The Kodak Carousel was probably the biggest seller. They had both consumer and industrial versions. The industrial versions were quite rugged. Make sure to look for one with autofocus, and make sure the autofocus still works. You will also probably want to get the carrier that lets you view "loose" slides so you don't have to put everything in a carousel tray prior to viewing. The carousel trays are still quite expensive.

Kodak Carousel can't be beat. Try to get one that has a zoom lens. There's a real advantage to this when you're capturing slides to video. Also make sure the fan works. If it doesn't, you'll destroy bulbs at a prodigious rate. Also be sure there's a remote, as this will make working with it a lot easier than having to find the advance button in the dark.

We've bought two Carousel's locally second hand, along with carousel trays, for under $75 each. Found them in the classifieds. When buying trays, look for the ones that hold 80 slides, rather than those that hold more. Slide mounts that are thick -- especially plastic and glass mounts -- often jam in the trays that hold 120 slides.

Baush and Lomb (sp?) also made an excellent projector. It used a long rectangular tray. The optics were excellent and inserting single slides was very easy. I've got one that's nearly 50 years old and still works fine.

The remote control is a must. As for the zoom lens, it is a good idea, but you can get an amazing increase in quality using lenses other than Kodak. I use a Navitar lense in my Kodak Ektagraphic (the commercial grade Carousel), and the quality is significantly better (i.e., the difference is not at all subtle).

Lenses: I put the lens from a Leica carousel projector in my Kodak projector, quality difference was striking. I also removed the greenish heat absorbing glass in the projector and for heat control replaced (as I recall) the stock mirror with a dichroic (reflects visible light but passes infared through) mirror. But then I was nuts....

A comment about lenses: I remember reading that one nice thing about the Kodak lenses was that they were specifically designed for a non-planar slide. In other words, if you look at a typical 35mm slide in a cardboard mount, the film is not at all flat, but instead it has a rather pronounced bulge in the center. The Kodak lenses were designed to maintain a sharp focus over the entire slide surface, which is a very different requirement than what is typically expected of a lens. Perhaps this was common practice with slide projection lenses; I don't know.

thanks everyone for this info!!

i'm still in the market for a slide projector. i've been buying vintage slide collections and looking at projectors, but can't seem to figure out why one projector costs $35 on ebay and others cost $350. price is not the issue, i just want the best machine for my intentions - which are to occationally project slides in clubs and art galleries. i would rather have a sturdy and quiet machine, but a few cheapo machines could be ok. interchangeable carousels between machines would probably be a good idea too. i'm going to research the comments and models discussed in this thread again before i make any decisions.

they made both types of lens -- i.e. for glass mounted slides and paper mounted slides .. there are also a tonne of after market very high quality lens for the kodaks..

you can of course buy used projectors, the VERY best were the SAV series made by kodak but in germany. But they use a different remote control or require an adaptor .. those SAV's were built beyond belief for quality (all metal construction and internal parts), they also have 2 lamps and and an automatic lamp changer. Other than that - as mentioned, get a AF model (autofocus) series. The autofocus often stopped working but is easy to fix (if you want to) .
Another thing is that there are 3 grades of rings .. the SAV rings, a industrial quality one (metal base) and a consummer one (there are lots of knockoffs also - AVOID!).

you might be also find a navitar/kodak projector .. these can be slightly modified up to xenon bulb high power (others also made xenon models out of kodak projectors) .. but you can still buy parts for the navitar ..

on ebay you might be able to fins a pair of projectors along with a dissolve ..

it would be a nice combination - though the kodak dissolves were problematic at times .. a DOVE dissolve (which will work with the kodak remote also) is quite good ..

there are 1000's and 1000's of these around not being used - i know of one place that has about 120 of them in storage (planetarium) .

don't buy them from a AV rental company used though -- just believe me on that score, unless you can check them completly before purchase...

Also as mentioned - there are other brands - some with absolutly superb optics and such -- myself, i wouldstay away as getting parts for these were a issues even when they were sold , and forget it now .. (everyone had a model at one time - nikon and carl zeiss even had a one - talk about rare).

but i guess if a really good deal on a number of them comes along ....

looks like the kodak ektagraphic III ATS has the best features: autofocus, remote, slide-out screen and timer (important). they sell on ebay for $100 - $200. you're probably right that there are 1000s of them not being used. maybe i could find some in the newspaper instead of ebay and buy 4 or 5 of them.

As I noted in my earlier post, the Ektagraphic is the industrial model. You definitely want this because the consumer models were a little cheesy, especially those built after the mid-70s.

I'd forgotton about the lenses for cardboard vs. glass mounts. They are definitely different because the cardboard mounts allowed the film to curve slightly, and the lenses for those mounts were designed to focus on a curved surface.

Try cinemas, they still use them for ads but if you get lucky and find a Megaplex that's changing to video projection you might pick up a bundle all the same model and with spares.

how much autofocus precision should i expect from a used kodak ektagraphic projector and vintage slides from the 50s and 60s? the projector that i bought seems to be lacking in the autofocus department and nearly renders the whole thing useless for automatic presentations.

by the way, here's a link to some pics from video and slide projections.

http://www.bbcp.nu/pix/noise

Only have vague recollections of the autofocus thing, seem to recall it wasn't actually checking the focus but reading the position of the slide in the gate.
What might help, if you haven't already done so, is to remount the slide in glass mounts. Don't know if you can still find them but I remember helping a mate pull 100s of slides out of cardboard mounts, clean them and remounting them in glass mounts.

Used to use Rollie 2 x 2 glass mounts in a super Rollie projector and that really helped.

JJK

With all the hoopla in this thread, some of you are overlooking a very important consideration.
The availability and cost of the projector bulbs. You may be shocked.

John

I've been using Elmo OmniGraphic projectors for about 15 years, great machines that just don't break even under heavy multimedia and road usage. Not sure if you can even buy them anymore. Also, Kodak has stopped making the Ektagraphics. I would recommend buying at least three of whatever you decide to go with in order to have backup.

ektagraphics still show up on the kodak slide projector site. don't know if that is just for reference though. i'd like to stick to kodak for now. still looking for more comments on the autofocus issue. some of my slides are 40 years old, but they're in good shape. don't really know if the autofocus problem is just to be expected with cardboard mounts and a 10 year old projector, or if a new projector would just work better.

If they're that old I'd suspect the cardboard mounts to be something that you need to replace. They're probably quite warped and apart from the film then being warped itself, they're likely to jam in the changer mechanism.

i forgot about the elmo's ... yea , they are superbly well built , they make a range of 16mm projectors also -- as well as a bunch of video equipment ..


they are sort of the japan version of the german kodak sav

I just realized that for some reason my reply to your autofocus question didn't get posted -- weird.

You should be able to hear the autofocus mechanism immediately after each slide is dropped into place. Also, with cardboard mount slides, the film will often pop or buckle slightly when hit with the heat of the lamp, and the autofocus will immediately correct to the new focus point. Finally, if you have an external focus on your wired remote control, when you focus with that, you should "feel" the autofocus "fight" you slightly, trying to take you back in the other direction.

If none of these apply, then your autofocus is broken, or your projector doesn't have it (not all Kodak projectors had it).

And, if your slides are all glass mounted, then you don't need autofocus. In fact, if you do have autofocus, turn it off when projecting glass mounted slides.

Also, use flat field (FF) lenses for glass mounted slides. Cardboard and plastic mounted slides benefit from curved field lenses.