Shock at an old slide...

We visited my parents yesterday, and I took a few boxes of slides i'd found recently as my mother has a new super dooper scanner that can make short work of scanning 4 slides at a time.

So i copied them to my ocmputer today, and the gave them the once over.  I was stunned to see this. A photo of a cross channel ferry called the Free Enterprise taken in August 1974, sailing with the bow door open.  This is almost a exact match for the disaster in 1987 which killed 193 people.  I was gobsmacked.

However a quick Wikipedia lookup checked the facts. The ship that sunk killing 193 was a new ship commissioned in the late 70's, so this was not it Wikipedia entry on the disaster


I then found a Ferry Site that shows all sorts of details of the various (8!) vessels of the same name. The link takes you to the 7th of the name, which would appear to be this one. It survived under various names until 2000.  It's proof positive that there's all sorts out there on the net!

The photo was actually taken from Calais harbour on a trip across the Channel in a small yacht with my Dad, sister and some friends of dad (to provide the sailing expertise!).

Still, seeing the name still gave me a momentary shock before I did the research.

Verdict on 30+ year old Slides

I found a few boxes of slides at teh weekend.  I only took photos on slides for a short period as they were a bit cheaper at the time, and as a kid, money was tight.

So, (more later), I'm going to transfer to digital scnaning to preserve, but in the meantime a verdict on longevity and clarity.

First Prize: Agfa colour.

Colour is pretty good, and there are few artefacts on the image, also the plastic mounts lasted well, the writing on them is good, but a date print would have been good.  I only know they are from 1979 because of posting address label, and some deduction

Second Prize: Boots slides

Some fading, and a few artifacts.  This is a typical example

Last Prize: Kodacolor

Whilst the colours are OK, there are quite a few artifacts, and this is a heavily compensated image, despite teh evident fading (although is shows better when compressed as here)