ALL MAY N OT B E LOST

I post photos that I had taken over many years. Many of the slides are over 40 years old. During that time I used many different manufacture's films; Kodachrome which has stood up with little deterioration, Ektachrome also made by Kodak but with different dyes, Agfacrome a good German film, Fugi which is losing tone and material, Anaschrome which had unfortunately a very short life before deterioration and one inexpensive mail order product that used movie negative film and when processed was returned on a positive film media. Although this was a fast film the slides have all lost color and the images are just red. The slides themselves are fading some more rapidly the others.

I was such a fanatic about getting pictures that I usually traveled with two reflex (Pentax) camera bodies so that I could use different film media. Of course I also had an assortment of interchangeable lenses. I would shoot multiple exposures in the hopes of getting the one perfect picture. How times have changed, today's digital cameras have all the good features plus you can immediately see what you got, and shoot again if you did not like it. Also memory discs are not as bulky as large rolls of film that had to be protected from airport screening xrays.

With today's many inexpensive photo program software it is possible to salvage some thing digitally from bad slides. I will use for example two slides which I just scanned; the first one was taken on that old negative movie film and the slide I received was on a positive film. The original colors were excellent but the slides have all deteriorated.

As you can see the image is of good quality, however the colors have all changed to tones of red..

The solution was to use a program that produced this "grey tone" black and white picture


The second picture was also taken in 1979 in Istanbul. However this time I was using Fugi film which had outstanding colors. Again the deteriorated slide was now in shades of red.

I used one program and was able without difficulty to obtain this more pleasing picture.

I was still not happy with the results although this is a more acceptable print. The purple car is now a light lavender. but the orange street is not natural. Please note the artifact behind the man's leg in the street
So I tried another program and ended with the next and for the time being final picture.
This needs further tinkering when I have time, but is a very pleasant street scene. Please take notice that the defect in the street has been removed. Because the tool used was too big the man's leg at the knee has lost some definition, but that should be easy to repair.

There are programs which would permit me to remove the man in the middle of the street from the picture. Also other more sophisticated software would allow me to repave the street in a grey/black tone.