, you can spread this out over months or years. 9) Make backups. Digital media offer little or no longevity advantage over slides, and may actually be worse. Be prepared to copy your CD-Rs (or whatever media you use) every 5 years or so. If images are important to you, I recommend you make two or three copies to begin with. -- Rod Smith, http://www.rodsbooks.com Author of books on Linux, FreeBSD, and networking |
#4
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scanning and cleaning very old slides
Lefty,
You are so smart in preserving your dads pictures so that future generations can enjoy them. I would use the upmost care in the cleaning process. Never use any water based cleaning liquid which would swell the paper mounts. Dust that is not embedded in the emulsions can be blown away with canned air. But fingerprints are a little tougher. If the acids in the fingerprint haven't eaten into the emulsion layer ( or fungus formed ) what I have used is a solvent based film cleaner solution made by EDWAL ( product code ED-AFC-4 ) on a Q-Tip. Next, scan on a scanner with Digital ICE processing software to further restore the images. You should also post your question on the newsgroup; comp.periphs.scanners Michael.... On Tue, 18 Apr 2006 19:53:46 GMT, Lefty Bigfoot wrote: My father recently gave me several LARGE boxes filled with slides taken from his travels all over the globe (literally) while in the Air Force in the 1960s. Many of them have very interesting subjects, but they have been stored for a very long time, and some have a lot of dust and other stuff from years of storage plus being projected in slide trays (many, many years ago). I would like to scan them (most of them anyway) but need to know about how to clean them without damaging them. Most are Kodachrome, but a few are Ektachrome, which seem to suffer from varying degrees of color fade and purple cast of colors. I may wind up having to convert the Extachrome slides to black and white in some cases. Curiously, some of the Extachrome slides from the same time period don't seem to have lost their color. I'm looking at them all on a light table with a loupe right now to avoid projecting them. Is a cleaning brush or canned air the only way to go? I'm wondering if there are any cleaning solutions that can be used, if they are the same or different for Kodachrome versus Extrachrome? Some appear to have some sort of "goo" on them, which might be old fingerprints, or some other substance. I was a tiny little rugrat when these were taken, and have no experience trying to work with slides this old and in such a potentially fragile condition. Any help much appreciated. |
#5
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scanning and cleaning very old slides
Michael wrote
(in article ): Lefty, You are so smart in preserving your dads pictures so that future generations can enjoy them. I would use the upmost care in the cleaning process. Never use any water based cleaning liquid which would swell the paper mounts. Dust that is not embedded in the emulsions can be blown away with canned air. But fingerprints are a little tougher. If the acids in the fingerprint haven't eaten into the emulsion layer ( or fungus formed ) what I have used is a solvent based film cleaner solution made by EDWAL ( product code ED-AFC-4 ) on a Q-Tip. Next, scan on a scanner with Digital ICE processing software to further restore the images. You should also post your question on the newsgroup; comp.periphs.scanners Michael.... Thanks to everyone that replied. I'm sorry it took me a while to respond, I've been out of town for a few days. You all made good points for me to consider before doing anything physical to the slides. Also, thanks for the pointer on the scanning group, I should have considered that earlier. -- Lefty |
#6
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scanning and cleaning very old slides
"Ken Hart" wrote in message
... "Lefty Bigfoot" wrote in message . net... My father recently gave me several LARGE boxes filled with slides taken from his travels all over the globe (literally) while in the Air Force in the 1960s. Many of them have very interesting subjects, but they have been stored for a very long time, and some have a lot of dust and other stuff from years of storage plus being projected in slide trays (many, many years ago). I would like to scan them (most of them anyway) but need to know about how to clean them without damaging them. Most are Kodachrome, but a few are Ektachrome, which seem to suffer from varying degrees of color fade and purple cast of colors. I may wind up having to convert the Extachrome slides to black and white in some cases. Curiously, some of the Extachrome slides from the same time period don't seem to have lost their color. I'm looking at them all on a light table with a loupe right now to avoid projecting them. Is a cleaning brush or canned air the only way to go? I'm wondering if there are any cleaning solutions that can be used, if they are the same or different for Kodachrome versus Extrachrome? Some appear to have some sort of "goo" on them, which might be old fingerprints, or some other substance. I was a tiny little rugrat when these were taken, and have no experience trying to work with slides this old and in such a potentially fragile condition. Any help much appreciated. -- Lefty #1. Contact Kodak for advice. No, don't contact Kodak. It's doubtful you'll be able to get useful advice from them. You'll get better advice right here. #2. Scan them before attempting any cleaning, just in case. Sound advice, but not likely necessary. Use a cleaner made for cleaning photographic emulsions, like PEC-12 Archival Photographic Emulsion Cleaner to remove the goo you speak of. I've been using it for years on my slides without any problem. Derek |
#7
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scanning and cleaning very old slides
On 2006-04-18 23:18:18 -0400, Michael Weinstein
said: On 2006-04-18 22:40:04 -0400, "Ken Hart" said: "Lefty Bigfoot" wrote in message . net... My father recently gave me several LARGE boxes filled with slides taken from his travels all over the globe (literally) while in the Air Force in the 1960s. Many of them have very interesting subjects, but they have been stored for a very long time, and some have a lot of dust and other stuff from years of storage plus being projected in slide trays (many, many years ago). I would like to scan them (most of them anyway) but need to know about how to clean them without damaging them. Most are Kodachrome, but a few are Ektachrome, which seem to suffer from varying degrees of color fade and purple cast of colors. I may wind up having to convert the Extachrome slides to black and white in some cases. Curiously, some of the Extachrome slides from the same time period don't seem to have lost their color. I'm looking at them all on a light table with a loupe right now to avoid projecting them. Is a cleaning brush or canned air the only way to go? I'm wondering if there are any cleaning solutions that can be used, if they are the same or different for Kodachrome versus Extrachrome? Some appear to have some sort of "goo" on them, which might be old fingerprints, or some other substance. I was a tiny little rugrat when these were taken, and have no experience trying to work with slides this old and in such a potentially fragile condition. Any help much appreciated. -- Lefty #1. Contact Kodak for advice. #2. Scan them before attempting any cleaning, just in case. And use a scanner that has DIGITAL ICE software and Nikon color correction. Digital ICE or other infared systems don't work with Kodachrome. Buy on that includes that however for the Ektachrome. The GEM and Color enhancement utilities will work but not the Dust removal. If the slides are just dusty, remove the dust carefully. I would attempt to scan before any other cleaning and see what you get. -- Jim |
#8
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scanning and cleaning very old slides
"Gregory Blank" wrote in message ... In article , Jim wrote: Digital ICE or other infared systems don't work with Kodachrome. I am going to try this.....and report back -- I understand that there is now a Digital ICE4, which has improved performance with Kodachrome slides. Some Nikon scanners feature this improved ICE4. |
#9
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scanning and cleaning very old slides
In article , Jim wrote:
Digital ICE or other infared systems don't work with Kodachrome. I am going to try this.....and report back -- George W. Bush is the President Quayle we never had. |
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