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Colour Slides - Advice Please


Happy

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When I was young - yes I can just about remember - I was quite keen on photography and took a lot of slides for a while which would have been mostly 'Broads' related, no not

that sort, we used Poloroid for that!  Anyway, the last time I saw them was when we moved 20 years ago and they were stored in a loft I created in the garage.  As far

as I know they will have been dry and kept in the dark.  I am thinking of delving into this space to find them (not an easy task) and putting them onto a DVD but am unsure

whether they will have survived enough to make this worthwhile?  Appreciate your thoughts.  Thanks

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Personally, I would like to see the polaroids! :default_coat:

I'm sure they will be fine as long as they have been inside a container and exposed to changes in atmosphere. When you get to them, before you open the boxes or whatever they are contained in, clean any dust/muck away thoroughly from the outside before opening as it's amazing how slides and negatives act as a magnet for it.

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18 minutes ago, floydraser said:

Personally, I would like to see the polaroids! :default_coat:

I'm sure they will be fine as long as they have been inside a container and exposed to changes in atmosphere. When you get to them, before you open the boxes or whatever they are contained in, clean any dust/muck away thoroughly from the outside before opening as it's amazing how slides and negatives act as a magnet for it.

:facepalm: The Polaroids faded, just like my memorary now!

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i have used many tricks to digitise slides, from projecting on a screen and taking photos, to a slide scanner, (make sure that the backlight colour is neutral, to one of those negative photographing lenses, so a standard flat screen scanner with a prism to backlight the slide, all work, for both slides and negatives, though you might have to invert the colours for negatives, auto correct can do wonders these days, I seem to recall a lot of slides lose the blue and tend towards the red when they get older, this can be corrected somewhat in post digitising settings.

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As previously said the conditions the slides were kept in will be the most important factor on whether they are still OK.

Another factor is the make of film that was used - some seem to be more stable than others.

I have Ferrania slides from the late 50s where the colour is still very good but I also have other makes taken from the 80s onwards which have fared very badly, and they have all been kept in the same place.

As has also been said, once digitised the colours can sometimes be adjusted by software.

I still have photoshop from my working days and it is surprising how well autocolour works in recovering slides.

The examples attached were taken in 1981 - scanned and adjusted three years ago - not perfect but at least viewable.923816149_581KarlHerbertWoodsPH.thumb.jpg.7a98c0a0b6d0cbd9e077f7be02ddbb96.jpg

581a Karl Herbert Woods PH.jpg

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29 minutes ago, Happy said:

:facepalm: The Polaroids faded, just like my memorary now!

Yes, Polaroids fade very quickly.

If the slides were taken on Kodachrome of Ilfrochrome and providing they have not attracted any mould they will be as good as new but if Ektachrome was used then they are likely to have faded.

Software can do wonders once you have them in digital form.  If you do have mould spots then a light wipe with alcohol (ethanol preferably or propanol) will help but do a test on an unimportant one first or it's down to a lot of work removing the spots in software.  Some scanning software does have a spot removal function but it is quite slow at working.

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I have boxes and boxes of slides, as well as a a hundred or so glass plates from the Victorian & Edwardian era that need digitizing. Some were Uncle Albert's photographs of our Broads holidays which had deteriorated very badly indeed. They had spent forty odd years floating around various cardboard boxes in lofts and cupboards. The majority are my great aunt's photograph collection. As well as all of her slides and projector I have inherited a 'home slide photograph developer machine' from the 50s or early 60s.

I did start the process, but with so many slides it was quite a laborious task. I bought a slide scanner from Amazon for around twenty quid or so which does an excellent job of scanning the slides in batches of three. I kicked Photoshop into touch several years ago when I discovered how far the the GNU Image Manipulation Program or GIMP had developed. It surpasses Photoshop in many aspects, you can program functions yourself and there are many add-ons available to do specific tasks, such as scanning phot slides, applying the appropriate algorithm to correct a slide and even detecting the original brand of film used to take the photograph and making adjustments for the film. Did I mention that it is FREE? I had got to the point where I had a bit of a production line going scanning slides, correcting them in GIMP, storing them, retouching them by hand to take out scratches and any deterioration and finally adding them all to a dedicated hard drive. Sadly I got  not so much bored as 'rubber room nuts' with the process.

Here's one that was very badly damaged with a lot of information missing from the lower portion of the image. A very handsome 5yr old chappie at the helm of Captain XII in 1971. Heavy smoker even then!23631985_1471499652966400_2102030100434590269_o.jpg

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