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Slide preservation, image sharing #187093 06/21/02 04:28 PM
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mombo Offline OP
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Starting a new thread for my questions so as not to lose this in another.

I have quite a number of old slides taken by an uncle and my Dad. The images contained on some of these are priceless as they captured me in my youth. Well that's just one example, lol! Many of them are of family members and also of special places and events.

Question #1 - What is the best storage method to preserve them? At present I have them in their original boxes in larger boxes in a bedroom closet?

Question #2 - How to share without dragging out the projector, screen, inviting folks over to the house at appointed times? Seems the answer's got to be to use the WWW. So what do I do? Do I take a bunch to a lab and ask them to put them on a disc? How many can fit? How much does this cost? Once done can I get duplicate copies of the discs? What is the approved storage method for discs? Clean, dry area?

A number of years ago I took a couple slides to a lab and had them make prints, 5x7's I believe. They came out pretty bad while the original slides were great. I believe they made a negative first.

Another time I took a couple to the same place and these turned out better and they made 8x10's. I don't think they made a negative for these, can't remember exactly how they did it.

Re: Slide preservation, image sharing #187094 06/21/02 05:36 PM
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PRINTS FROM SLIDES: Making prints from slides can be done in one of two ways. First is a direct print "Type C" (used to be called that anyway) which uses a paper that makes positive negatives directly from the slides. The other is to make an 'internegative' then make prints from the internegative. An Internegative might be the same size as the slide (35mm) or made larger - such as a 4x5". The resulting negative is used to make a regular color print. Generally this internegative and subsequent print resulted in a better quality image.

Slides, like prints are subject to color change over time. Some kinds of print paper will hold their colors much longer. I'm years away from doing this stuff, but the kind of Type C print that had long-lasting color was Cybachrome.

PRESERVING SLIDES: Preserving color slides from fading or color-shifting used to mean having a color separation made of the slide. Three separate black and white 'negatives' - one each for Yellow, Black, Cyan and Magenta. You could always create a new color image from these four color separations.

Now with the advent of digital images, you no longer need to worry about color fading or shifting IF you preserve copies of the slides or printings as digital images.

If you are taking digital images, save them to your hard drive, then write them to a CDROM and store that in some safe place.

If you have slides, you can take then to a professional lab and have them 'print' them to CD. Usually they will make a high quality print and a lower resolution print on the same CD. Once you have the CD and assuming you have a CD drive capable of writing to blank CDs, you can make as many copies as you want.

You could rent a slide scanner from a professional photo place and scan your slides, again, writing them to CD. Locally, you can rent a slide-scanner for about $50 a day. Since the local place is closed on Sunday, you can pick it up on Friday evening and return it Monday morning and still pay $50.

Gary can probably tell you want a good quality slide scanner costs new.

If you have a Nikon Coolpix camera, Nikon makes an attachment that allows you to copy slides or negatives through your digital camera. That costs about $90.


Re: Slide preservation, image sharing #187095 06/21/02 10:48 PM
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Hi Mombo,

John has pretty much covered the bases for you. What used to be called Cibachrome or type C prints are now known as Ilfochrome prints but the media and the process are still the same. They're archival and are typically used by museums, etc. I have a number of my slides that were done as large prints of this type. There are two downsides to them. One, they're a little more expensive, but given that they'll last 100+ years, no big deal. The serious down side is that they're relatively fragile prints. They scratch easily and fingerprints when they're handled are the kiss of death to their soft surface. They should always be handled wearing cotton gloves, which is great if they're going to be framed and behind glass, but not something that you can share around the coffee table after dinner.

Scanning slides and transferring them to a CD is probably the best alternative. The high end slide scanners out there today do a superb job and yield scans large enough to make 12x18 inch prints at 300 dpi (the print standard resolution) with data to throw away. There are software routines that take care of scratches, dust, and grain imperfections of slides. You can also color correct in software with good results on old Kodachrome slides, for instance. I've seen some that were badly faded after 30 or so years of storage yield quite vibrant scans and completely acceptable prints. Mastering a slide scanner may take more than a weekend though. Terry Forrest bought my Minolta Dimage Scan Speed when I replaced it with a new Nikon Coolscan 4000 ED scanner about 6 months ago. She could probably give you a better estimate on how long it took her to get comfortable with the scanner after she got it. The Nikon I use has all of the features that I just mentioned, but, also a rather hefty price tag of ~$1700. Autofeed capabilities to scan 50 slides unattended adds about another $400 to the price. All of the images that I've posted on these forum were done using the Nikon scanner I now have. Very good scanners are made by a number of companies and include Canon, Minolta, and Polaroid to name a couple. The "little brothers" to the one that I have trade off digital resolution (dpi or dots per inch) and advanced features for price. Minolta's scanners in the $500 range (I'm shooting from the hip as I haven't checked theh prices in a catalog lately) give excellent results but won't let you do some of the manipulations that might be necessary for old slides. It would probably be worth checking to see what a local photo lab would charge you to scan a group of slides at a lower resolution to share on the net and something big enough to give you an 8x10 print if you wanted at 300 dpi (~14 Megabytes or so). Another alternative would be to contact someone heavily into photography either as a very serious amatuer or a professional who scans slides. A local camera club would be a good place to contact. They might be willing to do it for you less expensively than a professional operation, but check the results you're getting from either first to make certain that they're acceptable... You don't want Aunt Millie in the pic with green hair or something like that.

Storing old slides isn't much of a problem. I would get them out of the boxes or plastic trays they're in and transfer them to archival slide sleeves and then archival binders. I buy my slide sleves/binders from Iconusa. Here's the URL:


http://www.iconusa.com/

You want to be certain to keep them away from anything that contains PVC plastic, which out gasses vinyl chloride which deteriorates slides with time. Once they're sleeved and in archival binders, store them in a cool, dry place and you're fine.

I hope that this helps some, Mombo. If not, ask away and I'll do all I can to help you out or John, Paul, or someone else will.

Gary

Re: Slide preservation, image sharing #187096 06/22/02 02:00 PM
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http://www.iconusa.com/online/Format%2020CD.htm
Thanks for the link Gary, I think I`ll have to get me some of these.

Re: Slide preservation, image sharing #187097 06/23/02 11:46 PM
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mombo Offline OP
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Thanks John and Gary. Sounds like a "winter project"!

Re: Slide preservation, image sharing #187098 06/25/02 12:02 AM
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I had the same problem with old slides- being a part of the forums has prompted me to get a tad better organized. All my old slides were stored in a cardboard box- I since have bought containers, had some put on CD, and some to prints. I've always been satisfied with the slide to print thing. Here's some circa 1970 slides that layed around for a long time. Thailand, on leave from RVN










Bud
Re: Slide preservation, image sharing #187099 06/25/02 12:47 AM
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One of those rickshaws looks just like my first rickshaw when I was just 12

Re: Slide preservation, image sharing #187100 06/25/02 12:52 AM
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Mombo, I wish I could restrict my slide scanning to just being a winter project! That would be nice!!!

Gary

Re: Slide preservation, image sharing #187101 06/25/02 12:56 AM
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Larry Offline
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Great Thailand pictures Bud. My brother was stationed in Thailand during the war, and married a girl there. They also adopted two boys and brought them back to the states.

Last year, I was going through the box of "family photos" and found some prints that he had sent to my parents while he was over there. He lives in New Mexico now, but was here for my mother's 80th birthday. I gave the pictures back to him. I thought he was going to cry when he saw them. I could tell that they really meant a lot to him. And they were really good pictures to boot!

Re: Slide preservation, image sharing #187102 06/26/02 12:39 AM
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Bud Schrader Offline
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Thanks, Larry- I hadn't looked at these for years, and my 14 year old daughter had never seen them. They do have a way of stirring memories. I actually "drove' one of those rickshaw deals, Mark, and didn't do real well with it. It may have been a combination of things working against me at that time.
Bud


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Re: Slide preservation, image sharing #187103 06/26/02 01:17 AM
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Mombo, I sent you a separate e-mail response re scanners, scanning your own, etc., as I felt it would be too long to put in here.



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Terry (Only my mother, brothers & sisters call me Teresa) Forrest


Terry (Only my mother, brothers & sisters call me Teresa) Forrest

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