Have you bought a 35mm slide scanner yet? If not, then wait until you have a plan in motion before cleaning lint off your slides. Chances are, your slides will accumulate lint or dust pretty quickly if you leave them lying around. If you are ready to store or reorganize your slides, it wouldn’t hurt to clean the dust, but you’ll need to do it again just before slide scanning.
To clean the the slides, start with a clean dry 100% cotton cloth. I would recommend purchasing a cloth made for cleaning eyeglasses. First, check for any large particles, like sand, that could scratch the slide during cleaning. If you do find anything, softly whisk it off with the cloth before proceeding.
While holding the slide casing with one hand, drape your other hand with the cloth and, using your thumb and forefinger, gently rub, but don’t scrub, the transparency between the cloth, trying to clean both sides of the entire image. In my experience, this has been the most efficient method. It’s not really necessary to try to remove any dust from the cracks where the casing touches the transparency. Most images will end up getting the very edges cropped anyway.
Another option, is to use “canned air”. This somewhat works, but it usually won’t rub off anything stuck to the slide (usually things with oil, like fingerprints or food crumbs). Also, canned air has to be replaced. With a cotton cloth, you can wash it reuse it over and over again. An air compressor works, and if you are lucky enough to have one, then great! It may be too strong, however. Don’t accidentally blow the slide out of your hand and risk letting it get scratched when it lands across the room!
Here are a few tips for some situations that may arise:
1. If you can’t seem to get off a fingerprint, don’t worry too much. Convert it to digital anyway. Usually it won’t even show up!
2. If the fingerprint shows up on the scan, it may have “burned” into the image over time, and cannot be physically removed. You can try to remove it during the retouching process.
3. If you feel it’s necessary to clean with anything liquid, please follow the advice of this photography veteran.
4. If you are using a scanner with Digital ICE technology, take advantage of it! It works wonders!
5. If you plan to transfer slides to digital, using one of the digital camera methods, some of the dust won’t be noticeable.
Anyway… that’s it! That be should be enough cleaning for your slide scanning purposes.
