35mm Slide Transparancy Care & Storage

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by obcbeatle

Thanks Lance ... as usual very useful information. And thanks to everyone for their replies and suggestions. One more thing I wanted to ask ... it was suggested to clean the slide transparencies. After doing a little research on this it seems there are many methods being use. Anything from gently using a new soft bristle paint brush to compressed air. I can't imagine using compressed air, and I'm not even sure about using a new paint brush. Is cleaning slides something that someone else in this group has done? I know I can try to find a reputable photo lab that might clean these slides as well as scan them for me. But even that I'm finding tough to do because there is a significant amount of trust in letting someone else handle these Marvin Newman slides. I guess I'm a do-it-yourself kind of person and don't mind learning to do things a proper way with a little instruction. Anyway ... my plan now is to buy a slide viewer as was suggested by Lance and others, then clean the slides myself if it seems like something I am capable of doing w/o damaging the slides (I would practice on some family slides first), and then eventually buy a scanner to do my own scanning. I need to further research drum scanning vs. non-drum scanning. Apparently drum scanning is best ... but very expensive. Thanks again to all that replied to my original post!

I would avoid physically "brushing" the slide with anything if at all possible unless there is something "stuck" to it that requires you to do so. I'm sure there are brushes that are soft enough to do such a thing without scratching, but even if the brush itself doesn't scratch the film, there is the potential for whatever it picks up from the surface to scratch the film. If more extensive cleaning is needed, definitely as you say practice on some others first.

If it's just dust specks that are on the film surface, you may be surprised what a few good blasts of air will accomplish. You can either buy the "canned" variety, or if you're cheap like me, this one has worked very well for me:
http://www.amazon.com/Giottos-AA1900...ywords=giottos
It has a large bulb so that you get a good strong blast of air, and has a filter for the air coming in the back and 1-way valve for the air going out the front so that you're not sucking in and recirculating the dust you're blasting off of the slide's surface. Holding the nozzle tip close to the slide and squeezing repeatedly, you can just about pneumatically "scrub" off anything that is not physically adhered to the film surface.

[steve B]

For a viewer one of the easiest is getting a light table from an art/sewing store. Many inexpensive ones have enough area to lay out 25+ slides, or about a typical roll of films worth. Sort of an inexpensive version of the units they sold in the 70's that let you view a bunch of slides at once.

The light table can also be used upside down on top of the scanner to scan a pretty wide range of transparencies. It works well for slides and film negatives, not as well for glass negatives or glass lantern slides.

Cleaning the slides is something I'd avoid unless they were pretty bad. The emulsion side would be the hardest, the film side would be easy, but can also be scratched fairly easily.

Slides were usually kept in the boxes, or in pages so they are typically clean. Bad storage will cause a whole bunch of problems. Really bad ones can be removed from the mount cleaned and remounted, some history might be lost, as most mounts have some info on them even if it's only the sort of film and date. But if it's bad enough to remount that's not the main concern.

Steve B