How to restore E6 slides of an age > 30 years.

trendland · Mar 10, 2018

The normal way today is restoring of slides from bad colors via scanning workflow - and software manipulation.
But the possible succsess is allways restricted - because there is no method with extreme color shifts.
Did you noticed color shifts on E6 slides ever?
What is your experience with slides of that age?
From my experience Kodachrome25 is looking as fresh developed last week!
And I have to state the problem with bad colors is very little on my side.
(Just a couple of Agfa and other E6 film types are "infected" )
Some of my first Ektachromes (early 80th) have a little brownish cast.
No problem from my point - I remember this brownish "look" from the time far behind.
But my urgend problem is caused from dust particles and pieces of fluff.
Some are NOT removable .......!
Some may say "ICE" and "SRD" will help.
But how to get these "auto corrected" slides back in my Rollei projector ?
I personaly find following way with particles of different origin while years of archievement onto slides.
"Dust off brushing" will not help anymore because it is in the surface of the gelantine.
A post final bath is my provisional solution. That is not removing 100% of particles but it helps much.
Perhaps I will do it again with some slides.
[Post Post final wash] .
The solution I use is simple warm water with extreme smal amounds of dish soap. [photo flow would be better].....And destilled water again and again.
[With hot water it is real easy to remove everything on the film..incl. emulsion].....So be aware of !
Have anybody made experience in this direction?

with regards

trendland · Mar 10, 2018

And in additional context I doubt on long time stability from my "last chance" procedure. Color couplers definitivly may not like to come in contact with anything after developing. But it is a way to me to use it with old slides one would normaly waste into trash because of worst condition of the slide.
Therefore the possible impact on long time stability isn't my problem.
But I guess photo flow has simular integrients of dish soap (without flavorings of course).
I would not recomand to "wash" slides as a normaly inspection procedure - I should state.

with regards

glbeas · Mar 10, 2018

You would want to use a stabilizer bath after washing the slides, preferably one that will discourage the growth of fungus.

guangong · Mar 10, 2018

My Agfa slides are at least 40 years old and don’t seem to have suffered any damage. I used Agfa back then because I preferred how people were rendered. My current E6 slides date from the demise of Kodachrome 120.
So not useful to comment on. It would seem to me that you have a ystorage problem. I have no idea how to resuscitate slides other than prints corrected by computer.

trendland · Mar 10, 2018

guangong said:
My Agfa slides are at least 40 years old and don’t seem to have suffered any damage. I used Agfa back then because I preferred how people were rendered. My current E6 slides date from the demise of Kodachrome 120.
So not useful to comment on. It would seem to me that you have a ystorage problem. I have no idea how to resuscitate slides other than prints corrected by computer.

You are right - against color shifts nothing will help - if it has happened.
Here is one example of Agfa Ct 18 (1977):
Oh weh .....I come back later because it is missing.
with regards

trendland · Mar 10, 2018

glbeas said:
You would want to use a stabilizer bath after washing the slides, preferably one that will discourage the growth of fungus.

To add stabilizers is not the worst aproach if slides are washed again.
But within 40 years I haven't noticed fungus on film. Hope I will not see fungus soon......
with regards

Sirius Glass · Mar 10, 2018

I have found no chemical solutions to help with fading or color shift. If one can find a gel filter to compensate for a slide's color shift, in a few years the color will shift some more.

Down Under · Mar 10, 2018

A most interesting thread, this, with many good contributions!

Like many of us old-tiimers, I have slides showing some degree of color shift. Amazingly, my Agfas from a 1970 trip to Bali show almost no color shift or deterioration at all. Ektachromes from the late '70s to 1990 have shifted more. Kodachromes remain as good as (almost) the day they were processed and returned to me in the now-highly-collectable yellow Kodak plastic boxes. My archives contain several hundred very old (mid 1940s to about 1965) Kodachromes shot by my late uncle in Canada, who used a state-of-the-art Contax II from the late 1930s until he passed away in 1979. All his slides are still 90% as good as new,with very slight color shift towards magenta,easily scanned out. Alas, my color negatives from 1962 when I took up photography to the late 1970s, well, too bad, so sad...

All the above said, last year I scanned several hundred color negatives (mostly Kodacolor and also a few other odd films) dating from about 1969 to the mid-'70s when I lived a vagabond life and wandered around Asia and the Pacific with a Pentax and three Hanimex lenses. Scans were made with an Epson V600 and the packaged Epson software. Quite a few of my older negs had almost entirely faded. Somehow, the Epson produced not only usable images but many with almost entirely natural colors. With a flatbed and 35mm film, as expected the sharpness wasn't the best, but at this late stage in my life I was happy to get anything at all from my fast-fading collection of old films.

A Kodak Australia expert I talked to in the '80s and '90s once told me that I should never, ever try to treat old slides with new chemistry (stabiliser) or even water, as the color dyes were by then very unstable and dousing the slides in liquids could easily set off unpredictable chain reactions of changes. Best to keep one's originals as they are and rely on modern techniques - scanning and post-processing.

Of course this means we have to accept that our film images are not indestructible and the passing of time changes everything. I remind myself of this every time I look in a mirror at home.

DREW WILEY · Mar 14, 2018

A lot has to do with storage conditions. Slides tightly cooped up in boxes with little opportunity for ventilation in a humid, hot, or polluted environment are going to be the most susceptible.

glbeas · Mar 14, 2018

trendland said:
To add stabilizers is not the worst aproach if slides are washed again.
But within 40 years I haven't noticed fungus on film. Hope I will not see fungus soon......
with regards

Considering the final bath in E-4 and E-6 is a stabilizing bath I would consider it prudent to replace it if you have to wash it off. I think back then it was a formalin based substance, newer stabilizers eliminated that. Not sure what you would use nowadays thats compatible so I would be wary of washing the film with anything but a proper film cleaner.
Its good to know you see no fungus, Ive had some of my old slides succumb to that. Its not pretty.

trendland · Mar 15, 2018

glbeas said:
Considering the final bath in E-4 and E-6 is a stabilizing bath I would consider it prudent to replace it if you have to wash it off. I think back then it was a formalin based substance, newer stabilizers eliminated that. Not sure what you would use nowadays thats compatible so I would be wary of washing the film with anything but a proper film cleaner.
Its good to know you see no fungus, Ive had some of my old slides succumb to that. Its not pretty.

As I understood PE in a correct way (it was mentioned different times) modern "stabilizers" get in chemical reaction with color couplers. The formed a stable basis. How stable it is is depending ob the time of storage/archivement. No stabilisation could avoid color shifts over many decades. But to simple "wash out" these stabilizers of modern type - I am not shure? Theoretical everything could happen - also massive fungus.
But I meant indeed a new stabilisation after "restorage" post washing step.
with regards

trendland · Mar 15, 2018

And yes "formalin" is of cause the right thing. It is not so good to drink - we don't want to inhalate so much of it - but it seams to be ok to old slides.

with regards

PS : Every method here is meant as compromise solution. To me just to get smallest particles away.

jtk · Mar 17, 2018

Whatever fluid you try, test an insignificant slide from that lot to see what happens.

It would be easy to correct color in a proper 35mm duplicate slide, perhaps perfectly.

Gerald C Koch · Mar 18, 2018

Sirius Glass said:
I have found no chemical solutions to help with fading or color shift. If one can find a gel filter to compensate for a slide's color shift, in a few years the color will shift some more.

+1 Once the shift occurs there is no way to restore the slides.

trendland · Mar 19, 2018

Gerald C Koch said:
+1 Once the shift occurs there is no way to restore the slides.

Restauring color shifts isn't possible - of course. The same is with colors wich are bleached (when colors lost more and more saturation ). By the way the normaly reason of shifts because the lost of saturation isn't with same intensity to each layer.
Well - here it is going about dust particles wich aren't remouvable from normal procedures.
Some slides (the absolut minority) have particles within the emulsion [after 30 years of storage].
The only way I found out to smaler the problem is a restoring bath. This helps to remouve > 80 % of "deep" dust particles.
The danger with such procedure is to smaler the long live stability. But the slides with that kind of problem have an age of 30 years meanwhile.
And the alternate (some recomanded) would be a spezial chemistry of a cleaner. The most cleaning fluids are from alcohol. And they allways

trendland · Mar 19, 2018

.....they allways clean just the direct surface of films - from fresh finger prints for example [I never used this stuff - better to avoid fingerprints 100%....].
But the idea to add stabilizer to the wash isn't so bad from my point.

with regards

PS : .......we aren't talking about new films and stabilizers. We just talk about very old slides (only a few ones) in extreme bad condition - I decided not to give into trash - I tryed to minimalize the dust wich is deep deep in the surface of film.
Normaly dust of spray can remove it.

Wallendo · Mar 19, 2018

I have some Ektachrome and 3M slides from around 1960 whish have faded and undergone color shifts. I have scanned these and attempted to correct the color shifts, but the colors have shifted in a heterogeneous fashion on the slide and it has been difficult. (To be honest, I suspect that there were other issues with these slides (many of which were 127) such as light leaks and poor exposure.)

I recently found some Kodachrome slides of my own from a European Trip in 1982 which had been affected by fungus. I scanned the slides and removed the image defects with photoshop. I wish I had some way to print the digital reconstructions back to slide film, but that doesn't seem to be a readily available service.

After scanning the slides, I did my best to remove the fungus from the slides to prevent further damage. The slides now have clear areas where the fungus used to be, but hopefully further infection has been minimized. I may need to find some formalin to further protect them.

trendland · Mar 19, 2018

Same as I did.First I gave some away for professional scanning.Later I tryed my best to get them in condition for projection with less dust.with regards

Wallendo said:
I have some Ektachrome and 3M slides from around 1960 whish have faded and undergone color shifts. I have scanned these and attempted to correct the color shifts, but the colors have shifted in a heterogeneous fashion on the slide and it has been difficult. (To be honest, I suspect that there were other issues with these slides (many of which were 127) such as light leaks and poor exposure.)

I recently found some Kodachrome slides of my own from a European Trip in 1982 which had been affected by fungus. I scanned the slides and removed the image defects with photoshop. I wish I had some way to print the digital reconstructions back to slide film, but that doesn't seem to be a readily available service.

After scanning the slides, I did my best to remove the fungus from the slides to prevent further damage. The slides now have clear areas where the fungus used to be, but hopefully further infection has been minimized. I may need to find some formalin to further protect them.

glbeas · Mar 19, 2018

trendland said:
Restauring color shifts isn't possible - of course. The same is with colors wich are bleached (when colors lost more and more saturation ). By the way the normaly reason of shifts because the lost of saturation isn't with same intensity to each layer.
Well - here it is going about dust particles wich aren't remouvable from normal procedures.
Some slides (the absolut minority) have particles within the emulsion [after 30 years of storage].
The only way I found out to smaler the problem is a restoring bath. This helps to remouve > 80 % of "deep" dust particles.
The danger with such procedure is to smaler the long live stability. But the slides with that kind of problem have an age of 30 years meanwhile.
And the alternate (some recomanded) would be a spezial chemistry of a cleaner. The most cleaning fluids are from alcohol. And they allways

The best results I’ve had were when I converted to cmyk and boosted the weak layers with levels or curves independently. Even then it was not anywhere near perfect but good enough to look right.

Poisson Du Jour · Mar 19, 2018

There is no real, proven fix for repatriating faded slides. It is an accepted risk of using that type of media in photography.
Having said that, correct storage over the long term (consider if they will be around, and you, in 20, 30 or 40 years!) definitely helps.
My own Kodachrome 64 and 200 slides date from mid-1977 to 1993. After 1993 I commenced shooting all of my production photography on Velvia and Provia. All of these slides are stored in clear slide sleeves in an ordinary, unremarkable 3-ring binder and stored in the wardrobe. None of Kodachrome, Velvia or Provia exhibit any fading whatsoever. In a very sentimental way, I do like the Kodachrome slides best because of the journey of discovery they took me on in my early years of photography. Back then, my photographic fodder was bright red MG cars, graveyard tombstones, wildflowers, imposing gum trees and snapshots and masterpieces of a long involvement in bicycle touring.

Ektachrome is different. I have only a small number of scattered 1979 Ektachrome slides in storage — a few of which were retrieved last September(?) for viewing during visits of a friend from overseas. These Ektachrome slides have a distinctly odd bluish tinge and pale colour. I did not use Ektachrome again after running a few rolls through my first camera in 1979 (Olympus OM10, replacing a K1000), finding Kodachrome more to my liking, despite at the time knowing nothing about how to keep them for 40 years, much less expecting me to still be around that many years hence! A kidney transplant in 1977 is actually still chugging along as Australia's only working (albeit declining) example of vintage surgical techniques in use in pediatric surgery at that time.

And so...careful and considered dry storage from the outset is probably the key to very long-term stability, but we cannot go around expecting that anything and everything made by man lasts forever!

Sirius Glass · Mar 20, 2018

Poisson Du Jour said:
There is no real, proven fix for repatriating faded slides. It is an accepted risk of using that type of media in photography.

I have accepted that. If I need the color of a slide restored, I deal with it on an individual basis.

trendland · Mar 20, 2018

Best way to avoid fungus is to mount glassless. It may also avoid too much moisture (after projection for example) - that will longer live time and stability of colors.But you all definitive are knowing this.The real big disadvantage from glassless mounting is still : D U S T......
with regards

Alan Edward Klein · Mar 20, 2018

50 year old Kodachromes https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/albums/72157626911395064
30+ year old Ektachromes. What's interesting is that the underwater shots were auto-color corrected in the scanner better than what they look like originally as far as natural colors. I had to spot the film of course and did make some adjustments, but all the film was pretty intact.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/albums/72157627032961729
https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/albums/72157625526207614

Sirius Glass · Mar 20, 2018

trendland said:
Best way to avoid fungus is to mount glassless. It may also avoid too much moisture (after projection for example) - that will longer live time and stability of colors.But you all definitive are knowing this.The real big disadvantage from glassless mounting is still : D U S T......
with regards

If you live in an area with low relative humidity, then glass mounted slides are the way to go, especially if the slide needs to be cropped.

trendland · Mar 21, 2018

Sirius Glass said:
If you live in an area with low relative humidity, then glass mounted slides are the way to go, especially if the slide needs to be cropped.

Yes that is absolute correct - in desert "like" areas you have not to care about
humidity that's a central key to livetime (not only in regard of slides) see :

with regards

How to restore E6 slides of an age > 30 years.

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