Snappy And The Days Of Kodachrome
As color-positive-image film [i]Also known as Reversal Film became readily available to amateur photographers, Dad’s focus shifted from black-and-white to Kodachrome and his slide inventory began to grow. Later, in the 1980s, when he got his first computers, I gave him a film scanner and a Snappy which we lashed up to his TV set and inkjet printer. The purpose of the Snappy and parallel port switch was to allow him to browse through the slides, using his TV set as a monitor and “snap” scans to save or print without having to change screens. The results are available in the same Online Directory where his earlier black-and-white work is also stored.
Unfortunately, the Silicon Planar Technology was only 20 years old at the time so the photo-transistor arrays and CCD image sensors of the 1980s were not what they are today – 600 dpi being the best that could be had for a reasonable price. The images are 750 x 525 pixels, orders of magnitude less than the film was capable of.
Unfortunately, the original slides were lost and what remains is what we see in the Online Directory, neatly arranged in folders of his making. Even at that resolution, after cropping and color-balancing [ii]Which I am happy to do on request, they can look pretty good on-screen or printed up to 8 x 10 inches or so.
