Buying slide mounts off ebay, what mount type, vintage mounts etc

kingbuzzie

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So I'm still engaged in the rich man's hobby of slide photography (anyone have a 6x6 projector they would like to sell me for cheap?). It looks like I have to turn to ebay for my mounts. In the past I used the thick plastic gepe that snapped together. I mounted by hand with just a pair of scissors and white gloves. No looking on fleabay, there are so many different brands of mounts, types of mounting systems etc. I just don't know where to begin. I thought about the hama dsr system, but there aren't a lot of slide mounts available for cheap with that system. 35mm slide mount types, brand recommendations?
 

AZD

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I have been using cardboard mounts with heat sensitive adhesive. They’re pretty easy to set with the edge of a hot iron. It can get a little tedious and time consuming, but they’re cheap and they work well.

Watch out for mounts thicker than 1.8mm. There are a lot of nice plastic 3mm thick mounts, but they won’t fit in Kodak carousels and some slide copying devices.
 

Dirb9

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B&H still has heat sealed cardboard mounts brand new, and they are the cheapest option at 1000 for $40 but they're slow to mount. The only other new option I'm aware of are the AP Pro CAM/CS II style mounts. AP Pro, Agfa, Kaiser, and Kindermann all made compatible mounts, and they're pretty fast to mount with the dedicated slide mounter. The difference between the CS and CS II is just which direction the mounts open (long vs short side), but as a result, you'll need a different mounter for each type. Easiest just to go with the CS II style.

The Hama DSR is a pretty nice system, but as you've noted, you're stuck with finding whatever mounts happen to show up used. Both the DSR and the CS II are under 1.8mm thick, as AZD noted, so they'll fit in the thinner trays.

Both Gepe and Pakor made two styles of glassless plastic mounts, ones that simply press together or pry apart to mount, and ones that require a machine. The mounts designed for machines cannot be used by hand, as the machine either melts or deforms rivets to lock the halves in place. At this point, given that the mounts are no longer available new, it's not worth tracking down a machine to use the mounts unless you come across a case of a few thousand mounts.

I've been told by a few different labs that plastic mounts (besides the CS II style) are not being produced any more, by Pakor, Gepe, or anyone else. Cardboard mounts I expect to be available for the foreseeable future, as they're much easier to manufacture than plastic ones.
 
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kingbuzzie

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I guess I shouldn't struggle with yet another obsolete tech and go with the AP CS II. Thanks for weighing in.
 

Michael Howard

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The plastic Pakon mounts with the foldover rivet style are very easy to use with a small flat-tipped soldering iron. I've mounted hundreds of slides with these. If you find/see a box of 1000 of these for cheap, don't be afraid to get them. I few trials and you're on your way.
 

Kino

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Matin slide mounts from South Korea can be purchased on Ebay. They state they are 2mm thick for the 6x6 size.

 

Nicholas Lindan

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I use glass / plastic Gepe mounts when needed. Mostly I find they are not needed - the cardboard mounts used by the processing lab are OK by me.

If I were processing my own film I would use mounts that can be re-used, like Gepe's. Apart from family and vacation photos, which are properly aide-mémoires, 99.9% of what I take are discards. 1 gem in 30 rolls of film, yeah, about right.
 

vendo81d

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B&H has discontinued the Pic Cardboard Mounts recently. I had been buying them for years. Apparently this is the result of Dwayne's Photo now being the sole producer of these mounts and their refusal to sell them to anyone else. I had been buying boxes of 1000 Pic Mounts from B&H for about $40. All I'm finding on eBay these days are highly overpriced Kodak Ready Mounts. If anyone has any cardboard mounts (especially Pic Mounts) they are willing to sell at a reasonable price, please let me know.
 

vendo81d

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If you have a source for reasonably priced cardboard mounts, please let me know. B&H Photo has discontinued selling them.
 

Ivo Stunga

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And GEPE is out of slide mount business...
 

guangong

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For 6x6 and 6x7 slides, I recommend glass slides. A few years ago I scoured eBay for some time and accumulated enough glass 66 &67 to last my lifetime. It just takes some time and perseverance but worth it. For 35mm glassless will do. The plastic Gepe are easiest to work with.
As for projectors, automatic projectors for 66 are pricey. I have a manual 66 once marketed by Leitz, and a manual 67 made by Linhof. I have an automatic 35mm projector, but have a Leitz manual projector just in case. Projecting a MF slide can be stunning. Hasselblad and Rollei sold MF projectors, but at a hefty price. The downside of auto projectors is the availability of repair.
 

AZD

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If you have a source for reasonably priced cardboard mounts, please let me know. B&H Photo has discontinued selling them.

Unfortunately I don’t. I had a stock of old cardboard mounts which I have since used up. I was planning on stocking up at B&H but that appears to be a dead end now.
 

willfrancis

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I would also be keen to hear about potential supplies of the Pic (or other) cardboard mounts - it’s a real shame B&H have pulled them. I’d been planning to buy a couple more boxes, but it seems if you snooze you lose!

With supplies really seeming to dwindle now, I wonder if it would be viable to investigate 3-D printing mounts as a community? I’m aware of the standard arguments that slide shooters’ “niche within a niche within a niche” status means there’s not really a commercial argument to catering for us specifically (fair enough!), but for those of us that just can’t do without projection there must be a way to find some sort of collective independence.
 

armadsen

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Cinestill sells plastic mounts and a mounter for them:


 

Old_Dick

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+1
 

MattKing

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Would Dwaynes sell them to you?
 

vendo81d

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I don't think it was B&H's choice to pull them. I chatted with one of their representatives and I think they would still carry them if they could get them. My understanding is that Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kansas makes the mounts now. The problem is that Dwayne's management has made the decision not to sell to anyone else and only produce mounts for their own use. They won't even sell to me directly. So, you can send your film to Dwayne's for processing and get it back in cardboard mounts, but you might also get one of their patented scratches which is why I quit using Dwayne's many years ago. The laboratory I use now processes my film without scratching it, but they don't do mounts and even if they did, they wouldn't be able to get cardboard mounts anymore. I checked with Denver Digital Imaging because they use cardboard mounts to see if they would sell to me and they said they couldn't because they were having trouble finding mounts for themselves. AgX was doing cardboard mounts too, but I'm sure he is running into the same problem. Mounting myself was no problem for me because I have a nice Seary mounting press that I bought on eBay and refurbished. I was down to my last box of 1000 mounts when I tried to order from B&H and found that they were discontinued. Now, I only have enough mounts left for about 20 rolls of film and I just shot 10 rolls over the weekend.

Regarding your second point, the mounts themselves don't seem complicated and only consist of two materials - cardboard and dry mounting tissue. I don't think you'd use 3D printing, but a diecut machine like the Cricut to cut out the mounts. I'm still exploring making my own mounts, but I have to find the correct materials to use in regard to thickness. Even if I find the right materials, I think it might be cost prohibitive to make my own mounts.
 

vendo81d

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Would Dwaynes sell them to you?

No, they won't. Here is a quote from the response I got from them: "Management has decided to focus on incoming orders and getting the ones we have in house developed and mounted. We will not be filling any additional orders that are not directly used for the orders in house. I apologize for this inconvenience. I did ask that if and when they decide to go back to making mounts to sell to let me know so I can let you know." It sounds like perhaps I will be able to buy from them in the future, but that's not guaranteed. Notice the use of the word "if" in her reply.
 

koraks

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I wonder if it would be viable to investigate 3-D printing mounts as a community?
I tried it once, for the heck of it.

It's a non-starter for production purposes. Throughput is way too low even for a niche-within-a-niche market and the tolerances are dodgy for this purpose.

Slides mounts are fairly easy shapes, to the reasonable way to do this would be to get a die made in China and die cast them, or die cut if it needs to be cardboard/paper.
 

vendo81d

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I just got some new information from Dwayne's Photo. I was under the mistaken impression that they were making mounts, but refusing to sell them to others. It turns out that they can't get mounts either and they have kept going only because they had new old stock mounts on hand. This is what I was told when I asked about what type of adhesive is used in the mounts:

"I checked with management and they said, unfortunately we have no idea what type of adhesive is used on the slide mounts. Likewise we do not know any other specifics about the manufacturing as the company we originally purchased from went out of business over a decade ago. We are currently using up the last of our 20 year old stock and do not have replacement options available."
 

vendo81d

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I guess I was right the first time. Dwayne's can still make mounts, they just don't want to sell them to anyone. I got this e-mail today:

"From what I understand we have plenty of stock still for customers sending in film we just can't afford to make or sell anymore on the side. The lab needs to focus on the slide orders we have in house and make that the main focus/priority."
 

cmacd123

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I guess I was not being paranoid when I got a couple of thousand mounts back a few years ago.
 
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BrianShaw

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Many decades ago I used those mounts, as well as the glass mounts too, and they definitly can be snapped together between fingers. Gepe made a mounting press that made the chore just a bit easier and reduced the risk of tweaking the glass mounts, which could break the glass. Here is an example:



I seem to recall some other brands making similar devices...
 
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