Alexander Georgiadis wrote:
I would also be interested in hearing the answer to this question. My *guess *would be to dis-mount them and soak and rinse in distilled water, then scan using a Digital ice 111 scanner. But I would suggest you contact kodak and ask their advice.
I've been hoping somebody else would come along who knew more about this than me. But there seems to have been a shortage of answers. How dirty are they, anyway? (I think Bob W8IMO was the original poster on this)
I'd start out with clean dry compressed air (or other gas), generally out of a can (I don't have a photo lab set up with a dry-air system). Depending on the state of the mounts, it might be better to dismount the film first, or it might not. Definitely "Digital ICE" is your friend here (it works by doing a fourth scan, in the infrared where all the normal dyes are transparent, so anything that blocks infrared is dirt or a scratch; then it interpolates to fill the blocked areas). Some older scanners say that ICE doesn't work with Kodachrome; in my experience it *mostly* works with Kodachrome, but sometimes a particular slide causes trouble (often one with high cyan dye densities).
Film cleaners like "PEC-12" work on oil-based dirt, like fingerprints. I've found about 2/3 of the gunk on old slides is not oil-based :-(. Before resorting to re-washing in distilled water, I'd make the best scan I could; re-washing individual film chips is relatively high-risk, corners can gouge the emulsion, it can soften too much, and so forth.
-- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
