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SLIDES-2-DIGITIZING

FOR MODERN PICTORIAL USAGE AND PRINTING

Dear Friends And Followers — After more than 60 years involved in the photo industry, in every aspect from photojournalist, lab owner to and the  retail/wholesale heavy shooting end of the business, I’m looking forward to the softer more selfish side of the business, like taking it easy and retiring from any stimulus other than whats good for me.  A few changes in store  — 

😃  I intend to maintain my  Black Box Customers and business for as long as supplies are available — as long as Icontinue to breath and maintain a normal life.

😃  Slide Production is moved to Pasco County and will be handled by My partner of thirty years —  My pack business is back and getting calls.  I moved more gear to his location.

😃  Trade shows are out.  Actually they are gone so are most of the camera companies.   I attended Vegas three times a year, for thirty-five years since most of those shows have nothing to do with photography anymore.   I could get a job driving a cab in Vegas since I know how to get around well  — 

😃  Weddings, I’m 79 in and not fast enough to challenge the 100-200 dollar Wedding Shooters.  But COVID has killed the wedding market, gatherings, occasions, caterers, florists and just about anything related to weddings.  Enough that it’s got more shooters than those that know what they are doing,  even brides in some places.  

😃  I covered the last three elections,  It’s not the same anymore.  Press pools, Getty, REUTERS,  and others,  and you ask what newspapers?  More and more cellphones are now upgraded with variable lenses, cell phone with software  and the growth of social media, other web sites, social media has changed how we communicate and how we get hacked. 

😕  I am avoiding any long term efforts as we know nothing or little of what the future holds in almost every aspect of life including health,  prosperity, the arrival of more fascist greedy politicians who care less about their constituents,  wars , hatred , secularism, violence, drugs, COVID expansions and morphing,  and the worst of it all those who spread lies and conspiracies.  Lies that kill people, and soon February 28 or March 1st, about one million people will have died from COVID.  One man lied to us and put us behind the curve and is responsible.  And those that deny are just as guilty and I have no remorse for idiots.

Stories From The Cave  —  If we go back to the beginning of story telling mankind, the first writings were preceded by pictures scraped and drawn on cave walls with bone and charcoal.  These were the first storytellers, of the hunt, of the strange beasts, of victories and life.  Some of these drawings were incredibly accurate.  And some I have photographed are hanging on my walls

We may have evolved a millennium in time but we still have stories to tell and those stories have been portrayed for the past century on walls just like the cavemen did only we used slides, a screen and a Kodak projector.  And in some cases an unwilling audience asking the battle cry of the bored asking...  Are we done yet?

Slides To Digital Conversions - No More Kodak Carousel Projectors  —  I designed and built our own scanners something we have been doing for forty years as we were just not satisfied with the units from Nikon and Kodak.   

• We know many of these slides are dusty from age, possibly the box they were stored in has deteriorated and location hasn’t helped them.  We bring the images back to life.  Each slide is treated with filtered compressed air to remove loose debris.
• Your slide is corrected to the proper orientation —  We apply color - exposure correction on each slide as needed on a base level — We check each slide individually and make corrections as best we can.  (Free service)
• We advise you of some slides which may be too far gone — All by hand - All work is done in house, nothing leaves the premises, complete confidentiality —  All corrections  are done in Photoshop. 
  
  

Why Do It Now —  Just so you know, you probably might not be aware of is they are slowly fading, degaussing and gathering dust,  just lying there in shoe boxes or Kodak Carousel Trays.   
Your attic is as bad as the cellar up north.  In Florida temperatures in the attic easily hit without ventilation, 125-130 degrees.  Add another twenty or thirty degrees from global warming and it can lite up the house with a fire and film is combustable. 
 Slides are very flammable, with a carton of film slides in their paper holders, and a bow drill, thats all you need to appear on  and you too can be a hero on TV’s Naked and Afraid making fire.  The paper slide holders add to the growth of the fire.

And let's face it, no  one wants to drag the old carousel out.  Now with the digital era, the older social events like the Kodak Carousel slide show for the family are as dreaded as getting allergy shots.   I want to take your slides and will convert them into digital for use so they will work on all formats cellphone to TV’s and you may then toss or otherwise dispose of the old slides. The digital images are large and easily a good shot can be enlarged as big as 20 x30.

NOTE:  Personally, I have no problem with art pictures, nudes, exotic art.  I worked for Playboy and taught classes, shot wars, crashes, you name it,  but nothing involving underage children, pedophilia, or of that sick nature… 

These Prints 20 X 30 Were Made From Slides Taken In 1957 In Italy On  

Kodak K-10 Asa10 Slide Film  (On A Queen Size Bed W/ Helmet For Size)

Kodak Went Under  Years Ago — You Only See Them As A  Licensee  — 

KodakLAND, in Rochester,  home to KODAK  has been closed and buried for fourteen years.  Gone , dead, No survivors.  Other businesses have taken their place.  No one answers the phones,  not even the few ghosts.  There are no remnants of the once powerful leader in Photographic products.  No services, no parts, no knowledge base that make sense any more as it is analog, not digital.  Theses Chinese manufacturers use Kodak for their name and have nothing to do with the origional real KODAK empire.  No Christmas lights, flashlights, backup cameras, etc.
Again, no phone numbers for services of any kind.  I have to rely on fifty years of working with these things or I would not want to attempt the processes needed to up grade these devices.  AS long as my health and mental capacity remain sound.

Kodak sold off its trade name to anyone and everyone willing to pay license fees so they can raise money off their branding people believing this is really Kodak.  The buyers of the Kodak name license, are mostly Chinese import companies on the web selling all kinds of Chinese export products and the buyers thinking they are buying a US brand.  QVC, HSN, and the other TV pot selling shills are in the lead.

As we have explained many times Chinese products are not American made, many of their products are throwaways, no repairs available, and when you name your entire fishing and coastal shoreline boats “ JUNK’s’  that best explains things.

Our machine turns slides into digitized high impact, high resolution images that can be Sorted, culled and rearranged on most computers.  The individual image may be altered and cropped, color corrected and duplicated with effects in most programs.

The memories are fading by the day.  I can save a high percentage till they reach a point of no return with little or no image or the color has faded, or a bad slide to begin with. Rarely do we hit some that have been destroyed.

You can forget about repairing the one projector you have since there are no parts.  The parts needed for repair are not available anywhere, no company, no warehouse, no repair stations, the technicians are either retired or dead.  
The only parts you might find are salvaged.  Good working projectors are units I convert but are getting rare.  Kodak made a change in their design at one point and the older machines which is 50% of sales( guessing) models and redesigns are not usable at all.  That leaves 50% which then is subject to wear and tear, usage and servicing.

I Manufactured My Own  —  S2D PRO SLIDE MACHINES — I have been in the photographic industry most of my life, as a lab-retail store owner, and a shooter.  I worked since I’m thirteen in school and seventeen in College Journalism,  US services in Wars, 450 Weddings, Lots of Commercial, and covered Pro Sports, I ran a photography school. With the death of Kodak (and half the industry followed)  I felt we needed a better way to convert slides rather than a flat scanner — slow , inaccurate, lacking detail.

• I had a working knowledge being a lab owner as to what needed.  I was also a Kodachrome fan and had shot thousands of slides on just about every brand imaginable.  
  
  
• A fire one day convinced me that slides were not a good storage solution and storage of all that stuff and difficult to find specific shot... off to the shop.
  
  
• I had a working prototype in three days, a model with the quality of a machine that could cost double from the competition and better resolution and performance than an overpriced, over costed, over bullshitted cost justification commercial model sold to camera stores.
  
  
• The clarity and definition of these supersize prints, was to demonstrate our building simple in many cases is better if you put into your product quality components,  more modern engineering, simplify the construction to keep costs down, and combining more modern optical and scientific advances you have a better mouse slide trap.  
  
  
• We will convert your slides in to digital Imaging suitable on phones and TV’s.  Then it’s your call, if they were bad and needed rebuilding the color of the slide or distorted , they are useless and can be pitched.  
  
  
• I segregate good from bad.  It amazing if someone brings in ten carousels and leaves with a thumb drive or a DVD of the images in his pocket.  Nine times out of ten I get told to ditch the Carousel trays and the projector.   They serve no purpose.  
  
  
• Currently we are not buying old machines.  I do not consider repairing any.  I convert them, only if a certain model for our use or they go to the dumpster.   If you were to pay someone to fix it if you found someone, most are dead, it will probably break the following week.    The first ones were built in the late fifties  and any of those we called A models are useless, right to the dumpster. 

😃  We went through ten till we find a good one we will work with.  Thats just life. I had a good friend tell me         “ Sounds like his married life”, the tenth was a keeper.

The Kodak Carousel DIY Criteria  —  Safety Warning 

🤬There were two classes of Carousel,  basically in the middle of their production run from the early 60’s the change took place.  

• The older ones are totally useless and when they stopped, we trashed them.  
• t cost almost forty dollars to ship one properly only to find out not worth fixing. 
• A retired Kodak employee who worked as a tech told me when they were built they were designed to last the warrantee period as a minimum and after that you were on your own, they needed service, which no one did.  
• The parts and solutions for all models, are not available, the parts are not duplicatable, we have been down this route with 3D printers to replace the gummy bear gears that have turned to gum and useless. waste of time by two pros who know what they are doing
• It’s just not worth it.  Some clowns advertise these 3d parts but just a waste of money you claimed was yours. 
• There are no parts and no service techs.
• Just too many things can, and usually will go wrong resulting in loss of currency and possibly severely cut or burnt fingers. 
• This is all about liability, I will not for liability reasoning offer any suggestions, clues, or repairs.  
• This warning is all about 240 HV,  stamped sharp metal, confusing construction, fifty springs and joints, gauge tools you don’t have and so forth. 
• These were  extremely complex mechanical, servo-motor driven high voltage combinations in the projector world with  thirty to forty variants with, as we have found, similarities outweighed by changes.  
• Thus we treated each machine independently to stabilize it for our project on an individual basis.  Another problem is it’s all exposed inside and shorts of a high nature do occur and this unit is a capacitor driven 240-V rig.
• I state here with no reservation —  YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED  —  and we have made sufficient notice.

Real Factual Numbers  —  Minus Border Space 10-13%

Slide Scanning  —  High Level Files  —  I Manually Correct With High Level Service

• With our high resolution professional scans, your images will look great on a TV, monitor, LCD projector and capable of making a quality 11x14 print easily.  
• Same old expression good slide, good print.  Good slide we can do 20x30’s.  Bad slides some can be improved, not all. Just like the computer business, trash in, trash out.  But we have tools to improve bad in some cases. Actually remarkable at times.
• We accept slides in carousels or bulk wrapped?  No problem!  Your slides will be kept in the carousels and bulk will be returned to you. 
• If you do not wish the carousels back, we’ll offer a credit on your account and wrap the slides in airtight configuration to stop further bleeding and ship back to you free. 
• If you want the useless carousels, the postage gets expensive.  Generally older Carousels, rust, old plastic, and lock up, after all some are 50 years old easily.  They do go bad, many do not want them back if their carousel is not functioning.  To date we have not found any other use for them. Once a year, I make a landfill run.  
• My partner advised me he dumped close to 200 in a plastics landfill for meltdown. It filled his pickup bed .

Special Format Slides  —  Oversize Thickness

55¢ -75¢- 95¢ a slide.  (BASED ON VOLUME -  DISCOUNTS)

These are slides that may have come from Europe or elsewhere  with oversized locked plastic cases. They have to be done manually as taking them apart is a very careful process so as not to injure the slide itself.  They were made by GEPE and used in some locations with anti-Newton Ring coverings. 

They are grey and white, some with glass in a thick plastic.  t Fortunately since I invest time and energy in developing these state of the art digitizers, we added the new manual  “PHOENIX” model to our other larger location and partner.

Slide Errata —  Rules Of The Road — Hints  — And Rates —  

• As long as the slide is 2 x 2 inches cardboard or plastic, these rates apply.      
•  35 mm  film in 2 x 2 inch  cardboard or plastic mounts
• 35 mm slides in Glass mounts .  Most common sizes set in glass work,  some other sizes are not. They must be removed from the glass, re-mounted in cardboard or done on the Phoenix machine.
• 35 mm Half Frame  in 2 x 2 inch mounts.  The image is half the size of 35 mm.  And we use a high resolution to overcome the small format.
• 110  slide in 2 x 2 mounts.  110 slides in 2 x 2” mounts are the same price as the 35 mm and treated as half frame.
• 126  mounted in a 2 x 2mounts.  The film size is square, not rectangular like 35 mm.
• 127 SuperSlides in  2 x 2”  mounts.  127 mm slides were called SuperSlides
• 110 Pocket Slides in 1x1 mounts —   VERY RARE - 110 slides in 1x1” mounts, were also known as “ Pocket Slides” and require special handling, using the Phoenix manual machine, and keeping prints if desired to small sizes.
• Good images result in 24 MP returns most (depending on crop) High resolution: to 4,000 dpi  24 MP.
• We orient and color correct each slide nominally. Some require more aggressive corrections because of exposure and natural aging of the slide.
• Severely bad slides requiring restoration are figured on an hourly basis.
• Quantity discount pricing for large repeat customers under our commercial program.
• No extra charge for slides in carousels, in fact its less and you could get a credit for the Carousels you won’t need.
• Dust & scratch reduction is automatic and more severe slides (those where the dust and dirt are embedded into the emulsion) might require additional processing.
• Photoshop Professional Touchups Available —