Digital Archiving Vintage Kodachrome Slides (photoshop, pictures, photos, professional)

[MainStreet]

One of my dozens of personal projects that I'm eternally behind on is archiving my family's hundreds of old Kodachrome slides. I also buy bulk lots of vintage slides on eBay (old Americana...Michigan vacations, etc.) I got the family photography bug from my grandfather. Thank God for him. He was a wonderful photographer and I love that these images are still with us.

Two years ago, I bought a Opteka (TM) Digital Duplicator Slide Copier that mounts on my digital Rebel and here are a few samples.

This topic has been addressed in the past and here is what the resulting files look like.

My mother on a horse.



My mother on the beach with family friends.



Me in 1965. Apparently I my hair cuts were done at home, lol. Maybe I took scissors to myself; who knows?

[Bones]

Mainstreet, they turned out really well.....

[RayinAK]

Very nice. I imagine that if you shoot in RAW you should be able to get the most form the old slides using PhotoShop, or perhaps Elements.

I have a whole bunch of slides, paper, and film photos I plan to scan using an Epson V700 flatbed scanner, but the Opteka gadget seems like a great idea for RAW pictures. I will have to try one of these, too.

[Morgana1964]

The best way to archive Kodachrome slides is the great new SilverFast Kodachrome-Workflow.
Read about it's features here: http://www.silverfast.com/show/kodachrome

Professional photographer David Brooks has tested several methods of scanning kodachromes.
His latest article on that topic: http://www.shutterbug.com/techniques/pro_techniques/0609scanning/index.html

David Brooks : ''... So the bottom line is, if you want to get the kind of Kodachrome images Paul Simon sang about, if you want your scanned images to reproduce that famous Kodachrome look, then take this advice: profile your scanner with the new LaserSoft Kodachrome IT-8 reference.''

[rigas]

i absolutely love color slide film, IMO you just cant get any better colors. good stuff