Uncovering the past . . .

[Paul_NJ]

Knowing I'd be unable to do much physically after surgery for at least several weeks, I tried to organize some projects to help keep my sanity for awhile. One thing I did was to buy a scanner that can handle 35mm slides. I probably have 300 or 400 35mm slides in my basement my father took 40-50 years ago, and I haven't seen any of them for likely that long.

One of my memories as a kid was my grandfather's red tractor. I recalled it was a Farmall, and I'm sure memories like that influenced many of us buy a first Cub. (In my case some "help" was added talking to "Country" at a family gathering several years ago. . . now I have a Cub,and several gallons of Kroil . . . ). Anyway, my memory still seemed to indicate the Farmall my grandfather had was a little larger than my Cub but, I thought, things do often seem bigger when you were a kid.

Here's one of the first slides I pulled out of the box.

Fortunately the scanner came with a scaled down version of Photoshop. This slide was so dark, and had aged with such an intensely blue cast you could hardly see anything. I'm amazed how easily you can digitally clean up these old slides! This is me, about 40 years ago at the age of 14, being taught by my Uncle Sigurd Reinertsen (you bet he was Norwegian!) how to drive! I thought you would all enjoy uncovering the past. Guess now I'll be looking for a Farmall A . . .

[John *.?-!.* cub owner]

fantastic Paul. From experience I have learned projects like that are great when you are recovering form a surgery. What kind of scanner do you have? I have a good scanner, but it doesn't handle slides, of which I have several hundered also.

[Paul_NJ]

fantastic Paul. From experience I have learned projects like that are great when you are recovering form a surgery. What kind of scanner do you have? I have a good scanner, but it doesn't handle slides, of which I have several hundered also.

John,

The scanner I bought is relatively new. It is an Epson 4490 Photo. It is specifically designed to scan photos and film, and offers terrific resolution: 4800 dpi "real resolution" - not the artifically inflated values. I got it for $225 on line, and there's a $50 mail in rebate on top of that. Came with Photoshop Elements 2. Here's where I ordered it.

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=281266

It was well rated:

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,122861,00.asp#

[400lbsonacubseatspring]

Paul,

First, congrats on your recent medical triumph, and best wishes for a speedy recovery.

I thought a bit of history on slides from the 50's and 60's might prove interesting and helpful for those of you who attempt digital resorations.

The first colour film for amateur use was arguably Agfachrome, a slide film, which had all of the colour dyes already in place, but was based on the Cyan Yellow Magenta system of colour rendition. It rendered the most beautiful yellows and browns of any of the slide films. Something that is still true today. It was very forgiving in terms of not having to have perfectly accurate exposures to produce useable images. The dyes were not chemically stable, however, and a lot of image degradation goes on after just a few years, let alone 40 or 50.

The second to come along was Kodachrome, although this was probably the first film to produce colour images. It took a long time for it to become practical for amateur use. Kodachrome is a 4 layer black and white film. One of the layers is truly for blacks and greys, the other three are for red, yellow, and blue dyes which are injected into these layers during processing. No one other than kodak has ever processed Kodachrome, not because of licensing issues, but because of the sheer madness of complexity behind the process. Aside from the enhancement of the colour red, kodachrome is the most "accurate" of the colour films to this day. What you see is what you get. This made it an instant favourite with professionals the world over. It is not at all forgiving in exposure error, requiring "dead on" accuracy to provide a useable image. The dyes are totally stable, and the slides from this film, if properly stored, will last for centuries without significant degradation.

The third to come along was Ektachrome from kodak, developed to provide faster processing times (it could be processed in your own lab, albeit not easily). It was loosely based upon the agfachrome concept, but used Red Yellow Blue instead of cyan yellow magenta as its dye system.
It rendered the colour Blue much more brilliantly than any other film of its day, and still does, to the opinion of many. Unfortunately, when it fades in subsequent years, it fades towards the blue end of the spectrum. Ektachrome is very forgiving in terms of exposure error, and it was actually commonplace to underexpose Ektachrome in order to achieve more brilliant colour saturation, a trick I have used many times myself. Ektachrome is not very stable, however, and begins to degrade almost immediately. Slides from Ektachrome that pass the 20 year mark always have a blue cast to them, and are frequently badly degraded.

The real problem for most of our parents and grandparents is that from their point of view, when they got the slides back from the drugstore and looked at them on the projection screen, there wasn't much of a difference in performance. No one takes pictures for posterity, they take them for themselves. Slides were a fad, of sorts, before colour prints were an option, or were economical. Slides were larger than life, or almost as large, anyway. You could see in "technicolor glory" the events of the recent past, and then put them away in a box somewhere, incase you wanted to see them again. From this perspective, there was very little reason to use Kodachrome. It was not cheaper, although the processing was slightly so. Kodachrome was a "slow" film compared to the others available at the time, with a top ASA rating of 25 until the 1970's.

It's ability to preserve images for long periods of time was known then, from the cinematography industry, but it was never mentioned by Kodak in sales pitches (probably because they didn't care which you bought, Kodachrome or Ektachrome). There were "cult" followers of Kodachrome, who loved the colour renditions -- "mama don't take my Kodachrome away". Middle class Americans, though, who did not want to spend a lot of money on a camera sophisticated enough to produce consistent results with the unforgiving Kodachrome, however, often preferred Agfachrome in their Argus Cameras, and chose the path of quantity rather than quality of images. We are no different today, so I'm not claiming this as a fault.
If any of us were concerned about permanence, we'd all be shooting black and white, and storing our negatives in archival paper vaults.

At any rate, it is safe to assume that if you have a slide that looks just great, and you know it to be 20 years old or more, it was shot on Kodachrome, and you can put it on a pile that can be scanned at your liesure. If, however, you have slides that are deteriorating, it is best to do a digital resoration as soon as possible, as they are decaying by the minute, just like the hollywood films you hear about. Use 'em or loose 'em.

[Patbretagne]

What a wonderful memory to recover, so glad for you, along with your health recovery.
When I first had a camera good enough to take colour slides I started in 1961 with Agfachrome, and for the reds, oranges, yellows and greens of Steam traction Engines, it was just great, unfortunately I dont seem to still have my collection of several hundred good engine slides, I used to give commented slide shows to steam engine societies.
After Agfa I seemed to get hooked on Fujicrome which was clear and concise, a little tending to green hues, now its Pixcells film that I use, and it's great, havn't had even one photo fade, darken or lose it's brilliance over the last few years.
Keep on restoring your past history!
Pat