Jim’s Slide Scanning Business Blog

Very often I get customers who have 35MM slides of artwork, usually paintings. I have found that artists are often the most difficult customers to satisfy, with scans of their artwork slides. One of the other scan service providers doesn’t guarantee scans of artwork.

The issues usually come from customers expecting the “scan” to look exactly like the art. There are several factors involved here. First, when artwork is captured on slide film, the lighting, film type and other factors impact how the slide looks, in comparison to the art.

Second, when a scan is made of that slide, the scan often does not look exactly like the slide. Third, it can be difficult get the right “white balance” on scans of artwork, especially if the art was made on paper or canvas that is not white. To get the best white balance there needs to be something white in the image.

One of my customers sent slides of art, drawn with charcoal. She called after reviewing the scans and claimed “the charcoal was pure black” yet the scans show the charcoal as slightly gray. To correct this I had to adjust the contrast on each of her scans.

Now, when customer call wanting to send slides of art, I tell them to expect the need for adjustments at their end, since I cannot make a scan look exactly like the art, when I have not seen the art!

Last week a potential customer dropped off ~2500 slides for scanning. The slides were distributed across about 30 Kodak carousel trays.

Most of the slide tray boxes had a strong smell of mold or mildew. Some of the slide tray boxes were so moldy, the cardboard had become soft and black mold was visible on the exterior of the boxes. The majority of the slides had mold or mildew visible on the actual slide. Some slides had stains which seemed to indicate there was water damage, in addition to the mold.

Due to the condition of the slides, I decided it was a project I did not want. I referred this customer to a few other local scan service providers.

If you are storing a collection of slides, make sure they are not in an extremely humid environment or in a place where they might get damaged by water.