Railfan Technology > Slide mount question.

Was wanting to bid on an item, and the sldie is in a mount that is plain on the front and has holes like this on the back.  Curious if this is a remount, off brand, or what?  Anyone familiar.  I know texh may not be the place to ask, but I'll start here.

RR

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Commercial duplicate?

Bob
nerrp.com

Schwartzchrome...

sure not original 
Gerry

Thanks all.  Was just curious.  In this day and age of duplicates running rampant, I ws wondering if this was.  Alas, without opening the mount and seeing what kind of film, it stays a mystry.  At leat some of the current next generation duplicates are amazingly accurate!

RR
 

It could be an original.  Before Kodachrome 64 ASA was introduced, I used to buy Ektachrome Professional in 100 ft rolls and load the film into 36-frame cassettes.  I had the rolls processed at a private lab and cut and mounted the slides myself in commercially-available heat-pressed slide mounts.  The mounts that I used were smooth, though.  I also used the purchased mounts to "correct" Kodak's Kodachrome mounting when their automated cutter would cut the image too close to to the edge of the frame. 

Greg Stadter
Phoenix, AZ

Agree, could be an original. Or not. Private labs that did E-6 processing for Ektachrome or other E-6 process color slide films could use such mounts. I have a bunch of them in my collection from s non-Kodak lab in St. Louis where I used to have my Ektachrome processed.

But I have seen such mounts on duplicates, too. Particularly for larger-scale, more commercialized duplicate slide sellers.

If the mount isn't labeled in some way as to origin of the image film stock, the only way to know for sure if the slide is a dupe may take more investigation. Even the best duplicates are usually identifiable with some careful examination. They tend to be slightly less sharp, have more contrast, more pronounced and more sharply delineated shadow areas (less smooth and gradated areas from heavy to light shadow), and may be slightly grainier too.  These and other characteristics may be very subtle in the best dupes, or more pronounced in lesser quality dupes. Get your lupe out, and examine the slide carefully under magnification with good clear lighting conditions. Then look at a known original, probably best an Ektachrome, since dupes usually used Ektachrome film. Often you can see the subtle differentiators between an original and a dupe.

It's not absolute, and I've seen originals that looked like dupes for sure, but weren't. And known dupes that were so good and so carefully made that it was quite difficult to tell they were dupes even with very close examination.

The mount can be a clue, but not an absolute determinant. Careful examination of the actual image is a better technique.

MC