I've recently begun the major undertaking of transferring all my old
slides [ObOly: all taken with OM gear, of course] into Vue-All archival
pages. Being a poor uni student, living in a damp house in a humid part
of the world, my storage so far has been very much sub-optimal, with
most of my slides kept in the original boxes in a timber drawer under my
bed.
I knew before I began that I was starting too late, because it was the
evidence of fungus on some slides that got me started. Just how much too
late only became apparent when I got down to the ektachromes from 4-10
years back. Many of my old favourites are completely unviewable, with
fungus having eaten away spots all over the emulsion. Even some of my
Velvia (which I've only been using since '96) slides have significant
fungus problems.
The one nice surprise out of all the disappointment is that my
kodachromes (KR 64 was the major film I used from '90 until '96) are
almost all rescuable. Unlike the E6 films, fungus just doesn't seem to
like the emulsion side of kodachromes! It is still all over the back
side of the slides, but at least it is reasonably painless to clean off,
with just a breath and a cotton cloth.
I love the saturation of velvia, and the convenience and quality of 4
hour E6 processing at the local pro-lab (Vision Graphics, St Leonards -
nice folks, highly recommend), but I'm now seriously thinking of
switching back to kodachrome. My main disappointments with kodachrome
are the agonising wait for processing, and its flat, washed out
rendition of the colours of the Australian bush (which are quite flat
enough on their own, and need a bit of livening up IMO). Don't get me
wrong, in the right lighting it has given me some magical results, but I
find it's greens especially a bit muddy.
I've observed the recent diatribes for and against Velvia/Kodachrome, so
I know asking for advice is a bit silly, but anyway, WHAT SHOULD I
DO???? Go back to KR64 (or perhaps try K25, though if anything I want
faster, not slower!) and suffer the processing and too-natural colours?
Or trust that my new storage system (when I finally get the cash
together to build a humidity controlled cabinet) will solve the problem
and go on shooting Velvia?
Dylan
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