by
Jonathan Eastland

Processed Kodachrome slides have the highest rating of any colour reversal (diapositiv) photographic film for their dark storage capacity to maintain colour veracity over long periods.

Ideally, safe dark storage for this material would comprise inert polypropylene hanging files housed in solvent-free painted metal filing cabinets sited in a cool and dry environment. Professional archivists recommend refrigeration as the ultimate safe storage method, but this could get expensive for the 100,000 plus collection; like all power dependent devices, refrigeration units need regular and proper maintenance to ensure a trouble free life.

For many guardians and owners, archive storage technology stops with the standard office filing cabinet, its contents left to cope with seasonal changes in local climates forced upon it by the needs of library operators to stay warm in winter and cool in summer. Excessive temperature and relative humidity fluctuations can take years off the life of any image artifact, but can have particularly devastating short term effects on photographic film emulsions.

In 2005, I began another time consuming editing and cleaning task to rescue what I could from a large collection of 50 year old Kodachrome slides that were stored for nearly two decades of their life in the damp and windy attic of their author's home in west Britanny, France. Years of hot and cold, dry and damp conditions has taken its toll on a fascinating record of life in Indo China towards the end of French Colonial rule...

by
Jonathan Eastland

Kodak processed and card or plastic mounted Kodachrome slides batch scanned in the Braun 4000 supplied 50 cartridge cause few jamming problems when the mount, particularly card, remains undamaged; i.e. not bent, sliced apart and then re-sealed with Selotape (Scotch), or labels, and, not defaced with old, worn, dog eared or misaligned caption labels, especially those placed so that a small portion of the label extends beyond the edge of the mount.

It is best to carefully remove any such labels used in the process of analogue archiving as these add microns to the overall thickness of the mount. The tolerances of the Braun cartridge are small and the mounted slide needs to be able to move freely in the cartridge slot, otherwise it will most likely jam during a batch scanning session.

Thin press-stud type plastic mounts are probably those offering the most trouble free experience, but carefully removing slides from card mounts of almost any description and vintage is a tedious process, adding considerably to the time schedule of a 50 batch scan. Nonetheless, it's worth doing if you want to avoid even the most minor of hassles.

Attached to this post are some illustrations of the kind of thing to avoid together with a few showing best practice.

Good scanning....!



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Written by admin on June 6th, 2007 with no comments.
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