Restoring old 35mm slides
Slides are transparent, so you photograph light coming through them, not light bouncing off them. Get that capture right and most of the restoration is colour correction.
How slides age
Kodachrome slides kept their colour remarkably well in the dark but faded quickly under a hot projector bulb, so the family favourites are often the worst. Ektachrome and other slide films of the 1960s and 70s faded faster in storage, frequently drifting to magenta. Slides also gather dust, fingerprints and mould on the emulsion, and their mounts warp. Because the frame is only 36mm wide, every speck of dust becomes large once enlarged.
Before you photograph it
- Blow dust off with a hand air blower, never with your breath or a cloth
- Hold slides by the mount only, keeping fingers off the film
- Work through them in projector-tray order to keep the sequence and any notes written on the mounts
Getting a good capture
- Turn a tablet or laptop to a plain white screen, lay the slide on it, and use it as a light box
- Mask the screen around the slide with black card so stray light does not wash out the capture
- Fill the phone frame with the slide using the 2x lens if your phone has one, rather than digital zoom
- Lock focus and exposure on the slide itself, because the bright screen around it fools the meter
What to run, and in what order
Run Restore Old Photos on the capture. It corrects the faded colour and the magenta cast together, then upscales, which matters because a phone capture of a 36mm frame starts small. Dust and fine scratches on the film come out in the same pass.
The tool for this is Restore old photos.
What to expect
Usually fixable. Colour shifts and dust correct well, and a well-exposed slide often holds more detail than a print from the same year. Slides with mould grown into the emulsion lose that detail for good.
Practical notes
- Start with the Kodachromes that stayed in their boxes: they are often in better shape than you expect
- Photograph both sides of mounts that carry handwritten dates or places
- For thousands of slides, borrowing a dedicated slide scanner is worth it; for a few dozen, the phone method is fine
Questions
Can you restore faded 35mm slides?
Yes. Fading in slides is mostly a colour shift, often towards magenta, and it corrects well once the slide is captured against an even backlight. Detail lost to mould does not come back.
How do I digitise slides without a scanner?
Use a tablet showing a blank white screen as a light box, lay the slide on it, mask the edges, and photograph it with your phone filling the frame. It is slower than a scanner but needs no extra equipment.
Going deeper
How to photograph old photos with your phone explains the method behind this, including what it cannot fix.