Old Fools Journal: Making do

From a 35mm slide taken somewhere in the South China Sea from the deck of the USS Mansfield DD728 by me.




After two days of discovering what does not work I have now decided to call in the professionals. You see I have these 40 to 50 year old slides, both 35 and 16mm, that I want to digitize so I decided I could do it myself with what I had on hand. I was persistent and I did get a few acceptable images but all in all the most positive thing is I that found out what did not work.

First I tried just focusing my 8.2 megapixal digital camera on a free standing slide that was backlite. I got an image but it was really poor. The problem was that my camera's close up function will not focus with the camera closer than about 6 inches and I needed to be under an inch.
Next I tried a box with a hole in it for the slides backlight. I did get some recognizable images but the problem was the camera's auto exposure was getting a different signal at the sensor than what the lens was seeing.
Finally I just stuck the hand viewer up to the lens with some reflected light on the light diffuser and got a few acceptable images with the 35mm slides but with the 16mm slides I get nothing.


From a slide of the Golden Gate bridge from the north side taken by me 1960.

Like I said these slides are 40 to 50 years old and taken with a variety of cheap cameras and all with out the aid of a flash attachment. Cameras are much different now than they were then.

Why all this trouble? Well for one thing I have more time than money and I don't have a 100 slides I want. I may not even have 50 so you see it's not worth spending the money for equipment. So what is the hang up? The last time I used a mail photo service part of my film was lost. I got part of it back and since it was all shipped together I know they got it. Customer service was not nice and in fact I got the impression that they did not give a shit. There was one picture on the entire order that will not and in fact cannot ever be duplicated and it is the one that SWMBO (she who must be obeyed) reminds me of often. Of all the pictures I have taken of the "Princess" it is the ONE. All she has to do is mention the "balloon picture" and I know I'm in for it. 'nough said.

When all was said and done with this experiment I felt I had about the same results that this guy had.