Mounting slides in glass mounts

[david_nash]

The direct question is... how DO you do it?

 

I've bought some Gepe Anti-Newton glass mounts, and am trying to clean them up

prior to mounting some transparencies. Firstly, the glass has some sort of

haze all over them, and if you look at them through a loupe they're covered in

dust, hairs, and 'drying marks'. I've tried blowing them with air, an anti-

static brush, and even a digital sensor vacuum cleaner, but they still look

pretty grotty. A clean Pentax cloth just pushes the stuff around. I've tried

washing them in warm soapy water, followed by rinse-aid, and that removes the

worst stuff. However, after letting them dry and giving a polish with the

Pentax cloth, there are still imperfections - marks around the edges of the

glass, and spots of dust, and this is all before I get some transparencies

back from the lab to mount. I don't think I'm being too fussy. but I just

can't envisage me me ever being able to process enough slides for a show...

Are there any tricks to simplify the process?

[rolfe_tessem]

I think they were probably clean before you started with all that stuff. These glass mounts are

supposed to look hazy when viewed from an angle.

[bruce levy]

They should be clean when you get them. It's possible they were wrapped and the plastic mounts off-gassed and deposited some material, but I've never had that happen.

[david_nash]

I know they're not meant to be crystal clear (due to the AN glass) but they definately have a haze on them, and they have sort of 'drip' marks on them - almost like a snail has crawled over them (I'm using my imagination there!) I checked one as soon as I removed it from the box, and they're far from clean. Washing them removed the haze, but maybe something like screen cleaner or alcohol would be better. Maybe I could try another pack from a different supplier - it's possible they've been sitting on a shelf for years - I don't suppose there's much call for them these days.

 

If they're supposed to be fine as shipped, do you do anything to prepare them before sandwiching the transparency?

[frank_nesbitt]

Sorry I can't add to these two replies. My days with glass slides were long ago. But then I

would sometimes have similar problems. I still shoot chromes and project them as well. I

haven't come across any digital system which quite matches the sparkle, clarity and impact

of Kodachrome projected through a good lens. (Not to mention archival quality.)

 

Lately I've been using a German 35mm slide mount available frrom www.porters.com in

Iowa. They are of one piece rigid plastic construction and thin enough to feed effortlessly

from a Kodak Carousel 140 slide tray, the kind with very narrow openings for each slide. I

take my paper slides apart carefully with a pen knife and slide the cut 35mm film piece

into the mount's opening where it seats with no room to spare and is held firm in the rigid

plastic. The brand is hama DSR and the mounts come in a box of 100 for US$16.49.

 

This isn't a cure for a slide popping out of focus as it heats up. I think only glass can do

that. But it does avoid the warping of paper mounts which bend and curl as they age and

often don't feed reliably from a Carousel tray. I solve the popping problem by riding

focus, or having an assistant do so. It's also an incentive to keep moving quickly on to

the next image before popping happens.

 

For those of us mired in a 20th Century technology, these mounts can be a good solution.

And with Kodachrome processing down to just one lab in the States, I may be looking for

an E-6 replacement sooner than I'd like.

[peter_mcdonough3]

Hi,

I use Wess mounts. They are best with pin-registered chromes, but work pretty well with normally shot chromes as well. They won't fit the 140 Kodak trays, but are fine in the 80 trays. Back in the dark ages of computerized slide presentations, where eight or ten machines were used, Wess mounts were the only way to keep everything regestired

They were made in every combination imaginable.

Good Luck.

Peter

[Rob F.]

Although I prefer Wess-Mounts for their ease of use and precision centering of the film, I have found that the Gepe mounts actually are cleaner out of the package compared to Wess. So I don't know what to think about your situation--especially since I find a Pentax cloth to be quite good for cleaning the Wess-Mounts. I never had to resort to washing and drying, etc.

 

How do they look on the screen if you mount an extra slide in one and project it? Probably not too good, if covered with hairs. Did you buy these new, or are they an eBay second-hand purchase? If new, and you think they were shipped dirty, maybe you should return them. This is definitely not normal!

[jtk]

I share Peter McDonough's sort of background. Based only on that ancient experience (Media Generalists, San Francisco), I strongly suspect people who think glass mounts come to you clean are not looking closely enough.

 

For serious production, Wess and Gepe required cleaning with dishwasher detergent, using an actal dishwasher hung with dozens of alligator clips. The household dishwasher had a drying mode that worked perfectly for fine crystal and so worked just as perfectly for slide mounts. We cleaned thousands per week that way for commercial shows like San Francisco Experience and Hawaii Experience. Leitz mounts were cleaner, doctor clients demanded them (and paid extra) but like the doctors themselves, they were miserable to work And lacking pin registration, they didn't register frames accurately enough for serious multi projector shows.

 

Forget using "Pentax" cloth etc. If you're working in small scale (hundreds) you'll do just as well with cotton gloves and cans of air.

[rolfe_tessem]

David,

 

The only thing I've had to do is a light blast of air from a Giotto air bulb just before placing

the film in place. I think you have gotten a bad batch or a batch that has been stored badly or

something. I would give HP Marketing a call and discuss the situation with them. Seriously, it

is not supposed to be that hard. Where did you buy them from?

[stuart_richardson]

Ok, forgive me if this is a non-sequitor, but for all the effort and expense spent on buying

and cleaning the glass mounts (they come dirty...), you might just consider getting a

better projector. They can be had for very little money these days. I bought a pradovit rt-

m for well under 1000 dollars awhile ago and it makes a huge difference. The lamp is far

more effectively cooled so the slides do not pop for quite a long time. Even when they do,

the autofocus immediately corrects for it. While you may see a minor improvement in edge

to edge sharpness with glass mounts, your color and contrast are going to suffer, and

those two are far more important to the average viewer than absolute edge sharpness. It is

one thing if you are projecting 6x6 or larger medium format slides, but if you are just

doing 35mm it seems like a huge waste of effort for dubious gains.

[david_nash]

Thanks for all the suggestions. The dishwasher routine appeals! At least I'm not the only one who's found the slide mounts to be dirty straight from the box. I'm expecting my first set of 35mm transparencies back from the lab soon, so will try projecting them first without the glass mounts. However, I've recently bought a secondhand Leica Colorplan lens (FF, I believe) and I'll try mounting one of the slides in a glass mount to compare the mounted/unmounted results. I've also bought an old Agfa 6x6 push-pull projector, and would like to mount some of my 6x6 transparencies. The Gepe 6x6 AN glass mounts are also fairly dirty (maybe not as bad as the 35mm ones) so I'm probably going to have to get to grips with glass-mounting at least one of the two formats. A new 35mm projector may be an option - I hadn't realised that some projectors 'pop' more readily than others...

[charles_stobbs3]

I think Kodak at one time made a Carousel with curved field lenses to properly project curved (popped) slides along with a preheater to pop each slide before it entered the gate.

[al_kaplan1]

Kodak offered both curved field and flat field lenses.