Hi,
J Mason wrote:
Any suggestions / tutorials for mounting slides at home? Best way to trim the frames? Sources for plastic slide mounts?
Funny you should ask, Shel. I've just been mounting slides for the first time. Shot about 30 rolls of slide film in South Africa over the summer. The quite wonderful lab that I used didn't mount, unless I paid extra. I was happy with the sleeved strips, since they were easier to bring back to the States.
Getting back from the lab unmounted is also my preference because I am scanning more then projecting at present. It's also one less process for them to foul up. I've only ever had two major foulups - one involved the film being put upside down in the dunk tank and one involved some night time shots being cut in the middle of frames.
Needed to mount the slides to be able to show to my students in class, so off I went to my favorite camera shop. Bill, the ever-helpful proprietor, gave me a five minute lesson and let me borrow what Bob calls...
specialist mounting equipment, with inbuilt lights and guillotines etc
I have fund that, unless you are using gear towards the more expensive end of the spectrum, scissors and time are the best tools for mounting.
Intimidating at first, so I tried lightbox and scissors. Very slow. Very tedious. And, disturbingly, not terribly accurate.
Practice makes.... better, at least. Cheap gear cuts badly, blades fall out and it is generally more nervewracking than using scissors.
So I turned on the mounting machine and went to work. Took just a few minutes to get comfortable. Cuts were more accurate and the process went more quickly.
That sounds like the better quality machinery.
Whole thing turned out to be tremendously satisfying.
One other thing. If you are going to project slides and you think that you have some good, keeper type images, I would recommend that you project copies. Each of them is unique - once it's been mangled in a projector or melted by heat getting past the missing heat shield or fungussed itself into oblivion after the projectionist has mauled it, it's gone. Too late then to make a copy.
