Imagine my joy last night when during a major cleaning of my office I discovered slides taken from the late 70’s. I had found a couple boxes a year or two ago, but this was a major discovery…at least in my little world.
So tell me, what is the best way to properly feed and care for 25+year old slides?
I took some down to Walgreens and they are printing 4x6 images and also saving to CD.
Does anyone have any tips at all for preserving these?
ed
Keep them in a cool, dry, dark place, preferably somewhere with a relatively stable temperature too.
I have some 50+ year old 35-mm Kodachrome slides that have been stored this way in Keystone brand plastic carousels for at lease 45-years, and there has been nearly zero color shift in the dyes. The few Anscochrome slides I have that are just about as old have nearly lost their entire image due to fading.
As I’ve said for decades, “Kodachrome Ueber Alles!”
2)Send me a copy of the book[;)]
Scan, scan, scan. Get them over to digital any way possible. You can get a decent flatbed that’s slide capable for less than $100 (more if you like - you usually get what you pay for).
Then store them as directed.
You could project them onto a good wall or projection screen with a image as good as you can get it, shoot it with a digital camera that way. I have NO idea how the resulting image will come out, this is just another avenue that I invented.
Get the slides onto CD, Computer hard drive or other media. And replicate this several times. Hard drives can and will fail.
Thanks for all the suggestions.
Like I said, beta testing on printing and CD storage is underway for the first 66 slides. I will report back when I get them back.
It was certainly a nice surprize.
ed
Here’s an example of a scanned slide obtained from my scanner…
WOW!
AWESOME.
How do you drop in photos in your threads? Never quite figured it out.
ed
First, you’ve got to find a website to upload them to. For my train shots, I submitted a couple to rrpicturearchives.net, who accepted me as a member, but you can also get free membership at sites like flickr.com or snapfish.com without waiting for a person to OK it. Once you have them uploaded to a website, you can then refer to them in your posts. For the picture above, I copied the address of that picture on rrpicturearchives (you right-click on the picture, select Properties, highlight the address that is shown in the pop-up window, and hit Control-C) and pasted it into my post (Control-V) like this, adding the img tags- {img}http://blhanel.rrpicturearchives.net/pictures/17217/MILW0775.jpg{/img}, except you use the square brackets instead of the curly ones. When you submit the post, VOILA, the picture appears!
More than a few folks did NOT read what you had posted [:P] - no need to scan them if Walgreens is affordable. Curious on your costs for the 66 prints [normally .19 each from Walgreens when ordered in groups of 50 or more] and the CD. Please report those costs when your batch arrives.
Once on CD - you can organize them into folders on a computer. Flash drives are so cheap now I am planning on taking a few of my albums to a viewing party - on the flash drive.
BTW - not all media CD’s are equal. There are archival gold CD’s optomized for storing photos - they run about a dollar each if you shop the bigger computer discount suppliers. Clone whatever you get created by Walgreens or another conversion source.
All I want for Christmas is a second fell swoop.
ED,
lot of confusion there, but basically what you want to do is find a hosting service (“image shack” or “photobucket” work fine) upload your image to their site,and then use the “link to” address they provide for the picture and wrap the proper tags around the picture file name as follows:
In the following example the picture file name is:
http://img468.imageshack.us/img468/3663/sfsv1.jpg
So, we add the tags before and after the name :
as shown.(may need to click on the above, if the forum has shrunk the image)
and you end up with:
I have returned with the slides, photos, and the burned CD.
First the cost…$41 covered really nicely (I will further discuss this) printed 4" x 6" shots plus the scanned images on the CD. I am ok with that cost.
Second…the quality. The printing quality of the photos is excellent, except…I had a group which I believe are too dark. Actually it is very difficult to explain, but they dont look right. The shots are of NKP765 in Argos, Indiana back in 1980 and it appears they are “greener” than on the slide. I am going back to Walgreen to see if that is normal. I can tell I used a telephoto lens and might have underexposed the exposures. To me the view on the little slide view I used is “brighter” than the photo prints.
Now, the shots were taken in summer with a high sun, probably close to noon. I realize that is not the best time for lighting. Any experience out there with what one can expect on slides to photos?
There are a few shots which literally took my breath away. In these, the light was low…either late in the day or autumn sun (such as now). I now realize how important low sunlight is for dramatic lighting…didnt realize it in 1979, cant change that fact.
When I say the shots “took my breath away”, I am not patting myself on the back. I am very realistic about my photographic abilities. I am average to slightly above average. I know how to compose a shot, use objects to enhance the image, shutter speed, F stops, etc. There are a few shots which I am very proud of and hence the comment.
Realize this…I know I took these, but dont remember taking them. So, I really dont have any emotional ownership in them…sort of like stumbling into a warm cherry pie in the kitchen when you are taking the dog out…where did this come from?
Anyway, I will take the prints and slides back to Walgreens and ask what they think…correctible printing or "the way it is.
ED, glad to hear that you are getting the images preserved, they sound exciting,can’t wait to see your favored picks.
As for posting them, glad you have help with that too. but you know, there is no substitute for experience. Try one, and see if it works, I don’t think anyone here got it right the first time, so if you goof, one of us can look and see what went wrong, and help you correct it.
It’s one of those things where after you get the first one right, it all becomes very simple
good luck.
Back from Walgreens.
I used the editing/printing machine to reprint a few of the shots. The editing helped, but I think it is something I can do on my own computer. The technician agreed the photos had too much color, but indicated they really cant do custom work. Fair enough.
Keep you informed.
ed
Just as an afterthought, you might want to give more consideration to setting up a free account at photobucket, where you can upload as many pix as you want, and then organize them into automatic slideshows, which would be easier for you than doing the individual tags for each image, plus it would be easier on the users here who still use dialup
