Just had a customer offer me the job of restoring and putting to disk, a collection of 150 colour glass slides. These are not something I've seen before in this size and quantity. The slides are positive images on glass that are 3 x 3 inch square. They date from around 1950 ish and are mostly in very good condition. Now in the past I have had a few large glass slides, that I've photographed via an old professional light box. This seemed to give better results than trying to scan them with a back light.
Just wondering if anybody has dealt with this size slide before, and what methods they found best for digitising the images? I'm still thinking photographing the images is going to be best, but open to any ideas :D

Oh, man! Dealing with glass is the pits. I've only done it once and that was an acrylic painting on glass and I spent literally days getting it "right". Mine was a larger piece and only one, not 150. I'll be following this thread to see if there is anyone with suggestions dealing with glass.

For my project, I ended up putting a light lime green poster board behind the piece and scanning that. Lime green was not a color in the subject material so that reduce much of the glare and made doing a color selection and deleting the bulk of the background easier.

I'm getting the slide collection today, so will spend this weekend trying out a few methods. Best thing about it is, they are wanted before Xmas :bawling:
At least there are only 10-15 that require any work doing on them. The rest are just slight adjustments for colour correction :D .

Hi Chris.

These sound like old magic lantern pictures. They were popular in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.

They were projected onto a screen or wall with a magic lantern which was lit with a carbide lamp.

There were two types. Some were proper photographs taken with a camera and then hand coloured but a lot were all drawn and painted onto the glass.

Take care with them as they are becoming quite collectable. Take a look on Ebay. They sell for about £5.00 each minimum depending on the content.

There are even magic lantern societies
http://www.magiclantern.org.uk/
http://www.magiclanterns.org/

And here are some examples
http://www.winternet.com/~akaske/Personal/lantern.html

As for copying them. You need to borrow my Chromega. :glasses:
http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/input-output-workflow/15321-batch-slide-scanning.html


Hope this helps.

Ken

Hi Ken,
When I was told they were glass slides, I assumed they were lantern slides. But they aren't, well from what I can see anyway. Each glass slide is exactly 3" square, with a plastic clip on (removable) frame around the edge that makes a total size of 4" square. The frames have the name of a photo studio in Leeds on them, and they seem to have been custom made to fit the glass. The images were taken between 1948 and 1951, and show some landscapes, wedding shots and a few family shots. They were taken by the customers grandfather (no longer with us), but they have no idea why they were on glass.
I've looked all over the net, and can't find anything that matches them at all. I'm going to contact customer on Monday and ask permission to post a photo of one on here, as they are also trying to find out exactly what they were for.

Hi Chris

Maybe they were for projection in a cinema or something. They are certainly for some sort of professional use.

Look forward to seeing one

Here is a brief history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transparency_(photography)


Ken.

Thanks for the link, will have a look through later. He was a budding amateur photographer, but never a Pro . But some of the images of wildlife and flowers are amazing. It must have cost ££££ or $$$$$ to have these done, so I would assume they were shots he liked the most.