Is anyone aware of or have you created a clamping style holder for slides? I would be very interested in a holder with a spring and a small clip to hold it all flat by mechanical means? Or other similar ideas? Seeing the Lobster Holder recently got me thinking about it. The closest I found is the Negative Supply version, but its not what I am thinking.
My Kodak “scanner” does a great job bulk scanning but there are problem slides that are cupped a little (or rarely, a lot) within the perfectly flat cardboard mount. There are sometimes damaged/bent cardboard mounts, too. If they are selected as a top image, they’re rescanned much more critically on the vertical film setup which is where a tool like this would come in. Right now, the best I can do is turn on the timer and try to hold it down with my fingers, or use heavy objects, but this can take a few tries as sometimes it introduces shake or alignment changes.
Aside from cutting open the slide to get the full 24x36mm frame onto glass (and then having to remount it or otherwise store it in a new way), there is no solution I am currently aware of for this. I search the forum and online a bit, too.
Sadly, it’s outside my skillset and time to design something myself. Just an idea and I would be the first buyer or tester, though I understand its extra niche, even for us! haha
Your ask is actually heavy-loaded one . You may look for holder like this which works for cardboard mounted slides and glassless plastics. I had troubling inserting and extracting Gepe mounts with glasses from this one. Most vintage slide duplicators do a decent job for slides, but they will not straighten up curled slide in cardboard mount. So my guess short of disassembling the mount you may try two things: go for aperture beyond the optimal one - say 1/13 or 1/16 to increase the depth of field ( i know about diffraction and al that stuff - but that’s the game we are playing and it may not be as terrible as some folks claim). The second thing is to place slides in properly humidified containers for weeks before scanning them - that may help flattening them down at the moment of scanning (glycerin and salt water are the mixture to look up for regiment ) . Lastly i would seriously consider option of remounting to thin plastic mount - with added benefit that cleaning / dust removal from unmounted frame becomes very trivial and time-efficient task. Good luck!
I will try some things I hadn’t considered or seen, now. The re-humidifying is interesting as well!
Also, the old cardboard mounts were expedient but, today, create so much of the dust that ends up on slides. I agree I much prefer the plastic mounts and even better for top selects, very nice glass mounts!
Just note that basically all glass mounts being produced dozens of years ago have an oxide layer on top of glass resembling a fog. Gepe admits that on their web site and notes that by itself this glass “oxide” is harmless for slides. I had to develop special cleaning procedure to clean NOS mounts in bulk from that layer before mounting my targets for sale. Just noting this so you can budget this cleaning effort for your project. I will be happy to describe the process in anyone is interested.
Over on the ‘Digitizing…’ forum Peter Orth described how it was common practice in labs to remove slides from their card mounts by carefully cutting a slit in one layer only. Once scanned it could then be put back in the mount. Personally I think it’s a shame to separate Kodachrome slides from their card mounts permanently because the mount, and particularly its date, seem to form part of the whole.
I often find myself wondering what museums and institutions do, these ‘popped’ slides must be a commom problem. I know that I’ve seen a DT Heritage video that shows how their system is able to photograph the mount as well, top and bottom I think, but that’s when they’ve left the film in place.
For what it’s worth the ancient Bowens Ilumitran had a metal slide holder a little similar to that one from Beseler, two little cart springs hold the slide up against the frame but pressure is only applied in the centre as with the Beseler, I use that on my vertical setup. Unfortunately later Bowens turned to plastic and dispensed with the springs, you just drop the slide in a tray and anyway you’d probably need to buy an entire Bowens Illumitran just to get this holder, pretty cheap in the UK but seemingly not so in the US.
Interesting to see Vlad’s information about the oxide layer on ANR mounts. Long before I got interested in camera scanning I inherited quite a few boxes of MF GEPE ANR mounts, 6x6, 6x7 & 645. They were really badly affected by this fogginess, so I, er, threw them away. Wishing I hadn’t of course because I have since wondered if a carefully cleaned 645 mount could double up as a way of copying curled 35mm frames, including borders etc. Could be masked down appropriately.
I’m using an old Beseler duplicator - basically an upside down enlarger. Film is held in fairly standard hinged negative holders but curly film pushes the two halves apart. I’ve fixed small neodymium magnets to the back (the front has a clamp) and they hold the film tightly.
Curly transparencies just have to be demounted, it’s no big deal. My neg carrier above does a decent job if there’s a bit of film left at the edges of the image but only glass (or a drum scanner!) really does the job. Someone mentioned the Wess full frame glassless mounts. They were very good, almost perfect & quick but I’ve not been able to get any for more than a decade & I’ve worn out my old ones reusing them.
@Harry Yea, I would really love pressure on all 4 sides of the slides.
As much as I LOVE a mounted slide, the mounts often cover usable (and often essential) parts of the image as these are primarily photojournalism and long-term documentary work. You end up with 23x35mm ish instead of the full frames, so for important images I personally lean towards wanting to remove them due to obstructions to the photographers original composition, sometimes drastically. Many of the slides had been well-handled and published over the years so their Kodachrome mounts are tattered even if the image is perfect. We often remount them when they are too far gone in newer plastic mounts while keeping the old mount that has metadata/notes written on it.
@DavidHoffmanuk I have looked at the Beseler duplicator before but I don’t want another whole device if I can help it, but I will consider it!
SSelvidge - The Wess mounts on eBay are not the full frame ones I had in mind. They are probably good but they will lose 1-2 mm from each edge. The Wess ones I used had an aperture of 36.1 x 24.6 mm. They have the number 500 on the inside & I think they’ve not been made for a decade or more.
Re the Beseler setup - I’ve made well over 50,000 ‘scans’ with it. It’s fast & very solid but if I were starting today I’d go for a very rigid copy stand, a mirrorless camera, whatever the best macro around 100 mm is today, a Negative Supply carrier & a means of precisely moving that carrier in 2 dimensions. Something on the lines of this - https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/256017108062
but that’s only the first one I saw & I show it only to give an idea of what I mean. I expect that there will be better options.
I seem to remember that 35mm SLR film cameras cropped the viewfinder image slightly (relative to the actual recorded frame) so that mounted slides and printed negs resembled what the photographer viewed when composing the photo?
Nevertheless I do like the idea of retrieving hidden image area on a “specific” image, at the cost of the mount but not “en masse”.
I also remember the “Quickpoint” plastic mounts which had a dob of goo to hold the film in place, but when the film is removed that dob on the film creates a sticky problem.
. You may look for holder like this which works for cardboard mounted slides and glassless plastics. I had troubling inserting and extracting Gepe mounts with glasses from this one. Most vintage slide duplicators do a decent job for slides, but they will not straighten up curled slide in cardboard mount. So my guess short of disassembling the mount you may try two things: go for aperture beyond the optimal one - say 1/13 or 1/16 to increase the depth of field ( i know about diffraction and al that stuff - but that’s the game we are playing and it may not be as terrible as some folks claim). The second thing is to place slides in properly humidified containers for weeks before scanning them - that may help flattening them down at the moment of scanning (glycerin and salt water are the mixture to look up for regiment ) . Lastly i would seriously consider option of remounting to thin plastic mount - with added benefit that cleaning / dust removal from unmounted frame becomes very trivial and time-efficient task. Good luck!