35mm question
I'm scanning in my grandparents slides from the 1960's and 1970's. Several of these slides are slightly out of focus (apparently autofocus was first commercially introduced by Konica in 1978, so I forgive the relatives since I can't manually focus worth a damn myself). Questions:
When did 35mm slides become popular?
What are their advantages over prints?
And do you get back the negatives with the slides (I can't seem to find any)?
What's the shelf-life of a 35mm slide? Some of the ones I have are fading away.
When did 35mm slides become popular?
What are their advantages over prints?
And do you get back the negatives with the slides (I can't seem to find any)?
What's the shelf-life of a 35mm slide? Some of the ones I have are fading away.
Comments
Originally posted by gobble gobble
I'm scanning in my grandparents slides from the 1960's and 1970's. Several of these slides are slightly out of focus (apparently autofocus was first commercially introduced by Konica in 1978, so I forgive the relatives since I can't manually focus worth a damn myself). Questions:
When did 35mm slides become popular?
What are their advantages over prints?
And do you get back the negatives with the slides (I can't seem to find any)?
What's the shelf-life of a 35mm slide? Some of the ones I have are fading away.
As I recall the first slide film sold was Kodachrome which came out sometime in the 1930s. There are no negatives with slide film -- the slide you get is the film used after processing. While very popular in the past, over the years, as negative films improved and local photo labs sprouted up like weeds, negative film has become the film of choice for most non-professionals.
As for the advantages and disadvantages of slide and negative films, they are debatable. Do a google search - there is a ton of information on the subject (but I will give you my thoughts on the matter).
Slide film is the medium of the artist and professional. Unlike negative films were the photofinisher in the lab has more control over the final picture then the photographer, slides show exactly what the photographer captured on the film. You must really know what you are doing as you have very little room for error with slide film (at most 1/2 stop over or 1 under exposed ).
Slide film also has better resolution and more saturated colors. Most publishers will only accept slides, and would not even consider prints under normal circumstances. It is also much easier to store and catalog slides instead of prints.
Print film, on the other hand, has really improved over the years and is far more practical then slide film. You can get it developed almost anywhere, easily get multiple prints and enlargements, and it is very forgiving when it comes to exposure. The grain has improved so much that you can get away with using higher ISO ratings then you would with slide film.
As for the shelf life of 35mm slide film, it greatly depends on the film and storage environment (Kodachrome will usually last for decades).
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day, oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera, I love to take a photograph
So mama don't take my Kodachrome away
- Paul Simon and the other guy
Originally posted by gobble gobble
And do you get back the negatives with the slides (I can't seem to find any)?
If any scans are out of focus, compare the scanned image with the slide. If the film is still in the cardboard holder, it can warp, even with the little heat produced by the scanner. The ideal way to scan film would be to put it between glass, but unless you have an particular image you are really interested in, it is too much trouble to take it out of the cardboard holder because of possible film damage and fingerprints.
Scratches shouldn't cause you too much trouble. They used to sell a liquid you could put on negatives to diffuse the light and make the scratches less noticable, but if you can still find the stuff, it is probably too messy since you'd have to clean the slide and/or scanner (depending on the type). You should be seeing white scratches with slide film. I'm not sure about this now that I've thought about it, since you're dealing with a reflected image rather than a transmitted image. The liquid might help if it on the side of the film facing the light source.
I'd guess you'd run into the above problems with a film scanner more than a flatbed.
If I remember correctly, the slides stored in a dark place will last longer than the negative image because when the slides are developed, the silver halide crystals are replaced by pigment. In negative images, the silver halide crystals can still change slowly after the development and fixing process.
These days it is cheaper to shoot prints and their quality is pretty impressive. Of course with digital taking over both are history.
Not sure what humidity is best for storing slides, but expect it is less than 50%. I have seen mold grow on slides kept in a humid place so best to be careful. I am sure Kodaks website will give you all the info you could ever need on this sort of thing.
As others said, the slide is the exposure, so there is no negative. A lot of scanner software includes ICE algorithms to help eliminate them. Obviously, the more expensive film and slide scanners have better implementations and even fine-tuning control of it.
The other advantage over prints, aside from being good to project at large sizes and that they used to be more economical, is that you don't have a generational degradation of the image. A print is the second generation of that image because the negative has to be essentially copied onto print paper, which introduces its own interpretive issues and errors. A slide is the first generation because it is the exposure. Film negatives were formerly the domain of pro photographers because they could touch-up images just the way they wanted in the print development stage. You local Kodak developer pushes the film through a machine that's mostly on auto-pilot. Slides didn't give photographers that flexibility, but it was good for more of a point-and-shoot application. If you took a great picture to begin with, I suppose it didn't matter.
A lot of old consumer cameras were FFL -- fixed focal-length cameras. Now a days, if you pick up an SLR or a camera with a manual focus lens, you'll see that if you focus on something more than about 10 meters away, everything is in focus, and it shows the infinity symbol as your focal distance. Back then, most consumer cameras were sort of stuck in that infinity-focus mode with no way to focus on things that were closer. (I'm not sure if the focal distance was 10 meters+ for these cameras, it could have been less but it's the same idea. It probably depends on the lens.) That might also explain the blur.
I miss the old-timey manual focus aids in the viewfinder. Even Nikon and Canon "prosumer" DSLRs have inferior feedback on this IMO.
It would really be great if you transferred the slide film into glass and heavy-duty plastic or metal cases. I had a brief job in college doing this, cropping photos with that silver tape and taping them into new mounts. The silver on the tape reflects heat away from the emulsion. Just wear gloves, watch out for the emulsion side and keep a lintless brush and/or cloth around.
My college's slide library is going through the laborious task of converting their slide collections to digital format. Some stuff from the 1960's and 70s is going, as of course are older slides.