My wife just rang me from shopping over in Armidale, that she has found a cassette slide projector and screen at Vinnies, that works, for $20, since we have only ever had a handheld version, I said buy it, as we have over 3000 slides, that we have never properly looked at. These slides were taken on our various trips around Australia, from 1978 to 1990, so will make a few different nights, worth it for a trip down memory lane. I was just wondering if it is possible to get new slides made from the many films I have stored properly that have not been developed, as well as using up the 30 odd 35mm films I have yet to use. I know I could google it, but just asking here what the chances are of getting slides developed today.?
If it's old film chuck it. If you have kept it in the fridge it has a longer life, bit still chuck it. I used Velvia for most work, mostly 120 film & a bit of 5x4 large format, then went digital about 2005.
A quick search found this place.
https://ikigaifilmlab.com.au/store/velvia-100-120
Clean the projector of dust. Do not touch the globe with fingers directly.
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Well, I developed some films last year, thru HN, and they turned out okay, so won't chuck them, as well as one of the films I developed I actually took the photo's last year. I still prefer to take photo's using film, and I like putting the pics in albums. Most of, if not all of Donna's digital pics, are on SD cards and have not really been viewed. Have had some made to hard cover pics. Our daughter and her family, surprisingly like to look at the photo albums, as do my nieces and nephews. I suppose that could change when we are dead, but at least they will have pics and slides of us, our lives, and of their grand, great, and great, great grand parents. Not everybody is lucky to have pics dating back to the 1870's, when they were alive.
-- Edited by Bicyclecamper on Wednesday 18th of May 2022 01:02:31 PM
Print & slides will out live digital simply due to that it is easy to go through a physical album or look at slides on a light box with a Peak Loupe etc or projector.
Descendants won't bother going through USB sticks.
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When we moved a couple of years ago we found, in the shed, a box of about a dozen undeveloped Kodachrome 36 exp rolls. These had been kept in the shed fridge. There was also all of my ancient development tanks, spirals, etc. As an extra bonus there was also an unopened Kodachrome developer kit to process 25 36 exp rolls. Another added bonus was that my 35mm Nikon scanner (SCSI interface) still worked OK on another shed find - a Pentium 2 Windows 3.11 computer. All I was lacking was a monitor but a friend had one in his shed.
I set to work and ended up with about 150 really good slides so I scanned them which worked out well too. I've still got an Ektachrome kit and a few packets of ID11 for Ilford HP5 and FP4 film.
These days I prefer digital - instant gratification, etc...
My guess is that you'll get some good stuff from the unprocessed film if you can find ether the gear and chemicals or a good processor.
-- Edited by markf on Wednesday 18th of May 2022 01:48:53 PM
I am sure the slides and the VHS will come in very handy if you or any of your friends are suffering from insomnia or you just want to get rid of a guest who has overstayed his or her welcome Mike.
This method has a proven track record in my family over many years.
I have a rule Dmaxer: when people say "Would you like to see the photographs of my trip/marriage/holiday/baptism/children/grandchildren" - I say "Certainly I would. Please give me the iPad/remote control/whatever and I'll find my way through them and ask questions when I want to know something".
The above process, which would have taken two hours, now takes about three minutes. This approach is often unexpected by photograph owner but... what can they say?
However, in defence of my VHS tapes, I suspect the footage of my rather sexy (ex) wife nude in the pool in the south of France would have aroused interest :)
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I've been slowly sifting my parent's slide collection. Not all have aged well physically with both colour fades and mold blooms taking their toll on some. Some have already been digitized (and I strongly believe that digital storage is the superior archive choice) but it's slow going. I'm using an older scanner and still yet to commit to the latest and greatest tech. Maybe when the house sells and I'm cashed up ...
We are just looking forward to the best trip slides from 84' when we took a Sigma Galant along part of the Gunbarrel, half of the Canning and all of the Tanami track. That car which I had raised the suspension, went to all those places including up to Weipa. Now it did survive that 18 month trip, but was not very saleable afterwards but I did get 2 grand for it.. Eating wild pig, goats and buffalo, in those days, having a semi auto .222 on the back shelf under a rug, was the norm. back when we had freedom, all on slides of the adventure at the time. We will settle down on the night with roast beef/veges/gravy and our spirits of choice and enjoy going thru that trip again.
-- Edited by Bicyclecamper on Wednesday 18th of May 2022 09:31:34 PM
I have around 6K of slides mostly of our travels around Australia and various postings in the Army that I have digitised successfully. I also have another 4.5K of slides from my parents that are about 50% digitised but these have concentrated on close family and extended family.
As I am the last person standing in my close family and probably the 6th most senior in the extended family, I believe these are important to keep and maintain, and also these days to digitise.
The issue I have is that in the future when my grand children, or perhaps even great grand children may wish to see them, the digitised versions perhaps will not have software available to view them.
A photograph from a film camera, particularly, if the negative or slide is available, more likely can be reproduced and viewed easily many times, because the process is relatively simple, involving relatively simple processes.
Their wont be software around in 100 ears that can play those pics, but my photos, slides and negatives will still be about. And I have some glass pictures as well as paper pictures from like I said the late 1870's and they are still viewable.
I heard a program on the radio that some institutions are reverting to archiving back on to film for their fail safe copy as they are so worried about all the issues with long term digital.
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Unless you have chosen an especially awkward and little used file format for your digital image archive, there will always be an option to view your images. Bits and bytes are flexible. The currently available physical media will still be available and readable, in fact just about every physical media for digital storage ever used is still available for purchase albeit sometimes at a cost. However, if you have archives based on a specific software viewing package then these may be problematic. Digital image archivists preference TIFF as a file format because it is an ISO standard *and* designed to include supported image information. FWIW it's one of the oldest image formats at nearly 40 yrs old.
If you had those files on a 30 year old 51/4" diskette, you would probably have to take the diskette to a specialist to be transcribed. Just like VHS tapes, who has a player now? Another 20 years and they will be hard to find. Even stored on a 20 year old IDE hard disk (pre SATA), how are you going to read it even if it still works?
If you have a routine of copying files to newer media every few years and possibly converting them to later formats, then OK.
To the original post, I also have a pile of slides from the '70s. Most have deteriorated badly. I am slowly working to convert the best to digital, but some are so far gone it's not worthwhile.
The only medium of which I'm aware which has stood the test of time is a piece of paper. I have a handwritten, pig skin bound book which is over 300 years old and the beautiful handwriting is still perfectly readable and the flower someone pressed in it is in good condition.
DVDs degrade, semiconductor and magnetic memory is prone to flipping bits and magnetic memory (tape) should also be moved annually to prevent gradual corruption by the earth's magnetic field. And good luck finding an 8" floppy drive and associated computer hardware.
It's be interested in what national archives and the like do but I doubt there is a modern storage mechanism which could be guaranteed for over, say, 50 years.
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"I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken"
Oliver Cromwell, 3rd August 1650 - in a letter to the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland
I've read 30+ yr old disks with zero errors but they were reputable brands to start not the relatively cheap stuff that flooded the market by the time disks were superceded. However no one would/should archive on magnetic or optical media today. I've already transferred anything on disk to both solid state drives (one copy) and USB (multiple copies). Again, using higher quality not the cheap as chips gear. If I'm around and capable when the next iteration of storage technology is available to the consumer then it will be transferred again. You can only do so much while you're here, eventually whoever becomes the future custodian needs be concerned enough to deal with the material using techniques and technology available at that time. I also have family portraits and other photographic images dating from 1880s and the ones stored in family bibles or shoved into drawers for 80 yrs are in poor condition. Some stored in older albums since pre-ww2 days have suffered as well but at least they tended to be stored with some thought and care. Interestingly my father and his siblings all had a portrait taken on or around their 1st birthdays. Over time, one aunt became the custodian and they were displayed on the walls inside her Rocky house, some for over 60 yrs. These 100 to 110 yr old images are in great condition. A few cousins and I arranged to get them professionally photographed about 30 yrs ago and copies were made available to the rest of the family. There is no single way to archive material and all methods have merit.
Mike, eBay always has listings for 8" drives and there's plenty of hobbyist websites that describe how to get them working with more modern computing gear. The real issue with floppies will be format used. It's my understanding the only real standard for 8" floppy disk formats was IBM's original single-sided, single-density format and only someone planning well ahead would have saved files in SS SD disk format. When I worked with 8" disks, we gave up that practice after less than a year and opted for multiple copies on multiple media types. Never underestimate hobbyists though, money and time are meaningless if presented with the right challenge !!
I too have hundreds of slides, B&W and colour pics but they just don't really seem important any longer... nor do the VHS tapes...?
Exactly the way we feel, why bother wasting your time looking back at what you've done rather than looking forward to what you want to be doing in the short time you have left.
