Digitizing slides....help!!
Jun 23, 2022 09:39:38 #
Gatorcoach wrote:
I was pretty astounded as well but it is what it is. No explanation why as they were all in the attic with heavy temperature shifts from summer to winter. What really astounded me was how poorly the purchased commercial slides I purchased at some site. They were almost purple and I haven't even tried adjusting them.
Commercial slides were made from color negatives printed onto motion picture print film. Motion picture print film was assumed to be disposable. The original negative is what mattered, so that film was manufactured with longevity in mind. But prints were "beat up" every day in the theater. They were replaceable. So the dyes in motion picture print film were cheap and unstable.
The positive side of the motion picture process was that the camera films had enormous dynamic range. Because it was negative film, it could be printed to any color balance. So "color grading" became a creative addition to the process of film making. Also, multiple copies of a film could be printed and distributed to multiple theaters at the same time.
The one mass market film with excellent "end product color permanence" has proved to be Kodachrome. Unfortunately, Kodachrome was the most environmentally unfriendly process, the most dangerous process, the most complicated process, the most critical process... which is why only a handful of labs were set up to do it.
Properly stored color negatives tend to last fairly long in a cool, dry, dark place — certainly longer than most wet, chromogenic, silver-halide-based paper prints. E6 is a bit twitchy, but really no more difficult than good black and white, IF you are set up to do it. I ran 12 to 20 rolls of E6 films twice a week for a time, back in the 1980s.
I was shocked when I cleaned out my then recently abandoned corporate AV studio in 2000 to find that most of the slides I'd made had already changed color, even the duplicates that had never been projected and were stored in polypropylene sleeves. The only surviving evidence of my work from that era is a few horrid VHS tapes of shows I did.
Jun 23, 2022 13:49:19 #
CHG_CANON wrote:
Use a scanner, not a camera. I've done both. The camera is a miserable process with inferior results.
Jun 23, 2022 16:00:51 #
josquin1
Loc: Massachusetts
CHG_CANON wrote:
Use a scanner, not a camera. I've done both. The camera is a miserable process with inferior results.
Agreed. I used the Canon 9000F Mark II and it worked really well, but alas it is discontinued. I hear the Epson 600 is also terrific.
Jun 23, 2022 16:05:50 #
therwol
Loc: USA
josquin1 wrote:
Agreed. I used the Canon 9000F Mark II and it worked really well, but alas it is discontinued. I hear the Epson 600 is also terrific.
Some scanners do give excellent results, but those who know how can also get excellent results by photographing slides and negatives. Look at the picture I posted of my mother earlier in this thread. The slide was photographed to produce the image. Look at the two pictures that BURKPHOTO posted. He has posted many pictures that he has copied from slides and negatives with his camera that rival anything you can get from a scanner. It all depends on doing it right.
Jul 5, 2022 06:57:54 #
therwol wrote:
Some scanners do give excellent results, but those who know how can also get excellent results by photographing slides and negatives. Look at the picture I posted of my mother earlier in this thread. The slide was photographed to produce the image. Look at the two pictures that BURKPHOTO posted. He has posted many pictures that he has copied from slides and negatives with his camera that rival anything you can get from a scanner. It all depends on doing it right.
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