P3D Re: Realist Slide Storage

[Paul Talbot <ptww@xxxxxxxxx>]

Steven Stultz wrote:

> The whole thing is a much better storage option, in my opinion, than the
> plastic 3-ring binder pages that I've been using.  When you pass slides
> around to friends and family to view, they're such a pain to get back
> into those pages, and after a while the corners of the slides get bent
> from repeatedly inserting them back into the sleeves.

Perhaps you've been using the wrong pages!??  :-)

I have never observed anything like what you describe while 
using PT Pages(tm), the archival-quality storage pages for
stereo slides.  These pages are flexible and slides slip
easily into the pocket, especially if you bend the page back
slightly at the opening.  I have even found that very often
I can put the slide back in the page using only one hand,
while holding the red button viewer in the other hand (but
not always).  And as anyone who has been on this list for
some time knows, I have one of the lowest known levels of
manual dexterity! ;-)

Incidentally, I only used a binder for the pages when I
first started out.  Now I just keep them stacked in a
cardboard box.

In comparison to other stereo slide storage pages on the market,
PT Pages(tm) have the following advantages:
    - Much lighter weight
    - Less bulky (take up less storage space)
    - ARCHIVAL quality (polypropelene instead of vinyl)
    - Frosted back for ease of browsing
    - Available from 5 different vendors*
    - Much lower priced

Late last week I needed to select some slides for my first
ever entry to a PSA International Salon.  With my slides in
these archival storage pages I could browse hundreds of slides
in a matter of minutes.  I don't know of any other storage
method that allows such ease of review and retrieval for such
minimal effort.  And with a little more effort you can use
a system such as different mounts (best in RBT, rest in paper
or aluminum), plus spotting dots of different color to indicate
a grade (like gold = "A," red = "B," blue = "C," etc.) for even
speedier location of your best images.  That would allow you
to easily select a small, medium, or large sample of images
to show someone--depending on the subject's tolerance level!

Now of course I happen to have an economic incentive to
promote use of these pages.  But the truth is I invented
these pages because I needed them for my own use, and was
using them for well over a year before starting to sell
them.

Yes, there are cheaper solutions to storing slides and
systems that may take up less space.  If all I wanted to
do was "STORE" slides indefinitely, I might investigate
something else.  But I want to be able to rapidly browse
my images (and possibly freeview them) whenever I want to
find slides to show off, to submit to a club competition,
folio, or salon, or just to enjoy.  Without the archival
storage pages, I would virtually never be able to share
my images with family and friends, show them off at our
club, or enter folios or competitions.  I suspect my stereo
shooting activities would have dwindled to a pretty minimal
level if I had to deal with the frustration of retrieving
images from any other storage system.  I was fed up with
keeping slides in boxes by the time I got to about 5 rolls
of images!  I now have thousands of slides in storage pages
and could not be happier about how well it works out.  (Unless
I had a way to make sure someone puts them back after taking
them out to show to others, but that's not a fault of the
storage system!)  Incindentally, the cost of the pages is
trivial compared to the cost of the film (which we always
hear how cheap film is) and the processing, and is only half
the cost of even the inexpensive cardboard mount!

I also recently discovered an additional advantage of the
slide pages: I can skip the step of sealing the cardboard
mounts, saving time while mounting!  After storing slides
in stacked pages for some time, they stay virtually shut
all by themselves!  Then I only have to seal up the slides
I want to enter them in a folio, salon, etc.  I can also
easily recyle the cardboard mount if I decide to toss an
image, or upgrade it to an RBT mount.

* The five vendors are:
    - Steve Berezin   sbere@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
    - Ron Labbe       ron@xxxxxxxxxxxx
    - Dalia Miller    ddd@xxxxxxxxxxxx
    - Paul Talbot     ptww@xxxxxxxxx; sales@xxxxxxxxx
    - George Themelis DrT-3d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

No storage system will be perfect for everyone's needs, but
I cannot imagine using anything other than the archival pages.

Paul Talbot