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Subject: Archival slide films

Archival slide films

From: Richard Pearce-Moses <iacrpm>
Date: Thursday, January 6, 1994
Everything I've ever heard is that Kodachrome is the most stable color
slide film (in terms of dark storage).  Now the camera store is trying
to push a Scotch (3M) film made in Italy on the museum as the best
product for digital imagery.  (The fact that these people said that in
ten years the technology will make archival issues irrelevant because it
will compensate for all the defects of the current media makes me doubt
their expertise, but we shall let that pass...)

I told the Museum that I would assume that things have changed and I
missed the boat somewhere.  But to ensure this, I would ask my esteemed
colleagues their opinion: If you were to make slides to be kept as an
archival document (not projected, kept in cold storage) of your
collections, which 35mm film would you choose?

Long rolls might be nice for a future project, but currently we're
shooting short rolls (and half frame at that for a video disk), so we
can easily live with what's available in 36 exposure rolls.

Thanks.

Richard Pearce-Moses, Curator of Photographs
Arizona State University Libraries, Tempe 85287-1006
602-965-9276
Fax: 602-965-9169

                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 7:49
                 Distributed: Saturday, January 8, 1994
                        Message Id: cdl-7-49-002
                                  ***
Received on Thursday, 6 January, 1994

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