35mm projector slides cleaning/restoring

[davetranter]

I have just found a large box of my Grandfather's 35mm slides (several hundred of them) in a lockup garage which I am clearing out. The garage is unheated, and gets very damp during the winter months. I thought that all the slides, 8mm film, and projectors were in the house (several more large boxes). Who put this box out in the garage I have no idea, but would estimate that it will have been there for at least 8-10 years...

A quick look, and an attempt to project a couple of 'unimportant' ones (after leaving them in the house for a couple of weeks to warm up / dry out) shows at least most of them to be dirty/patchy and to project at low definition (as though slightly out-of-focus).

Has anyone had any experience with this sort of thing?? Is it worth trying to clean them, or put the piece of film into a new housing, or is the lack of definition likely to be because the actual emulsion has deteriorated?? (I saw them all of them when my Grandfather was still alive, and all had pin-sharp definition).

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

All best

Dave T

 

[perc-o-prince]

We have a locally well-known media transfer guy who specializes in 8mm and other transfers to digital media. The one thing he does not recommend transferring to CD or DVD except for ease of showing is slides. He says it's because their clarity and image "beauty" cannot be successfully transferred so that the digital image will be at least as good as the analog one.

 

Have you considered checking with a camera collector's club? Or maybe if there's a shop(pe) near you that carries older cameras and has a knowledgeable person behind the counter?

 

Best of luck,

Chuck

 

[sfh074]

This .....

looks like some useful info:

3 Ways to Clean 35mm Slides - wikiHow Fun

While a speck of dirt or dust is small, it becomes dramatically magnified when attached to a 35mm slide. Fortunately, cleaning 35mm slides is easy. Just shake the slide until the debris comes off, or blow it off using compressed...

www.wikihow.com

 

[davetranter]

Thanks, guys. Great suggestions. I think (on closer examination) that mine may have a film of mould over them, they have certainly been very damp. I will have a go at a couple of them with Isoprop, and see what happens. I am lucky in that I have now found quite a few which I can 'experiment' on, as either they are of people or places unknown, or are duplicates.
Any further ideas are most welcome!
Thanks again
Dave T

 

[kb0nes]

I think the idea that a slide can't be digitized to the limit of its resolution is false. Most slide film will struggle to do better than 12 Meg pixel under ideal conditions (the photographer is the biggest variable in image resolution). Some technical films used under ideal conditions might need 20 Meg pixel to capture all the resolution. Of course if the image has degraded then it is even easier to get everything represented in a scan. It likely makes sense to digitize any valuable images asap before they further succumb to time, very few of us store film in any sort of archival manner. Of course a slide may objectively have a different 'look' than a digital image just due to the difference in the edges. I find most slides I shot in the past look pretty awful (soft) compared to what comes out of my current D500 camera.

As for washing the film the biggest issue with slides is they are often sealed into a cardboard frame that isn't fond of water. Plastic frames can often be easily opened for ease of washing. I have rewashed negative strips many times and individual slide film frames could be washed too. A drop or two of surfactant in slightly warm water for the wash. Final rinse in distilled water with compressed air to chase the droplets and speed drying if possible.