Topic: This might sound like a barmy idea but.....

[Late Developer]

.....I've been wondering, of late, whether it would be best to put the 35mm negatives I want to scan into anti-Newton slide mounts and then use the slide carrier on my Epson V750 to scan them.

My logic (insofar as I do logic) goes like this:

1. So long as the negative is clean when it goes into the mount, it will stay clean. If I do manage to get finger marks or dust on the glass, I can wipe them off with a microfibre cloth easily.

2. Because of 1. I only have to worry about keeping the glass lenses / beds on the scanner clean (a real bug-bear for me as I use our rather dusty second bedroom as my makeshift office / digital darkroom).

Has anyone else done / considered doing this? Is it a good idea or am I a brick short of a hod-load?

Your thoughts / advice, please....

[Francois]

Well... it would beep everything neat and tidy. If you don't plan on doing enlarger work, it's a simple viable solution.

I've once seen someone who used some anti-reflection pictureframe glass with sanded edges that he had mounted on 4 small silicon feet. He used masking tape to hold the negatives in place while scanning...

But I figure the slides are probably the safest way to keep negs...

[Late Developer]

Thank goodness for that. I had started to believe a career in window licking was on the cards.....

[Pete_R]

Sounds a good idea but the only occasion I ever used glass slide mounts, the slides were damaged from fungus. I suppose there was some dampness in them somehow and that encouraged the mould to grow. So using them to scan might be a good idea but I'm not so sure about long term storage.

Just did a quick search on the subject and found this discussion. Sounds like glass can be OK but you have to be very carefull about cleanliness and dryness of the mounts. I obviously wasn't.

[Late Developer]

Thanks Peter, the Photo.net thread was very useful.

I'm a bit paranoid about ensuring slides are dry before mounting under glass as I had a couple of nasty experiences when I first started using slide film. I hated the cheap and nasty Kodachrome cardboard mounts with their fuzzy edges, so I used to transfer my "keepers" into GePe anti-newtons. My old house didn't have double glazing or central heating and, unbeknown to me, was perpetually slightly damp. The inevitable happened and, like you, I learned the hard way.

Where we live now is as warm and dry as King Tut's sandals - so no fear about storage. In any event, I'll be scanning the negs to very large TIFF files so, if the worst happens, I'll still have a very usable image. Not the same as a negative but still worth having.

Regards, Paul.

[Francois]

If you're really paranoid about loosing the images to fungus growth, you can always have them irradiated after they're mounted 

But for the reassuring thought, I've had my grandpa's old glass mounted slides (Leica mounts, no Anti-Newton glass, just a thicker cardboard spacer on both sides) in the basement (which is somewhat dry I should add) and have had no fungus problem. If it's damp, you might want to consider a can of desiccant like Silica Gel.

[Late Developer]

Cheers Francois, good idea.

I have a small collection of silica gel sachets (collected over the years) so I'll definitely keep a few in the box with the slides.

[Francois]

Since silica gel absorbs humidity, so if the packets are somewhat old, you might need to re-activate them.
Here's something on the subject
http://www.theruststore.com/Silica-Gel-FAQ-W40C2.aspx