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Re: [OM] IMG: Family Kodachromes, 1950-53

Subject: Re: [OM] IMG: Family Kodachromes, 1950-53
From: Chuck Norcutt <chucknorcutt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2016 09:48:18 -0500
It certainly sounds like you have the situation well in hand.

While the antithesis of doing it quickly, I was wondering if you could make a much longer exposure to brighten the shadows. That, of course, risks blowing out the highlights but perhaps two exposures could be merged with HDR software.

On a related note I have a friend who used his ancient slide projector and his little Canon P&S to copy old family slides. My first thought was that it wouldn't do a good job but, as it turned out, he managed to capture everything worth capturing on those 1950s Kodachrome and other slides. There were lots of poorly focused ones and image motion blurring and the capture technique was always at least up to the quality of the original images. The color on the Kodachrome was still pretty good but Ektachrome and others were faded. I showed him how to use Microsoft Photo Gallery to do simple edits and they were elated.

Chuck Norcutt


On 2/22/2016 9:38 PM, Peter Klein wrote:
Thanks for the feedback, Chuck:  The ES-1 slide copier is advertised to
work with Nikon full-frame macro lenses of 50 or 60mm. Micro 4/3 is
about 2x, so I couldn't use my 50/3.5 OM macro, which would be 100
equivalent.  Too bad.  I'd need several inches of extension between the
lens and the ES-1. A standard 4/3 Olympus macro of 35/3.5 is still
available, which is reasonably priced today and might work if it's not
too long for the ES-1. There's also a Panasonic micro 4/3 30/2.8 macro
which I know will work, because a friend uses it. But it lists for just
under $400.

The slides are indeed very contrasty. I'm bringing the shadows up a bit
in Capture One as I process the RAW files, but doing that beyond a
certain point just makes them ugly.

None of the slides are super-sharp. Under a 30x loupe, the grain is
sharp, but all the images have some motion blur or misfocus. No wonder,
we're talking ASA 10 film here. That's 1/80 at f/5.6 of 1/160 at f/4 in
bright sunshine, and it just gets slower from there.

I'm thinking that the 28/2.8 OM lens may be good enough. It does not
quite resolve the film grain, although I can still focus the camera on
the grain texture at 14x electronic magnification. But what's the point
of resolving the grain if the highest resolution of the image is lower
than that? The images I'm getting looks to me as good as I see under the
loupe.

If I find a slide that really warrants it, I can always get out the
Canon FS-4000 film scanner. It can do a dual pass scan to open up the
shadows. But for most of the work, this is *so* much faster and easier.

--Peter


 > You'll have to re-rig the setup.  The Zuiko 4/3 macro is 60mm.
 >
 > There are lots of very deep shadows but I can't tell if that's
underexposure of the copy or underexposure of the original.
 >
 > Chuck Norcutt

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