Slide Scanning Service with Glass Slides.

Glass Slide Scanning Information

Glass slides, or lantern slides, were invented in 1849, are a transparent slide mounted within glass plates and are intended to be viewed by being projected onto a surface.

William and Frederick Langenheim patented the invention in 1850 and they discovered a way of using a light sensitive solution to be adhered onto a plate of glass, rather than paper to create a negative image, which could be used to project a large image to an audience

Lantern slides were used for entertainment and educational purposes until the mid 20th century when the Kodachrome three colour process made 35mm slides less expensive to produce.

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Here is an example of a glass slide, photographed outside of its box. You can see the transparent nature of the glass and the outline of an image.

Pixave can convert these old glass slides into modern digital images using our high end flat bed scanners.Below is a sample of our work, courtesy or one of our happy customers, Mr. Mike Ross. Please note that the images shown are only an extract of a portion of the scan and have been converted to a low resolution copy for the purposes of reducing the load time on the internet.

You can view a larger copy of the image by clicking the sample thumbnail, you will then be able to view the amount of detail our scans produce.

To scan these antique slides, we use a flat bed scanner and lay the glass directly on the glass scanner bed emulsion side up which eliminates any risk of Newton Rings. The sample image shown is the result of the scan without any modifications in Photoshop. Please note that Digital ICE will not work with black and white glass scans

We have also had success in cleaning the glass slide before the scan which reduces the amount of dust and therefore improves the quality of the image, our service includes the cleaning, scanning and sending the image back to you on a disk or via email.