Warbird Information Exchange

Most of my shots are Kodachrome or Fujichrome. I probably should open a box just to check on fading or discoloration.

Uncle Sam didn't give me a dime for film or equipment. I actually paid for film used in incident reports because the Alert Photo shop was sometimes "out of film" . They certainly didn't want to respond to incidents at 0300, during a blizzard, and 20 below zero. which is why I got certified as an Alert Photog. But, they did have a neat 8x10 view camera.

They'll be fine. My 50-year old K25s are just as bright and sharp as the day they were developed and have been kept in simple store-bought boxes and viewed countless times. As posted above, the cheap films of the past are the ones which will decay.

Disposing of a collection depends on whether you want money for it or just want it preserved for posterity. The buying and selling aspect is concentrated in Europe, particularly the UK, with associated logistic hurdles. Me, I would like some away to ensure mine don't just get put in the garbage when I'm no longer around.

Lots of good advice here.

Kodachrome slides properly stored have a very long shelf life. Other types of slides, not so much. It is not a question of whether the film is cheap. Even premium slides using the E-6 process like Ektachrome or Fujichrome are less stable. However, it varies from roll to roll. I have seen rolls of Ektachrome that look great after 40 years, and other rolls that are useless after 20, kept under the same conditions.

Inspector is very correct about not giving them to a local air museum if you want them preserved for posterity. The story he describes happens over and over again. The better solution is to find an individual who recognizes their value and is willing to care for them, shop them for publication, maybe scan some or all of them. Preferably a youngish individual who won't have to pass them on again for quite a few more years.

August

Which is why all of W.T. Larkins stuff is still around, he licenses the pictures and I believe, still controls every part of the process. You might look at selling the entire collection to someone like GETTY IMAGES, you'd be amazed at what popular pictures belong to GETTY-

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Don't make me go get my flying monkeys-

I would imagine that the statute of limitations for the possibility of a felony with the exceptions of Tax Evasion and Murder have long since expired. Post on man, Post on

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Kind Regards,
Gary Lewis
J.A.F.O.

as to mass quantities of negatives or slides.... is there still a market for such outdated photography??( other than from the history aspect of course!!) possibly to an aviation magazine publishing company?? transfering old slides or negatives to current disk technology would seem to be quite expensive & very labor intensive. opinions from shutterbugs appreciated!!

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tom d. friedman - hey!!! those fokkers were messerschmitts!! * without ammunition, the usaf would be just another flying club!!! * better to have piece of mind than piece of tail!!

Tom, as for the current market, although the average consumer has abandoned negs and slides, significant amounts of the stuff continues to be sold and shot. Kodachrome and Polaroid are gone, but new neg and slide emulsions continue to be released, and Kodak reports that film sales are up this year over last.

I guess you could say outdated photography is like outdated airplanes. A P-51 or DC-3 is thoroughly outdated. Yet there continues to be a small market for them, and some people even think, apart from their historical character, they have some desirable qualities not available in more modern airplanes. Go figure!

For the hobbyist consumer, scanning large quantities of negs or slides does present cost/effort issues. Having it done professionally is prohibitively expensive unless the slides are of exceptional value. For the DIY approach, none of the flatbed scanners such as the Epsons are really very good; they can make an image adequate for the web or small prints, but they're capturing only a fraction of what is on the film. There used to be good dedicated consumer film scanners like the Minolta Dimage 5400 that I use, but they are not made or supported any more and most of them only support the 35mm format. Nikon now makes some very good scanners but they cost thousands. Commercial units are very expensive. And no matter what machine is used, to get a decent scan each one requires individual attention if it is going to be any good.

For this reason anyone with a large number of negs or slides to scan really needs to ask why he is doing it, i.e. to what use will the stuff be put. It is easy to sink a lot of time into scanning old slides only to discover that the scans are not right for your needs. Doing the best possible scan of every slide generally is not worthwhile because if you turn on multi-pass averaging and all the other options it can easily take more than half an hour to scan a 35mm slide, and you may never need a scan of that quality or never use that image at all.

Personally, I maintain an 80,000-slide collection from a deceased photographer, have 15,000 or so negs/slides of my own, and continue to shoot several hundred frames of film per year. I have made high quality archival scans of the most historically important material but otherwise scan only as needed and to the level needed. If I want to throw some pics here on the board, a 1200-dpi scan on my Epson flatbed is fine. If I'm submitting to a publication or making a 12x16, I'll fire up the Minolta and do a proper job with the one or few images in question. I do save everything I scan with the idea of using it later, but I've sometimes found that it's quicker to do a new scan than to go to the external hard drive and wait for Windows to load up the thumbnails so I can find the image I'm looking for.

August

As I said at the outset, some 'rare' slides (the originals) can command decent prices individually on the auction sites. Realistically though, and I include myself in this, the majority in any collection are of no unique historical or artistic value. Unless you're an old geezer (guilty!) or have found yourself in some exotic or privileged locations, there are probably hundreds of shots just like yours.

Bottom line: your collection is worth much more to you than anyone else. Not that that helps any, I know.