When I was a young teenager I used an Instamatic camera for my snapshots. I used colour slide film because it was the cheapest way of getting a photograph at that time. I now have boxes of slides, taken with different cameras, slowly decaying away. Many have mould marks on them.
A few years ago I made an initial attempt to scan these in to my computer and, although this worked OK for a reasonably exposed photo, the scanning process seemed to enhance the marks made by the mould – as you can see there are many marks on this photo to the right.
However, I discovered that I could get a better image by using my digital camera with a macro lens. Using this has given the image on the left which, I am sure, you will agree is a lot cleaner.
Another problem was with colour casts – this could vary from red:
(yes, that is me in the 6th form at school many years ago…) to violet:
One of the biggest problems though was poor exposure. The camera was a simple fixed focus, fixed exposure, device. So, many images were quite dark or too light. A typical photo, as taken by my setup (described below), was like this on the right. Even then the camera copying this has made some exposure adjustments. With a bit of editing I managed to get this as a final image:
A bit of an improvement on the original. At least I now have some images to reminisce over with my friends.
The setup:
Years ago I bought a slide duplicator for my film camera. Although this worked OK, I was never satisfied with the quality of the photos (many of the originals were taken with better cameras). Now that I have a cropped format sensor on my digital camera, this duplicator was no longer usable – it cropped half of the image out. So I took the thing to bits so that I could utilise the slide (and film) carrier, made a barrel to connect this with my macro lens and mounted the setup on a piece of wood as shown below:
Black cardboard, black foamcore, black foam sheet, Sugru, Blu Tack… To provide the light I used a dedicated flashgun on an extension lead. I used the camera’s auto exposure setting which gave a reasonable level of exposure compensation.
Overall, I am quite satisfied with the results. I have worked through all the Instamatic slides, those taken with a Zenith B (remember those? Russian made and built like a tank!) and I am currently processing those taken with an Olympus 35ECR compact camera – this I took in my overland trip through Africa in the early 1970s.