This week I bought a fantastic set of Kodachrome slides taken in Switzerland in the early 1960s which came in one of the worst condition boxes I've ever seen.
To be fair to the seller on Ebay, he did say the box was tatty, but that the slides inside seemed to be in good condition. When it turned up (after I'd bought the box for about £20), this seemed to be an understatement because, as I pulled the box from the packaging, I was covered in a light dust of flaky green paint and rust. At this stage I was concerned that the dust and paint may have also permeated the inside of the box, because it would probably ruin the slides, but when I gingerly un-clipped and lifted the lid I found the inside of the case was in much better condition.
The Swiss photos are all Kodachromes, with the majority being cardboard mount, another 40 or so in well constructed, solid, glass mounts and then another 30 or so in home assembled mounts. These consist of two glass sheets, some aluminium foil masks and sticky tape holding it all together. These last slides are a bit of a sticky mess, and most of them have slipped in the mount so the sprocket holes show, so I need to decide if I remount these in modern plastic mounts or try to clean them up.
One thing which isn't a problem is the quality of the images. I've looked through all the images I can see (the ones which aren't in the home made mounts) and almost without exception they are fantastic quality pictures. Well exposed, well focused and good composition and really interesting to see over 55 years after they were taken.
One thing I need to try to improve is the scanning so that the image on the Found-Film site is as good as the slides look in real life - there is almost nothing quite like looking at a properly exposed Kodachrome slide.
The Swiss Photos
This is a small selection of the first pictures I've scanned and added to the site. They are all in a series called Switzerland, although the slides have been taken in France and Italy as well, and possibly other European countries - I'll discover as I scan the rest. One of the features I want to add to the site over the next few weeks is a series viewer which will help with viewing these sort of finds. In the meantime I hope you find these as interesting as I do.
