Oh, some of my fondest childhood memories are of family slideshows. I remember the sparkliness of the reflective white screen, the ancient rubber band that held its legs together when it wasn't in use . . .
My dad has been scanning old slides to preserve their color and make them more accessible, but you're right: there's no comparison to the experience of viewing them projected on a screen.
Every time I have to sit through another PowerPoint presentation I have mutinous fantasies about using real slides. Too bad they'll likely stay fantasies.
About a year ago, I and a few other local photogs met with the director of the Arts Center to discuss integrating Flickr as a sort of living exhibition. One of the ideas was to have projectors, erm, projecting Flickr photos onto the walls of a particular room. (One of the ideas being to let visitors input their own keywords--results restricted to "safe" images from the local pool, of course.)
Then the director got outsted and that's the last we heard of it.
The last time I saw actual-factual slides was during my brief membership in the local camera club (who still have a slide category for competitions.) That was... oh... about ten years ago? I keep wandering across screen and slide trays and the occasional handheld viewer, and I waver for a moment, but so far have been able to talk myself off that particular ledge. Like I need still more equipment in my life.
Maybe I'll be proven wrong and the ubiquitousness of wall-mounted TVs will resurrect this old form of entertainment, but I have my doubts.
Mrs. Moon had to have slides made from photos of her senior art project back in the day. Her faculty advisor had to give her the name of a company downtown Columbus (about a 70-mile trip from our college) that still performed this service. She still has the slides, but no way to show them.
I've been thinking, along similar lines, about stop-motion photography. We've been making short little stop-motion movies with this cheap digital camera Gretchen got for Christmas and having a blast doing it. It just seems weird to do it on a PC, but much much easier than the old fashioned way.
Duffy, you might be interested to know that "The Corpse Bride", and I believe the upcoming "Coraline", was "filmed" entirely with Canon DSLRs. True stop-motion animation lives!
Hahaha I actually saw a slide projection show the other day in a class I was in. The prof is a dedicated luddite (no cell phone, all, though I've yet to ask him what typewriter he uses), but it was great to see all his grainy old slides of yellowstone and stuff like that. It makes me want to go and hound one of my photographer friends until he tells me how to develop slides from my 35mm--right now, I'm stuck with bw film (but I'm not complaining--there's something about the smell of a darkroom that's addicting). I love the retrotech. ~theanab
Hooray for slides! I did a post about this a long time ago.... here it is. I have a friend who just spent an entire year scanning boxes and boxes and BOXES of his family slides, a project of immense scope. I still remember the particles of dust hanging in the air, lit up by the projector light, while we kids sat cross-legged on the floor admiring slide film of ourselves at Marriott's Great America in Santa Clara... good times.
I think my dad scanned a heap of old slides, mostly his, if I remember right. I'll have to see if he finished the job or just surrendered in the end. What I miss most about it though is the actual experience of being pressed together on the sofa/floor and watching them all together.
I happen to have the screen saver on my home computer set to pick randomly through my "Photos" folder in slideshow mode (at least the old language is still with us.) Whenever it starts up, the kids naturally gravitate towards it, wanting to see the old snapshots of vacations and birthdays and Halloween costumes long gone by. I need to rig up this sound to go with it, though.
"The somnolent drone of the cooling fan" hit me so hard that for a few seconds I was sitting in a wood-and-steel desk in my third-grade classroom, looking at slides of the solar system. I think that for a moment I actually smelled pencil shavings as well. Wowsers.
When I left public school teaching about five years ago, the storage room still had several funtioning slide projectors and at least six portable record players. They were sometimes used in tandem, if you remember (DING!). There were also a couple of functioning projectors that used ready made film rolls (DING!).
I'll bet all of that, including numerous boxes of slides and film rolls, are still there. Ah, Arkansas public schools.
I stumbled across -- literally -- a school filmstrip projector with an integrated cassette-player, which supposedly would advance the film when it heard the magic BOOOOP sound. I was sorely tempted, but it seemed to be made from 100% solid Heavy, and made even my typewriters look light and dainty.
Oh, I dearly miss those LP/filmstrip shows, especially when the needle would skip, moving the class suddenly ahead a few seconds into the narrative. I'm sure my science education lacks keys facts due to such mishaps. (What *are* all the parts of the tooth?)
11 comments:
Oh, some of my fondest childhood memories are of family slideshows. I remember the sparkliness of the reflective white screen, the ancient rubber band that held its legs together when it wasn't in use . . .
My dad has been scanning old slides to preserve their color and make them more accessible, but you're right: there's no comparison to the experience of viewing them projected on a screen.
Every time I have to sit through another PowerPoint presentation I have mutinous fantasies about using real slides. Too bad they'll likely stay fantasies.
About a year ago, I and a few other local photogs met with the director of the Arts Center to discuss integrating Flickr as a sort of living exhibition. One of the ideas was to have projectors, erm, projecting Flickr photos onto the walls of a particular room. (One of the ideas being to let visitors input their own keywords--results restricted to "safe" images from the local pool, of course.)
Then the director got outsted and that's the last we heard of it.
The last time I saw actual-factual slides was during my brief membership in the local camera club (who still have a slide category for competitions.) That was... oh... about ten years ago? I keep wandering across screen and slide trays and the occasional handheld viewer, and I waver for a moment, but so far have been able to talk myself off that particular ledge. Like I need still more equipment in my life.
Maybe I'll be proven wrong and the ubiquitousness of wall-mounted TVs will resurrect this old form of entertainment, but I have my doubts.
Mrs. Moon had to have slides made from photos of her senior art project back in the day. Her faculty advisor had to give her the name of a company downtown Columbus (about a 70-mile trip from our college) that still performed this service. She still has the slides, but no way to show them.
I've been thinking, along similar lines, about stop-motion photography. We've been making short little stop-motion movies with this cheap digital camera Gretchen got for Christmas and having a blast doing it. It just seems weird to do it on a PC, but much much easier than the old fashioned way.
Duffy, you might be interested to know that "The Corpse Bride", and I believe the upcoming "Coraline", was "filmed" entirely with Canon DSLRs. True stop-motion animation lives!
Hahaha I actually saw a slide projection show the other day in a class I was in. The prof is a dedicated luddite (no cell phone, all, though I've yet to ask him what typewriter he uses), but it was great to see all his grainy old slides of yellowstone and stuff like that. It makes me want to go and hound one of my photographer friends until he tells me how to develop slides from my 35mm--right now, I'm stuck with bw film (but I'm not complaining--there's something about the smell of a darkroom that's addicting).
I love the retrotech.
~theanab
Hooray for slides! I did a post about this a long time ago.... here it is. I have a friend who just spent an entire year scanning boxes and boxes and BOXES of his family slides, a project of immense scope. I still remember the particles of dust hanging in the air, lit up by the projector light, while we kids sat cross-legged on the floor admiring slide film of ourselves at Marriott's Great America in Santa Clara... good times.
I think my dad scanned a heap of old slides, mostly his, if I remember right. I'll have to see if he finished the job or just surrendered in the end. What I miss most about it though is the actual experience of being pressed together on the sofa/floor and watching them all together.
I happen to have the screen saver on my home computer set to pick randomly through my "Photos" folder in slideshow mode (at least the old language is still with us.) Whenever it starts up, the kids naturally gravitate towards it, wanting to see the old snapshots of vacations and birthdays and Halloween costumes long gone by. I need to rig up this sound to go with it, though.
"The somnolent drone of the cooling fan" hit me so hard that for a few seconds I was sitting in a wood-and-steel desk in my third-grade classroom, looking at slides of the solar system. I think that for a moment I actually smelled pencil shavings as well. Wowsers.
When I left public school teaching about five years ago, the storage room still had several funtioning slide projectors and at least six portable record players. They were sometimes used in tandem, if you remember (DING!). There were also a couple of functioning projectors that used ready made film rolls (DING!).
I'll bet all of that, including numerous boxes of slides and film rolls, are still there. Ah, Arkansas public schools.
I stumbled across -- literally -- a school filmstrip projector with an integrated cassette-player, which supposedly would advance the film when it heard the magic BOOOOP sound. I was sorely tempted, but it seemed to be made from 100% solid Heavy, and made even my typewriters look light and dainty.
Oh, I dearly miss those LP/filmstrip shows, especially when the needle would skip, moving the class suddenly ahead a few seconds into the narrative. I'm sure my science education lacks keys facts due to such mishaps. (What *are* all the parts of the tooth?)
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