4 Replies Latest reply: Jan 22, 2014 5:23 AM by Spoot51 RSS

    Digitize Old Kodachrome Slides

    Spoot51 Community Member

      For some reason I started my photo hobby 40 years ago using mostly slide film instead of prints. Turns out ot be a pretty lucky idea since the slides preserved much better than prints over the years. Here's the question: I scanned literally thousands of slides into .jpgs over ten years ago. Even then the inks were not perfect, but using PS I can renew most of them. At this point I have a closet full of old Kodak Carousels and 8500 slides. What do I do? Toss them or try to rescan using a much better Canon scanner than I had back then? I'm sure they won't last forever and I hate to throw out the originals, but "The Old Trout", err, I mean my dear wife, wants the closet space NOW!!

        • 1. Re: Digitize Old Kodachrome Slides
          Curt Y Community Member

          Question: Do you think the scan you make today can be read by a computer 40 years in the future?  Or even 14 years?  Also, digital copies on disks don't last forever either. 

          • 2. Re: Digitize Old Kodachrome Slides
            bob frost Community Member

            I'm busy rephotographing my old Kodachromes with a 60mm macro lens and my D800E, using a cheap screw-on SRB-Griturn holder. The results are as good or better than my old Nikon 5000 scanner which bit the dust some time ago, and having raw files allows far better processing than the scanner software did.

             

            Bob frost

            • 3. Re: Digitize Old Kodachrome Slides
              twenty_one Community Member

              bob frost wrote:

               

              I'm busy rephotographing my old Kodachromes with a 60mm macro lens and my D800E, using a cheap screw-on SRB-Griturn holder. The results are as good or better than my old Nikon 5000 scanner which bit the dust some time ago, and having raw files allows far better processing than the scanner software did.

              Yup, that's the way to do it. My experience exactly. The Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8 is outstandingly sharp, and - equally important - flat field. It's the perfect lens for this.

               

              Don't use a flatbed scanner if image quality is important. Even the best Canon and Epson scanners have nominal resolutions that are way beyond what they can really resolve optically, so those numbers don't mean much. And there is usually very bad chromatic aberration (color fringing). With my Epson I found the effective resolution to be around 4000 pixels long side, for a 35mm frame, even though the scanner would natively deliver 8000. And I still had to deal with the fringing (a nightmare).

              • 4. Re: Digitize Old Kodachrome Slides
                Spoot51 Community Member

                Thanks, Curt Y and Bob Frost! That's a method  I never knew about and your answers make sense. I do have a macro for my Canon 6D and am going to try it. Of course

                today's technology will change, but I view the preservation in future using whatever method will be my grand kid's problem, assuming their generation wants to archive what I have.