[FoxbatK]

Sent a huge batch of Velvia 50 to Dwayne's Photo and marked it a billion times not to mount slides. Apparently not clear enough.

My normal local shop in Michigan just sent me back the slide film in a roll for me to cut so I was expecting to get that. Now that I have my first mounted slides, is there any affordable/feasible way at all to unmount them? They look like cardboard, not the plastic or glass mounts I read about when trying the search engines for information about this.

I just want to get the residual cardboard dust/pieces off the frame and scan them in my 35mm scanner, so is there any way to know if I can just rip the mount apart or whether there's the adhesive that some websites say are used? They look 34x22mm with ugly rounded corners that eat away at the point of having a wide angle lens.

Should I just pour myself a good glass of bourbon and consider myself SOL at this point?

[BigDave]

Its nice to know the lab read the instructions!

Kodak used to mount their slides in the cardboard mounts. They are probably the same type. The film itself is not really held by the glued cardboard, but is in an inset in the cardboard frame. To demount, take a single edge razor blade and carefully start to split the mount on the edge. Once you get it started you can peel the holder right open. If you are too rough doing this you can bend the mount and slide, so work carefully. Start with the slides that you like the least so you do not experiment with anything you like!
A box of 36 slides should take you about ten minutes to unmount. Dust them off and you are good to go!

Good luck!

[Tako Kichi]

I have separated the common slide card mounts before but it was many years ago when I used to shoot slide film only (c. early 1980's). I had a few damaged when a slide projector decided to throw a wobbly and tried crushing the slides instead of advancing them! I cut out the slides and then re-mounted them in plastic holders.

If I remember correctly I used either a single-sided safety razor-blade or a craft knife/scalpel and gently eased it between the two layers of card (watch your fingers!) until I started to get the two parts separated and then it was easy to pull it apart the rest of the way. I seem to remember that the inside faces of the card halves had a small indent/recess in them to accept the slide and the glue used to hold the two halves together was only around the very outside edges of the card mount (they obviously didn't want to get glue too close to the slide itself).

As I say this was back in the early 80's and they were all Kodak mounts so whether anything has changed in the intervening years I have no idea.

If you have access to one of the old fashioned paper guillotines (office or school perhaps) you could try shearing off maybe 1/8" to 1/4" off a couple of adjacent sides which might give enough leeway to peel them apart. It would certainly be faster that way if you have a lot to do.

Edit: I see BigDave got in ahead of me while I was typing...lol.

[FoxbatK]

Its nice to know the lab read the instructions!

Kodak used to mount their slides in the cardboard mounts. They are probably the same type. The film itself is not really held by the glued cardboard, but is in an inset in the cardboard frame. To demount, take a single edge razor blade and carefully start to split the mount on the edge. Once you get it started you can peel the holder right open. If you are too rough doing this you can bend the mount and slide, so work carefully. Start with the slides that you like the least so you do not experiment with anything you like!
A box of 36 slides should take you about ten minutes to unmount. Dust them off and you are good to go!

Good luck!

THANK YOU BOTH! I saw some mounting instructions/explanations online that worried me a bit, but it looks like you're right in what kind of mounts they are - glad things haven't changed! After trying your advice, it seems some time and cutting up those mounts (and later, archival film storage sleeves to accomodate the single frames) is all that I've lost. Can't recall the last time to be this happy to have hours of work ahead of me, and share my Yosemite shots here too

If either of you should find yourself in the Bay area, feel free to collect on the drink now I owe you!

[TaoMaas]

Start with the slides that you like the least so you do not experiment with anything you like!

That's great advice! When I read this thread, I thought, "Oh man...taking the film out of those cardboard frames is a lot harder than getting it out of the plastic frames." When I tried to do this in the past, it was always iffy as to whether I'd accidentally bend the slide film in the process. That's why I had no good suggestions. But...the few times I did have to do it, I did exactly what you said. I took a razor blade and split the mount open carefully from the edge.

[cpk]

Once you dismount the slides you will have the issue of how to store them individually. Single 35mm slides (or negatives) do not store easily because of their size; and I don't know of any storage medium, such as Print File, which will store the individual slides. Can you not scan the mounted slides in your scanner? I do realize there may be some slight image loss if you do so. Alternatively, you might be able to find a plastic and glass/plastic frame in which to remount each slide. The GEPE brand comes to mind; they also have glassless mounts.

[Silent Street]

Velvia 50, along with Provia 100F and Provia 400X, should never be cut and mounted, despite this having gone on since Noah lost his outboard. These emulsions do not store well in any slide mount and certainly have nothing like the latent stability of Kodachrome. The best way is to cut into strips of 6, place in PrintFile clear sleeves and store in a sealed archival box, taking them out occasionally.

Dismounting from card mounts is almost an art form; it can be done. Use a No. 11 blade scalpel (and a great deal of finesse!) and very slowly and carefully slice through the midline of the mount until half-way through then peel it apart. There is likely to be some residual adhesive which can be removed with alcohol. The problem of how best to store the individually cut images is one for you to deal with; as I said they should not be cut or mounted but supplied as an uncut roll. Labs frequently do not go through the details provided by clients. If it was me, in professional practice, they would be forced to repatriate the goods any which way to my pleasure.

[dwinnert]

I used to use this small guillotine cutter made just for slide mounts. I use to work for a magazine in the 90's and had to pull negs out for drum scanning. I think it was hand made.

[FoxbatK]

I normally just cut them in sets of 6-7 and throw them onto the scanner for an hour, then put them in the Print File archival sleeve. I'm also paranoid and put in a few "do not mount" notes

cpk, I think I could scan them as is, but as Silent Street said, the mounting isn't good for the film, so I long ago threw my slide holder tray to the bottom of some old electronics box. I also compensate severely for my lack of photographic skills by taking wide angle shots of things, so the 10% crop the slides give don't help either

Despite being a complete klutz, I was able to extract a junk last frame to test my abilities and it seems there was no residue etc. to worry about. Since I won't be scanning seven at a time, I think I should be able to extract 1-2 and scan them, then cut apart my Print File sleeves into 2 columns of 3 and store them. Not ideal, but incredibly relieved that my wide shots of ice over Lake Michigan and the waterfalls in Yosemite will be recovered some weekend when I have a lot of spare time. As many of you have said, I'll probably need to take more time with some of the shots I really love!

[WPRESTO]

I have moved numerous slides into and out of cardboard and plastic, glass and glassless mounts. Many of the Kodak mounts DO GLUE the slide itself to the cardboard, but only along one of the perforated edges. The descriptions above for using a razor blade are good, but if you can locate on EBAY perhaps one of the little plastic cardboard slide openers they are very easy to use. I think mine is made by Gepe for ease transferring slides form cardboard to Gepe glass & plastic mounts.. I used to have glasseline envelopes for 21/4 square negatives that would be good for single frame 35mm slides. Again, try EBAY perhaps under "21/4 negative storage." Cannot remember if the fitted wooden box with those is still in the basement, must go an look (don't hold your breath, a busy few days upcoming for me). Suggestion: a flat ended stamp-collector style forceps is useful for handling single slides, and pulling them free of the glue in a cardboard mount. These are also used by insect collectors but you're more like to find one under "stamp collecting supplies." Get a pair with a rounded rather than squared end.

[Not a Number]

All I do is go from the base side (not emulsion side) and hook a finger nail under the inside frame and tear. The rest of the slide mount is stiff enough that it doesn't bend and the cutout area is thin enough that it tears easily. You should be cleaning dust off of them regardless how you open the mount.

I used Pakon mounts. Indeed I found a package of 250 of them when cleaning out the darkroom at my parents house. Gepe is the replacement for Pakon. They had various gadgets to help you insert or remove the film chip from the mount.

[gofour3]

Not sure why you would want to un-mount a slide, as I think they are way easier to store than strips of negatives and a lot easier to scan. I have 40+ year old Kodachrome cardboard mounted slides that look as good as they did in the early 1907's. It's all in how you store them.

I would leave them as is and just scan them mounted. Buy a slide projector and have some fun! Slides are different than negatives, that's what's great about them.

Phil.

[leekil]

Not sure why you would want to un-mount a slide, as I think they are way easier to store than strips of negatives and a lot easier to scan. I have 40+ year old Kodachrome cardboard mounted slides that look as good as they did in the early 1907's. It's all in how you store them.

It's apparently due to the loss of a slight amount of image area due to the slide mount combined with the rounded corners.

In general, I personally would not worry about that, myself, but I do have some slides that I scanned and printed, including the round slide border as well to emphasize that they were Kodachrome slides. But more recently I have wanted to do the same thing as the OP, to take (only one) slide out and scan it that way in order to get the full negative area. For certain uses of that image, there is not quite enough headroom on the top, so I want to recover that.

[gofour3]

It's apparently due to the loss of a slight amount of image area due to the slide mount combined with the rounded corners.

In general, I personally would not worry about that, myself, but I do have some slides that I scanned and printed, including the round slide border as well to emphasize that they were Kodachrome slides. But more recently I have wanted to do the same thing as the OP, to take (only one) slide out and scan it that way in order to get the full negative area. For certain uses of that image, there is not quite enough headroom on the top, so I want to recover that.

The plastic Gepe slide mounts my processing Lab uses are a bit more flexible and have no rounded corners. These are generally resealable if you remove the slide, however some do get buggered up so I also have a spare box of slide mounts for that purpose.

I haven't seen a cardboard slide mount since I had my last roll of Kodachrome developed back in 2010.

Phil.