January 2011 Archives

To begin digitizing the photographs I needed a scanner. I looked at several services that would scan the photos for you, but at $0.30 a photo this could be come cost prohibitive very quickly.  Additionally all of the albums would have to be completely disassembled and sent off and them reassembled from scratch. Also there was soem feedback about photos getting scratched etc..  

In selecting the scanner I would have preferred to automate the process somewhat or be able to scan several photos at once without having to scan them one at a time.  To facilitate this I looked into scanners with a auto sheet feeder, However I found that these were primarily scanners targeted at scanning documents.  I proceeded to test a scanner with a document feeder to see how it worked with photographs and came to the conclusion that auto sheet feeders do not work well for photographs.  Even using a series of prints of the same size the document feeder easily became jammed.  The photos also noticeably showed signs of wear after being put through the auto sheet feeder. I also noticed the image quality was much worse when the same print was scanned on the same scanner using both the sheet feeder and laying the print on the glass.  Using the feeder the image lost much of it's sharpness and resulted in streaking lines across the image.   Also worth noting scanners intended for documents seem to result in poorer image quality when scanning photos. 

As a result of the test it was a choice between a film scanner, a hybrid film/ print scanner, and a Flatbad scanner (with a built in film adapter).  Film and slide scanners or adapters have a second light built into them which shines through the film or slide and is captured by the sensor on the other end. Unlike a regular scanner which shines a light ont he surface as the sensor passes along with it.  After my mom tried to digitize some old negatives, we found out that the image quality of many of the old negatives had deteriorated to the point that the image was unrecognizable.  Based on this and knowing that for many photos I would have the prints, but not necessarily the negatives or that the negatives might be unusable, I ruled out the film only scanner.  I looked at the hybrid which allows you to insert film or slides into it to scan the images, but also has a fram you can slide a 4x6" print into.  My concerns around the hybrid were how well the print holder would accept prints of different sizes.  Also you would only be able to scan a single photo at a time.  So I wen with a flat bed scanner.

Eventually i settled on the Epson V600 Photo scanner.  I haven't tried the built in film adapter on the flatbed scanner yet, because for all the pictures I've scanned so far, I don't have them negatives.  The scans so far have coem out very well including many faded black and white pictures and faded color prints.  The color prints have gone back as far as the 1970's and some of the black and whites to the 1940's.  The software the Epson V600 came with is simple enough to use, but has a few key features that make it very useful.  It incorporates Digital ICE, image color restoration, and it automatically sprits up multiple images into separate image files as long as there is space between them on the glass.  So you can load it up with a few prints each time.  it also sequentially auto numbers each file. 

The color restoration feature has proven to be very effective at undoing years of fading on many of both the color and Black and white prints.  In many cases revealing just how much the colors had changed over time.  Scanning a file as a TIFF with 48 bits of color depth at 720-800 DPI takes about 2 minutes a picture. The resulting fiel is about 50MB

After having started this now, I'm glad I didn't try to do it years ago.  Remembering that when I was in High school how much time it took to scan a picture and how much lower the resolutions was. it would have taken so much longer and it would be work that now would probably have to be redone now that technology has improved.  

I've also gotten to watch quite a bit of the BBC show Top Gear as I wait for the image scans to complete.

A few years ago one of my parents had a fire in a shed, while fortunately not much of value was lost except for a very sturdy wagon hand built by my dad.  The wagon at some point I have plans to rebuild.  Not because I need it, but because it would be a cool project to get my dad to help me with.  And I can give it to my kid(s) to play with some day.  I'm also toying with the idea of making a copy to give to my nephew.  

Last year my other parent had a flood in their basement. MI'm nto using names because my parents hate when I mention them in my blog. Fortunately again not much of value was destroyed.  Sure some carpet and an old couch was thrown out, but most things survived. Again all of these things and what was destroyed are just that, things.  However, among the boxes of stuff quickly being relocated to higher ground was a cardboard box full of photos.  These cover at least the past several decades.  Some of them are of vacations and other events, others are most likely not important at all. Their not organized or put into photo albums so their is no easy way to tell whats there. 

This caused me to realize that I have all of my photos from the past decade stored digitally.  And I have the originals and the negatives from the days I had a film camera achieved in box in my parents basement as well as a backup digital copy.  At least I used a plastic box.   However, everything from before 1999  is still in analogue form .  

The reason is that in 1999 it became really easy and inexpensive to get a CD with a copy of all your photos returned when you developed them.  The downside to the analogue is that is stored only in one location and the prints and negatives steadily deteriorate over time.  The effect is actually quite rapid and quickly noticeable as colors become distorted.  Black and whites seem to age more gracefully into a yellow and gray.  However color photos become darker and the yellows start to disappear.  Further the analog form takes up space that i don't have so their likely to be stored away somewhere where I can't easily get them. And their fragile so their not likely to be handled readily.  Much of how I interact with personal media is now digital.  I'm more likely to flip through photos on my laptop or on an iPad then to dig a book out of the attic.  

This may beg the question, why are these pictures so important or why take the effort to preserve them.  People place varying degrees of importance on photos, some are happy with a grainy horribly lit self taken photo from a cell phone in a bar that is rapidly uploaded and spread across the vast internet.  Others would favor a carefully posed, and possibly heavily doctored photo taked with meticulous quality. I sometimes thing the later group would prefer the picture not taken of them, but instead taken of the person they think they look like.  

My recent interest in photography has led to an interest in preserving the pictures of that which I can not possibly photograph, and that is what has already happened.  For example I can't for any amount of photographic genius photograph my own childhood.  Instead I have to rely on what was already taken.  In this their is an intrinsic value in these pictures, even the less then perfect ones,  in that they are the raw unadulterated, but thoroughly honest image of the past.  Combined these are the illustrations to the narrative that is my life.  Even less then perfect they are extremely provocative in stirring up old memories or explaining stories told. Reminding me just how rustic the farm I grew up on was as a small child.   Instead of the more yuppie golf course looking estate it became.  I also recognize certain toys and other things long ago forgotten.  

As part fo this project to retrieve, digitize and store these images I've also gon through one of my Moms old photo albums from the 1970's. I don't know many of the people or understand why many of them where selected to be remembered.   All the photos here are before my time, but they are loaded with the illustrations from stories I have heard, which makes the intriguing to see. Pictures of my Grandfathers old Mustang, my Dads Triumph motorcycle, a row boat, the horse my Mom used to ride, and even a boat lift and a flag pole I have heard referred to many times but have never seen.  

Perhaps I must be getting a bit older to appreciate such nostalgia.  But the images of my life add color and perhaps even a 3-D (3-D is supper trendy right now) effect to my memory.