Railfan Technology > Cleaning slides?

I recently got a scanner and started scanning some slides.  I use a puffer to blow off dust, but Im finding I still have lots of black dust specks that especially show up in blue sky areas.  What would you reccomend for cleaning the slides before scanning? Thanks!

This may help. https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?9,3720428

You can try this on an not important one first, I found a little blower not very effective.

I lightly wipe with lens or monitor cloth to loosen specs and then blow, not too closely with special compressed air, one not containing fluids.

Very dirty still require lots of time with spot tool in PS as I dont want to be too aggresive..

don't really need anyone to say not to do that, just try on not important slide, scan first, then clean to see if this helps.  I believe this one required very little spot removal in ps.

I find an often somewhat bigger problem is a type of "bubbling" in the sky, can require several techniques.

Bob



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/28/20 16:02 by robj.

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Thanks for the help!  The only cleaner I could find was this one:
Pro Cleaner
It says its for slides, so I may give it a shot.  I saw someone else mention distilled water and another mention 99% Isopropyl alcohol.  THe alchhol is hard to find thanks to the Wu-flu, but I do have distilled water. 
Now to find some cleaning pads....
 

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/Film-Cleaning/ci/18802/N/4077265213

Not sure of the resistance to B & H, good quality company thru the years.

Bob



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/20 09:43 by robj.

Matt_Gidley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I recently got a scanner and started scanning some
> slides.  I use a puffer to blow off dust, but Im
> finding I still have lots of black dust specks
> that especially show up in blue sky areas.  What
> would you reccomend for cleaning the slides before
> scanning? Thanks!

A good quality brush and some decent "Photoshop" type skills / techniques. 
 

I'm in the middle (OK. The beginning) of a massive slide scanning project. Beyond the capacity of an air blast can, the most effective and gentle thing I've found is a bottle of film cleaner (pentane based Kodak product, but B&H has something similar) applied with a Qtip swab. 

No scratches so far, and very little need to alter the image thru photoshop editing. 

march_hare Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I'm in the middle (OK. The beginning) of a massive
> slide scanning project. Beyond the capacity of an
> air blast can, the most effective and gentle thing
> I've found is a bottle of film cleaner (pentane
> based Kodak product, but B&H has something
> similar) applied with a Qtip swab. 
>
> No scratches so far, and very little need to alter
> the image thru photoshop editing. 

Post a few so we can see how they turned out.

I have had good luck with 91% isopropyl and cotton swaps. Hard to find the 99% even when things are normal . Make sure you use cotton swaps, polyester will scratch.

Randal Erickson

Tigard, Oregon

Dirty little secret on finding 99% IPA during the CoVid crisis. 

Go to a farm supply store. it's widely used as a disinfectant in dairies, and other places. 

Well, I got the Pec-Pads and the PEC-12 cleaning solution to try.  It seems to get some things and yet I have one with a bit of dirty fingerprint left over that I can't rid of.  Also, even with the pads, for every piece of debris I remove I think I pull out two from the sides of the slide/cardboard.  I can do things in Photoshop, but for the number of slides I want to scan It'd take me an eternity.  

On the bad side, I found one piece of debris that kept showing up in the same spot.  I figured out it was on the scanning bed.  Well, to be more clear - under the glass.  Ive been really pleased with the quality of scans from the Epson V600 I bought, but it doesn;t look like you can open it up to clean the glass from the bottom.  So now I have to decide if I need to send it back.  The debris inside the scanner is pretty nopticable and riuns one of 4 slides that can be scanned at once.   

It's a steep learning curve!