Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/01/03
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Dale R. Reed wrote: > > Maybe this is out of order for a Leica List but you fellows seem to game > for almost anything. > > How do you view your slides? My Leica projector is OK for its primary > purpose but the projection screen is all wrinkly from being rolled up in > the attic too long. I think a light table with a certain brightness and > color light with a frosted glass or plastic of a certain thickness is > required. Maybe available commercially from a known dealer for I am > kinda lazy about construcing things like this. And the best > magnification loupe? Maybe even a make and model? > Dale, Funny, but the thought of viewing slides on a projector--well I've done it a couple times in several decades. But as a pro my objective to get them off quickly to client for scanning and publication. I have two Knox Acculight four foot long tables. I just recently built rolling stands for them so I can move them by the computer for doing the labeling and database entry. They are quite nice, color corrected and resonable (about $250, I think, with Calumet.) I understand the major difference between cheap and expensive light boxes is that the expensive ones use expensive daylight balanced full spectrum florescents. These are available as replacements, so you could replace a cheap box's bulbs or build your own and use daylight tubes. For years I used a 2x4 foot light fixture scrounged from a construction site, had a piece of plex cut to fit and set it upside down on a table. Not elegant, but worked fine. When I interned at National Geographic many years ago I had the wonderful pleasure of using their editing system. Perhaps they still use it. They had cabinets made which housed a sitdown level light table which pulled out from the cabinet like a drawer. When you pushed it back in, the slides were protected from dust inside the cabinet. Brilliant! You could set all the working material on top of the cabinet, such as slide sheets and film boxes, where they were handy. On the left end of the cabinet was built a holder for a Kodak Carosel projector. This pointed away from you, into a mirror at 45 degrees (or maybe two mirrors) and then into a small projection screen in front of you. The Carosels had bulk loaders attached. So the initial editing process was to grab box of slides, insert them into the bulk loader and go through the roll tossing into the trash can any seriously lacking images. It might take a couple of passes. Then the remaining slides were stored by placing 2x2 cut pieces of paper on each end and binding with rubber band. The paper could be marked with subject. When the rough editing was completed, then similar would go onto the light table and the real editing process would begin. You would take close images and compare them, one by one with each other, tossing the inferior, until the best emerged. This is a process that could take a half hour to a hour a roll if their was a lot of subtle differences to make judgements about. Very hard to edit from a projector, since you can't easily do quick back and forth viewing of several slides. Editing at this stage, especially with hundreds of rolls to manage is a fine art and craft, and takes nearly as much seeing and discrimination as the original shooting. Few photoeditors who have emerged from the word side have the dicipline or visual discrimination or patience (or often time) to do this well. Treasure good editors, for they are more rare than good photographers. Kodak makes a self contained project/screen unit that would probably work, but I never liked the quality of the backlight screen. I have a couple Fuji 4X lupes that they gave away and that works okay with my budget. I had enough Velvia boxtops to get about ten of them, so gave most away. Someday I'll pop for a great Schneider lupe. A 50mm Summicron -R with aperture set wide open works nicely, too, as a lupe. All of my images go into standard pages with Pentaflex bars and into the file cabinets according to serial number. Hope this helps, donal - -- Donal Philby San Diego http://www.donalphilby.com