Slide Damage?

[Martin L]

Just digitising some old Kodachrome slides. First digitisation of such old slides.

When on the PC I just noticed that at 100% there are some artifacts that look like noise on the image. However on closer inspection they look like crystals as they are angular rather than normal fungi type threads (they have been cleaned with cloth and isopropyl and not steel wool  )

It looks like some kind of breakdown of the emulsion as the surface looks kind of pitted as well.

 

So:

 

a) Is this normal and expected for slides about 40 years old and therefore acceptable as just part of normal deterioration?

b) Can they be recovered?

c) Or are they fooked?

d) Does it matter?

 

 

[wiskerke]

Are you using a scanner? If so don't use digital ICE or similar dust removal settings using the IR channel. Google scanning Kodachrome.

I have not tried Kodachrome with my camera copy setup, so cannot comment on that. However with B/W the similar problem does not show with a camera.

 

wim

[Martin L]

7 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

Are you using a scanner? If so don't use digital ICE or similar dust removal settings using the IR channel. Google scanning Kodachrome.

I have not tried Kodachrome with my camera copy setup, so cannot comment on that. However with B/W the similar problem does not show with a camera.

 

wim

Camera setup

[spacecadet]

Kodachrome emulsion does have a unique relief appearance, but as always unless you post an example we're just guessing as to the cause.

[Martin L]

39 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

Kodachrome emulsion does have a unique relief appearance, but as always unless you post an example we're just guessing as to the cause.

Yes it does have a unique relief appearance, I've noticed that.

I'm not too fussed about the cause, damage has been done, just wondered if it was a common degradation that was expected for old slides and if there was any restoration that could be applied.

I'll try and get an example up but not sure it will really help. It's like foxing on an old picture but more crystalline.

 

 

[spacecadet]

5 minutes ago, Martin L said:

not sure it will really help.

It will. I for one don't recognise your description.

At least if you're using a camera it can't be a scanning artefact. I assue you're not applying sharpening or NR before seeing the problem.

Edited December 3, 2022 by spacecadet

[M.Chapman]

10 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

It will. I for one don't recognise your description.

At least if you're using a camera it can't be a scanning artefact. I assue you're not applying sharpening or NR before seeing the problem.

+1

Well worth posting an example. There are a few folks on this forum with lots of slide copying experience. I've not had problems with camera copying of old 35mm Kodachrome 64 slides, but film grain can sometimes be quite noticeable.

 

Mark

[geogphotos]

Are you seeing this on the slide or on the copy?

 

If on the copy one possibility might be that the light source is not bright enough- assuming that your doing this through camera rather than scanner.

Edited December 3, 2022 by geogphotos

[Martin L]

20 minutes ago, geogphotos said:

Are you seeing this on the slide or on the copy?

 

If on the copy one possibility might be that the light source is not bright enough- assuming that your doing this through camera rather than scanner.

Its on the slide. Obviously shows more at 100% on the raw copy on the PC 

I'll try and get a crop up to show you but searching for somewhere to host it at the mo.

At moment thinking it's really stubborn funghi.

 

There is no sharpening or NR applied to the capture

Edited December 3, 2022 by Martin L

[spacecadet]

9 minutes ago, Martin L said:

searching for somewhere to host it

postimages.org

 

[Martin L]

8 minutes ago, spacecadet said:

postimages.org

 

Thanks Mark 

 

Hopefully you can see this, 100% crop of the copy

 

https://postimg.cc/YjXrk4tj

[wiskerke]

Could be ordinary dust. Try rinsing one with a little bit of rinse aid. If that doesn't work try rubbing it gently with some detergent.

 

wim

[Martin L]

9 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

Could be ordinary dust. Try rinsing one with a little bit of rinse aid. If that doesn't work try rubbing it gently with some detergent.

 

wim

It's been scrubbed to an inch of it's emulsion with alcohol a few times.

Is detergent better?

[M.Chapman]

Mmmm, looks a bit unusual. Can you give some other details?
Film speed - Kodachrome 64?

Digitising camera?

f/no, shutter speed, digitising camera ISO settings

Are you just filling the frame?

Posting a full frame jpg might help too.

Other thoughts - is there a diffuser between light source and slide? Is it textured? If so, how far away from the slide is it?

 

Mark

Edited December 3, 2022 by M.Chapman

[zxzoomy]

I sell old slides online so have thousands of them. Looking at your scan I muse on mold/fungus. I don't know how to fix it, if that is the problem. 

[Martin L]

 

2 hours ago, M.Chapman said:

Mmmm, looks a bit unusual. Can you give some other details?
Film speed - Kodachrome 64?

Digitising camera?

f/no, shutter speed, digitising camera ISO settings

Are you just filling the frame?

Posting a full frame jpg might help too.

Other thoughts - is there a diffuser between light source and slide? Is it textured? If so, how far away from the slide is it?

 

Mark

 

Not sure it's in the capture as it's visible on the physical slide.

I can only remember it was Kodachrome, I think 200, taken in the late 80's.

However I was travelling, film was bought and processed in various different countries, film in and out of plane holds, x-ray machines etc.

I use a 7d on tripod, sigma 105 macro, f9, iso 100, slide approx 10 CMS over a light box, frame filled.

 

Edit: I think some may have been Ektachrome 

 

1 hour ago, zxzoomy said:

I sell old slides online so have thousands of them. Looking at your scan I muse on mold/fungus. I don't know how to fix it, if that is the problem. 

That's kind of what I thought but I thought the alcohol and a bit of elbow grease would sort it 

Edited December 3, 2022 by Martin L

[Chuck Nacke]

3 hours ago, wiskerke said:

Could be ordinary dust. Try rinsing one with a little bit of rinse aid. If that doesn't work try rubbing it gently with some detergent.

 

wim

Win "BAD IDEA."  

 

Martin,

 

I see what you showed all the time from "Old" 35mm chromes.  Both Kodak and Fuji, in the good old film days told me to use PEC-12 solution and PEC pads.

Most of the images that I have on Alamy are 4000 DPI scans from Kodachrome, Ektachrome or Fujichrome.  It is a painful process.  One of my most licensed images took me several hours a day for two weeks to finish.  During my entire time contributing to Alamy I have been using a CanoScan FS4000, now running the scanning through VueScan.  I scan everything to a 16bit  aRGB TIFF, then spotting before dropping to and 8bit JPEG that I have downsized a small amout to 5000 by at 300DPI JPEG for uploading to Alamy.

 

In the US PEC-12 is easy to order online along with the pads.

 

Also, I have a HUGE problem with a "Pink" shift in the color, still trying to find a good solution to that.

 

Chuck   

[Martin L]

26 minutes ago, Chuck Nacke said:

Win "BAD IDEA."  

 

Martin,

 

I see what you showed all the time from "Old" 35mm chromes.  Both Kodak and Fuji, in the good old film days told me to use PEC-12 solution and PEC pads.

Most of the images that I have on Alamy are 4000 DPI scans from Kodachrome, Ektachrome or Fujichrome.  It is a painful process.  One of my most licensed images took me several hours a day for two weeks to finish.  During my entire time contributing to Alamy I have been using a CanoScan FS4000, now running the scanning through VueScan.  I scan everything to a 16bit  aRGB TIFF, then spotting before dropping to and 8bit JPEG that I have downsized a small amout to 5000 by at 300DPI JPEG for uploading to Alamy.

 

In the US PEC-12 is easy to order online along with the pads.

 

Also, I have a HUGE problem with a "Pink" shift in the color, still trying to find a good solution to that.

 

Chuck   

Thanks, Chuck

Only got about 3000 to do

Does anybody think it's worth putting through the 'archive' route with that damage?

Some pics have a bit of historical interest, opening day of the first McDonald's in Moscow for example.

 

From hunting around on tinternet, I think the fungus has eaten into the emulsion, which apparently can happen so maybe no amount of cleaning will help

 

Edited December 3, 2022 by Martin L

[wiskerke]

Fungus in the emulsion is simply not curable.  But as has been said, it usually looks spidery. Real mold/mould is easier to get off but if that means it's leaving no trace I doubt it.

In general water is to be avoided.  Chuck is absolutely right. Isopropyl alcohol and such is used as to not make the emulsion swell. (Solubilizing if you want to Google it.)

Water does and in doing so may let the pollutants go (or get deeper into the emulsion when drying - pick your poison). Try a single unimportant frame first. If you have never handled wet film before, don't. Think rinsing b/w film and trying to dislodge a dust particle or hair.

For scratches to the film base there used to be a sort of filler with the same breaking index as the base: Repolisan by Tetenal. I still have a tiny bit left. Useless of course.

Some people rubbed their nose and then their film with the resulting fatty stuff. Superstition had it that it has the same breaking index as photographic emulsion and therefore made scratches invisible.

 

wim

Edited December 3, 2022 by wiskerke

[Martin L]

3 minutes ago, wiskerke said:

Fungus in the emulsion is simply not curable.  But as has been said, it usually looks spidery. Real mold/mould is easier to get off but if that means it's leaving no trace I doubt it.

In general water is to be avoided.  Chuck is absolutely right. Isopropyl alcohol and such is used as to not make the emulsion swell. (Solubilizing if you want to Google it.)

Water does and in doing so may let the pollutants go (or get deeper into the emulsion when drying - pick your poison). Try a single unimportant frame first. If you have never handled wet film before, don't. Think rinsing b/w film and trying to dislodge a dust particle or hair.

For scratches to the film base there used to be a sort of filler with the same breaking index as the base: Repolisan by Tetenal. I still have a tiny bit left. Useless of course.

Some people rubbed their nose and then their film with the resulting fatty stuff. Superstition had it that it has the same breaking index as photographic emulsion and therefore made scratches invisible.

 

wim

Ta, might have to wait till I get a cold

[wiskerke]

Here is a pdf describing current knowledge and workflow.

(sorry for the vagueness of the description of this link)

 

wim

Edited December 3, 2022 by wiskerke

[Pav]

14 hours ago, Martin L said:

Just digitising some old Kodachrome slides. First digitisation of such old slides.

When on the PC I just noticed that at 100% there are some artifacts that look like noise on the image. However on closer inspection they look like crystals as they are angular rather than normal fungi type threads (they have been cleaned with cloth and isopropyl and not steel wool  )

It looks like some kind of breakdown of the emulsion as the surface looks kind of pitted as well.

 

So:

 

a) Is this normal and expected for slides about 40 years old and therefore acceptable as just part of normal deterioration?

b) Can they be recovered?

c) Or are they fooked?

d) Does it matter?

 

 

Hi,

 

Recently I digitalized 2000+ slides so far, the oldest from 1966, most of them 1970+. The main problem I have is emulsion corrosion - black 'cancer-like' artefacts coming from black frame towards the middle, probably caused by moisture. I scan my slides 7200dpi and have to crop them tighter. I don't use 'AI' or smart dust removal, so I remove the corrosion along with normal dust spots in Photoshop. 

The software I use has that option (Silverfast) to 'intelligently' get rid of the dust - but trust me - it damages images more then unprofessional retouching.

At the end I reduce 10000x7000px scans to 5000px - that helps with small artefacts as well. Noise is not a problem, the older film, the nicer it looks. My scans from 90s (Ecta 200) have noise I can't even process, so I skip them when I see them.

 

The second problem - colour. I'm not sure if that is the process or age of the emulsion. The older scans - the stronger shift in colours, tones, contrasts, etc. I have to desaturate the oldest scans by 50% as the green-cyan/red cast is too strong to export 1:1 - here an example 2HTKTB6.(desaturation 50% + extra cyan desaturation 50%)

 

All the slides processed in the UK in 60s and 70s are ok in general, I have a portion of stuff processed in Poland and former Yugoslavia, completely unusable. 

If you have questions - happy to help.

 

Pav

Edited December 4, 2022 by Pav

[geogphotos]

If PEC solution doesn't work it would suggest to me some form of fungus or other deterioration of the surface..

 

Personally I would still go ahead and submit to Alamy using the Archive route - assuming the image subject matter is worth it.

 

You can always reduce the image size.

[geogphotos]

10 hours ago, zxzoomy said:

I sell old slides online so have thousands of them. Looking at your scan I muse on mold/fungus. I don't know how to fix it, if that is the problem. 

 

 

Interesting, let me know if you have any that come with copyright transfer?

 

Do you sell on Ebay?

[Harry Harrison]

12 hours ago, Martin L said:

I use a 7d on tripod, sigma 105 macro, f9, iso 100, slide approx 10 CMS over a light box, frame filled.

I don't have an idea either I'm afraid but I think the crucial fact is that you can see it on the transparency. Hard to say how much impact it would have on the whole frame though, especially if resized downwards for archival. Just to get an idea of scale, that uploaded section is 1062 x 800 pixels, has that been resized or is that how you uploaded it? Your 7D would be giving you around 5100 x 3400 px full frame I'd guess once you've cropped it a little so that's quite a large area of the slide that you're showing us if that is indeed the size of it.

Edited December 4, 2022 by Harry Harrison

[Harry Harrison]

10 hours ago, wiskerke said:

Here is a pdf describing current knowledge and workflow.

Interesting article, tantalised by the 'DigiDupe' lightbox that they made seeing as I'm thinking of making something similar myself:

 

"Each slide was lit by a custom-made light box, named the DigiDupe. This light box has internal mirrors and a frosted glass top, diffusing the light and therefore generating a more uniform lighting setup. Dust particles and other issues such as scratches become less visible in the created digital file, leading also to less time needed for postcapture file editing."

 

I wonder what light source they used in it.

Edited December 4, 2022 by Harry Harrison