I have some slides that i took back in the early 90s, before i went digital. I’d like to scan some of them for display on the web.
They’ve been in protective plastic sleeves for the past ten years, so i assumed they would be nice and clean. When i put them into a slide scanner, however, and scanned them at 2400dpi, it became obvious that there were heaps of tiny dust particles on the slides. At such high-res scanning, those dust specks end up looking like little boulders. If there were only one or two, i could easily fix the problem using the cloning tool in Photoshop, or something similar. But they’re everywhere, so i need to make the slides clean again.
I obviously don’t want to scratch or otherwise harm the slides themselves, so a cloth is out. My first thought was compressed air. Any other suggestions?
Air is the way to go. I’m not aware of any liquid cleaner suitable, and would be afraid of damaging the emulsion side of the transparency with that type of action. Good luck.
Compressed air isn’t a magic fix-it for dusty negs or slides. You blast it and look again and the things are still there. Sometimes you need to use a nice fine soft brush to loosen the specks up, so the air can blow them away.
Kodak used to make a film cleaner specifically for problems like this. Oddly enough, it was called Kodak Film Cleaner. Best results came from unmounting the slide, cleaning it, then remounting in either plastic or glass mounts.
I’ll see if I can find a link, but you might be better off going to a library and looking at the old Kodak Photo Guides. You’ll probably find a lot of useful information besides the slide cleaning info before I finish wading through a web search.
The film cleaner is for really dirty films. (Negs, chromes, or movies). Gets rid of fingerprints, fungus, in addition to dirt.
For moderately dirty chomes, a soft blower brush or a photo chamois would work.
Still, for best results, remount the slides.
Water was always frowned on by the custom printer guys I knew. It adds spotting problems if not done right. And, if there’s any fungus at all, it will accelerate the growth.
It seems, from my own searching as well as the advice above, that there are a few products on the market that might be of help. I’ll go to the local photo pro store tomorrow and see what they recommend, too.
The only reason why this makes me uneasy is that the transparency processes I’ve run (E-3, E-4) both end with a stabilizer bath after the final wash. Can’t speak for E-6 or other mixes, but my concern is that a fluid treatment might remove what the stabilizer was meant to leave on the emulsion, thereby making it more prone to accelerated deterioration. Any Kodak or Fuji lab people lurking?
Yeah, having done some internet searching last night, i found out about ICE. I’ve never done any slide scanning before, so i didn’t know about it.
The scanner i use (but could never afford myself) is in my university’s digital media lab. it is a Nikon Super Coolscan LS 2000 Film and Slide Scanner. According to this review, the scanner has excellent ICE technology, so i’ll give that a try next week.
My previous scanner was the 2000, and I always had problems with it. I had to make all sorts of adjustments to get the image to come out looking right. When I got the 4000, I wound up having to re-scan all my old images. The improvement is remarkable! And now there’s an even better model out, which I haven’t tried yet.
By the way, even with ICE, I still shoot some canned air at both sides of the slide before scanning. Just remember to hold the can vertically, so the spray comes out horizontally. Otherwise the liquid comes out and can ruin the slide.
