Beginner Post 35mm Slide scanning

eeyore

eeyore

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eeyore
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1451300048330.jpg 1451300072358.jpg 1451300095319.jpg Hi all. I've been given a load of old scans mainly of old 1960s holidays in Scotland that I'd like to bring back to life.
At the moment I have a cheap slide scanner from 7day shop that produces a half decent result but I want to try and give some of the pictures a bit photoshop work to help do them justice, the trouble is I don't know where to start.
Can anyone recommend some tutorials for me to look towards for ideas?
 
Well I'm sure someone will suggest a tutorial, but the basics of scanning is to make sure there is no dust, hairs etc on the film (which I noticed in the first shot) so wiping the film before scanning is important...I'm not sure what scanner you are using but that has to be clean as well...enjoy
forgot:- for very old shots to be superb it would depend on the camera and film used originally so your scanner might be good enough compared to a £500 scanner.
 
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eeyore said:
Hi all. I've been given a load of old scans mainly of old 1960s holidays in Scotland that I'd like to bring back to life.
At the moment I have a cheap slide scanner from 7day shop that produces a half decent result but I want to try and give some of the pictures a bit photoshop work to help do them justice, the trouble is I don't know where to start.
Can anyone recommend some tutorials for me to look towards for ideas?
Click to expand...

Hi @eeyore, perhaps in your first sentence you meant you were given slides rather than scans?

I guess you've bought one of those stand-alone scanners, basically a 5mp camera in a sort-or-light-proof box with a slot for a slide carrier, and a SD card. These have two main advantages: they are cheap, and they are quick to use. When I had one I remember scanning over 100 slides in one evening. The disadvantage is that you have zero control over the scanning process, other than selecting slide, black and white negative, or colour negative. It's all handled automatically for you, so I guess that leads to your thread title: post-scanning, ie how to improve these images after they have been scanned and uploaded.

Brian's right; the first example shows some hairs and dust. Both are inevitable with old slides, no matter how well they've been kept. An inspection before scanning and some work with the rocket blower and even possibly a lens brush (carefully!) will save you hours of post-production spot removal.

TBH I'm not sure folk here will be able to help much more, as anyone serious about film will have moved onto more powerful (and expensive, and slower) scanners (*). I think it's best to imagine you've just been handed these shots a relative has taken on a 2008-vintage point and shoot digital, and use your best post-processing techniques to try to improve them.

At least if you've only been given slides rather than colour negatives, you haven't got the worst of the problems. Colour negatives are shot onto an orange background that varies by film type, so a straight inversion doesn't work very well, and colour correction can be much more tricky than for slides. OTOH Kodachromes can produce some VERY weird results when scanned, and particularly with these scanners.

* Either flat-beds like the ubiquitous Epson V500, capable of scanning 35mm and 120, or dedicated 35mm scanners like the Plusteks and higher end Reflectas. Scan control via software run on the computer the scanner is connected to, eg Epson Scan, Vuescan, or SilverFast among others.
 
Cheers guys, yer it's a cheap scanner. I just ran a few through it and uploads them jpeg via my phone.
I'll have to dig out my rocket blower, I think I have brush somewhere too.
 
eeyore said:
Cheers guys, yer it's a cheap scanner. I just ran a few through it and uploads them jpeg via my phone.
I'll have to dig out my rocket blower, I think I have brush somewhere too.
Click to expand...

The 3rd shot can easily be corrected in Photoshop (as it has a Magenta cast) by just clicking on "image" then "auto color".
 
I've had a little time to mess around with the castle picture.
I'm not happy with the darker spots but for a first attempt I've learned a few things.... mainly make sure the slides are clean!
castle-edit.jpg
 
Can you see on the slide what film it is as other than Kodachrome I find it difficult on some old pos and neg film to get all the colour right i.e. you get one part of the shot right and the colour goes wrong on another part...I suppose an expert in Photoshop could sort it our h'mm but I'm not an expert. Any way the important thing is that you (friends or family) like it and not what we think.
 
Much better without the worst dust, but still a way to go; you're a bit green in the sky now, and you've lost shadow detail to the left of the castle and bottom right. Somewhere between the two and you'll be spot-on!

I agree, it would be interesting to know the film. First question: are they cardboard mounts that say Kodachrome or Ektachrome (or something else), or plastic mounts? AFAIK most older Kodak slide films were sold including processing, so you'de get quality mounts from the Kodak agents. The Fuji ones... can't remember whether they were sold with processing, but all of mine have horrible plastic mounts that are sometimes cracking open. :(
 
Cheers for the comments.
The slide I think off the top of my head this one is kodachrome. I don't have them to hand as I'm away but I recall 2 types of film one definitely koda and some that were in a red white and blue box. They seem to a mix of card and plastic mounts. The date for these pictures were mostly 1964 or 1969.
I agree with the comments made. I have worked on and un-calibrated laptop and did not see too much green however on my mobile I can see what looks like a poison gas cloud!
For the darker bits as you say a little bit of photoshop learning is needed to hopefully bring out a little detail
 
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This article talks about the "bluecast" problem with scanning Kodachromes. I guess it's just something you'll have to deal with in PP.

Wikipedia suggests Ilfochrome was another name for Cibachrome, a direct positive printing paper and process, rather than slides as such. I suppose there must have been a slide variant!
 
ChrisR said:
This article talks about the "bluecast" problem with scanning Kodachromes. I guess it's just something you'll have to deal with in PP.

Wikipedia suggests Ilfochrome was another name for Cibachrome, a direct positive printing paper and process, rather than slides as such. I suppose there must have been a slide variant!
Click to expand...
I have quite a few ilforchrome slides from my parents photo collections, as far as I can tell it is a standard (for the time) colour reversal film.

Scanning Kodachrome without a dedicated setting in the scanning software can be a bit of a pig to correct in pp in my experience, it obviously can be done but it's not that easy.
 
With Kodachrome and even using a cheap flatbed scanner you should be getting results like below...providing a decent camera was used and the exposure was correct and also best results were with a sunny day....h'mm well nothing has changed:- The jpgs from the scanner came out very good and only a very small touch up in Photoshop for small things like too bright and so on...all my slides are stored at room temp.
BTW any slides that are Perutz didn't keep very well, Agfacolor also start to fade over the years....and never used Iford.But Kodachrome is estimated, if stored correctly, would last well over 100 years with no colour change

My father took this in 1966 and looks like he had a fairly decent camera


My shot using a good camera (Pentax SLR) taken about 1970 of my son and father and got similar result originally using an old flatbed scanner (Epson 2480) bought for £8 off gumtree
 
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Not everything needs to be digitised.

Want share the images? Invite your friends round for s slideshow!


Steve.
 
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