Identifying Kodachrome slides

[john_simon5]

<p>I have recently acquired a Coolscan 5000 with a view to digitizing my dad's slide collection.<br>

I have just opened up the first few boxes of slides and find that some are mounted in plastic mounts, some in cardboard that say Kodachrome and some in cardboard that say Ektachrome (and some are minis). In some cases the mounts change but the subject remains the same, suggesting it is from the same roll of film. This leads me to my question:</p>

<p>How does one identify that a particular slide was shot on Kodachrome as opposed to some other film? (Given that this matters for choosing the right settings for the scanner.)<br>

If I scan a Kodachrome slide as a normal positive, will my error become apparent in some way?</p>

<p>(I have some additional questions related to slides in general - would it be possible for me to open up some of the plastic mounts to look for film identification in the margins and then be able to re-close them? I have never dealt with slides before so need to do some basic learning about the 'technology' - is there a basic primer on them somewhere?.)</p>

<p>Any assistance would be appreciated.</p>

[howard_m]

<p>the Kodachrome slides, when viewed at an angle held between you and an in-front light source will seem more 3 dimensional/layered than Ekta; like a transparent sand painting of layers. Ekta *tends* to be cooler/bluer than Koda.</p>

[franklin_polk]

<p>To add onto what Howard said, it really looks like a relief image on the emulsion side of Kodachrome. Older ektachrome kind of has this, but it isnt as great as Kodachrome of any vintage. It is pretty cool actually. IIRC, the scanner puts more work into recording the darker areas with the Kodachrome setting vs the regular setting. It also turns off ICE. ICE won't work with Kodachrome as it will read all the depressions and varying thickensses as dust. The only scanner out there that works with Kodachrome and ICE is the Coolscan 9000. Yes, you can open up both cardboard and plastic slides pretty easily. The cardboard ones can be split open carefully with a knife on the edge at the halfway point. The plastic ones usually have a spot where you can pry them open. However, in most cases, you won't be able to close them again, you'll need to remount them. It is pretty easy, fortunately. 100 mounts at b&h are under $20, and you can probably pick up the press cheaply on ebay. </p>

[JDMvW]

<p>Lots of scanners can handle Kodachrome. I've done literally thousands of them on a Canoscan 4000F. Got decent results from a Canoscan 9900F as well.</p>

<p>I personally think you'll do better on <em>any</em> slides by cleaning the slides really carefully before you scan and turning off the ICE unless you're only using the scans for web display.</p>

[john_simon5]

<p>Thanks. I think I can see what you are talking about with the 3-dimensional quality of some in Kodachrome mounts.</p>

<p>I thought that the Coolscan 5000 could handle Kodachrome and ICE. At any rate, what is the best way to clean the slides? I've found a number of blower brushes with the slides that look like the ticket (The "U.N Blower Brush" for Camera Lens and Nega-Film with some talk about static electricity and what not - although it only mentions negative film on the box I presume it would work for positive as well)</p>

[benbangerter]

<p>If the colors are lovely and the slide looks like it might have been taken last week, it's Kodachrome!</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>Quick note:<br>

Cleaning is best done with a "rocket"-style blower first. Then a very soft brush (never, ever touch the fibers or it will spread grease - ask yourself why fingerprinting crime scenes works). Some slides came from the processor (even Kodak toward the end) with some stuff embeded on the slide. Do hand spotting on the image using things like the cloning brush, etc. This avoids any diffusion of the image, and artifacts from the automatic cleaning" processes.</p>

<p>in some cases, where the slide has fungus or has got wet or whatever, take the slide out of the mount and clean with something like Edwal's Film Cleaner and a frequently washed, soft, and lintless cotton cloth.</p>

[will_daniel1]

<p>Ben was over-generalizing. I have hundreds of Agfachrome slides in which "... the colors are lovely and the slide looks like it might have been taken last week..."</p>

[john_simon5]

<p>On a random sampling of slides I note some very red slides from the early 60s, but equally there are non-Kodachrome slides that seem to have retained their colour from then very well. Indeed, most of the slides from 1960 to 2000 seem to be in pretty good shape. But I will agree - when I take out a Kodachrome from then and compare it to a non-Kodachrome - the Kodachrome really pops.</p>

<p>(On further investigation I also have also discovered some colour and B&W negatives from the 1970s - I wonder what the colour negatives will look like upon scanning...)</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>Usually, the magenta slides from aging can be restored fairly easily to something closer to the original. It seems to usually be the green that has faded the most, so you can either use the slider to push up green, or in very many cases, just hitting "auto color" will do most of the job.</p>

<p>The same thing is true of color negatives, both those that have preserved their colors, and for those that have not --once scanned, just a little post-processing will restore faded colors to a great degree.</p>

[john_simon5]

<p>Thanks JDM.</p>

<p>Is ROC from the ICE suite better than Auto Colour for faded slides? I was under the impression that ROC might use some more complicated levels adjustments to account for the particular way colours fade and keep the colour balance throughout highlights and shadows better than just using Auto Colour might. Any experience with this?</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>No, I haven't tried that. Sorry. Perhaps someone else knows?</p>

[peter_york]

<p>"I thought that the Coolscan 5000 could handle Kodachrome and ICE."<br /> <br /> No, it cannot. The CoolScan 9000 is the only scanner supporting ICE4 Professionel.<br /> A very good (but expensive) alternative is to use SilverFast's dust and scratch remove functionality iSRD allowing to manually adjust the corrections on different layers. In contrast to similar functions you can prevent destroying details.<br /> SilverFast has some other useful features for scanning kodachromes, but you have to scan a lot of slides to reason its price.</p>