old photos

[teg]

At work, I have Nikon coolscan 4000 with the autoloader SF-200. Put in 50 slides and let her rip... every once in awhile, load more slides and clear out the finished ones. We used to do many, many slides with very little work. Now it just sits here collecting dust. I would highly recommend this set up.

 

[deereman64]

teg

youre right but I think that is fairly expensive system. The machine I have cost just under $70.00

 

[Mickey_Fx]

This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart.

For Christmas I put together a photo album for the Wifes borthers and sister. Albums made from many photo's she has from many a yr ago. Must have scaned in maybe 200 photo's plus personal papers and even news articles about the family. Way too many images to print out them all so made CD's as well as the prints. Each album has room for about 600 prints. I included close to 200 prints of photo's, documents and news articles. Was a very big winner for the wife.

Have been working on doing something similar for my family and have over 500 old photo's scanned so far.

The hard part for both these projects is to put some information to each of them. This is a very desirable project for anyone to do to pass on family history to future generations. Time to get started.

As for scanning, I try and scan what ever kind & size of image so when printed in a typ 4x6 print it will be at least at 300 DPI.

Here are a couple examples of old photo's. One is of my greatgrand parent shortly after their wedding circa 1860, a large tintype. The other is a pic from about 1920 of my dad's aunt. Anyone notice anything unusual about this picture for its age?

 

[RobS]

This is a topic that is near and dear to my heart.

For Christmas I put together a photo album for the Wifes borthers and sister. Albums made from many photo's she has from many a yr ago. Must have scaned in maybe 200 photo's plus personal papers and even news articles about the family. Way too many images to print out them all so made CD's as well as the prints. Each album has room for about 600 prints. I included close to 200 prints of photo's, documents and news articles. Was a very big winner for the wife.

Have been working on doing something similar for my family and have over 500 old photo's scanned so far.

The hard part for both these projects is to put some information to each of them. This is a very desirable project for anyone to do to pass on family history to future generations. Time to get started.

As for scanning, I try and scan what ever kind & size of image so when printed in a typ 4x6 print it will be at least at 300 DPI.

Here are a couple examples of old photo's. One is of my greatgrand parent shortly after their wedding circa 1860, a large tintype. The other is a pic from about 1920 of my dad's aunt. Anyone notice anything unusual about this picture for its age?

Nice images, that does a good job. I'll take a guess on the 1920s picture, their pose seems very "current" which was probably not common back then. They are seated and close, I would expect them to be sitting up more or standing and not so close. They are also looking at each other, not the camera. Again, a rather "current" look.

 

[Mickey_Fx]

If there was a prize, you'd get it Rob. Very unusual pose for that period of time. You would expect a pose closer to what is shown in the old tintype.
A few yrs back I showed this pic to a shirt tail relative working on geneology and was active in a geneology club. As soon as he saw this pic he had to have a copy. Received word later the pic was the talk of the club due to the unusual pose.

 

[moonstruck]

Anyone notice anything unusual about this picture for its age?


Yep, they are smiling. Most Unusual for that time period!!

 

[RobertN]

At work, I have Nikon coolscan 4000 with the autoloader SF-200. Put in 50 slides and let her rip... every once in awhile, load more slides and clear out the finished ones. We used to do many, many slides with very little work. Now it just sits here collecting dust. I would highly recommend this set up.

For those perfect pictures, it is still good to remove the film from the carrier. You lose something over 10% of you picture underneath that slide frame.

 

[RobertN]

Well, I discovered that the images run between 2-3 megs each.Too large for upload to TBN, but that does mean that the resolution is good and you could probably get away with lower ,say 600 dpi, which would speed up the process

He could run 600 dpi, but for good result 1200 is better; you can always downsize them with photo software. If you decide to blow up a picture, and it's only 600dpi, then you gotta find the film again and rescan it.

A lot of old slides were 64 and 100asa film. For the typical photographer it does not matter. But, 64asa slide film has the resoltion of 20-24 megapixel camera's. Not many people really need that resolution. But, if you do, it's hard to be a quality slide film.

 

[jinman]

He could run 600 dpi, but for good result 1200 is better; you can always downsize them with photo software. If you decide to blow up a picture, and it's only 600dpi, then you gotta find the film again and rescan it.

A lot of old slides were 64 and 100asa film. For the typical photographer it does not matter. But, 64asa slide film has the resoltion of 20-24 megapixel camera's. Not many people really need that resolution. But, if you do, it's hard to be a quality slide film.

Robert, I agree that some pictures may need more resolution, but most will need much less if you are just building digital picture catalogs with many images identified by filename. One method I saw was someone setting up a digital camera on a tripod and projecting a slide projector onto a wall. That was one very fast and cheap method of digitizing slides. Change a slide and snap a picture. Done! Of course, you had to load the slide tray. You can buy old Carousel projectors for around $25 and trays for $1 each at flea markets ($8 each for 140 trays on Amazon). You'll probably spend more for bulbs than the projector.

Another way is to load the slides into carousel and take them to a professional photo lab. These labs can scan them to Kodak Picture CDs. They used to have the Kodak Photo CD process that put about 100 high resolution photos on each CD. They also give you thumbnails for quickly being able to identify images. Almost any picture browser (certainly Irfanview, ACDSee, or Photoshop) style program can view and manipulate these images. Each of these types of CDs may be expensive, but when you consider the time you save, they are worth every penny. Today, I would recommend the Picture CD format over Photo CD. I don't even know if you could find an operable Photo CD machine at any lab even though they gave the best resolution at over 4000 dpi.

I just think that manual scanning of images is a tedious task that may lead to an incomplete job. A photos resolution is dependent not only on the film resolution, but the focus of a camera. Most images become fuzzy due to focus rather than resolution when you start blowing them up and cropping. If you are making a picture book or electronic catalog for lots of people. The projector-on-wall and digital camera-on-tripod may prove to be the best method.

 

[Eastinlet]

Guys, I've been following about slides and scanning. It's something I have been wondering about, so you are very informative.

Could I ask what you think of using a camera to photograph old pictures? I have a number of studio photos of ancestors I would love to reproduce and also store on my computer.

I have a reasonably good quality digital camera, a Nikon Coolpix 5700. I have a tripod but no macro lens. Lighting is whatever I can rig up.

I tried a few and it holds some promise to my eye, but maybe you guys could tell me if I'm headed for mediocrity or how to improve my chances?