Yet Another Cycling Forum
Random Musings => Gallery => Phototalk => Topic started by: fruitcake on 14 March, 2018, 09:48:58 pm
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So the family photo albums are getting dusty up there on the shelf. Only reason I haven't digitised them, and then binned the rectangles of shiny paper, is I've been dreading it. There's a whole shelf full of them. I know, I know. I don't need to keep them all. But even the thought of loading even a quarter of these prints into the flatbed scanner, waiting for the scanner to do its scanning, and then file-naming each of them it is enough to make me want to leave them all there on the shelf gathering dust instead. It strikes me there must be a quicker way of digitising these prints. It's the waiting for the scanner that's the onerous part. So I'm thinking I could molish some means of photographing each print instead, and just work through the pile in one evening.
For that I'm looking for a kitchen table studio set up. My initial plan is to place the print on a drawing board, with the DSLR on a tripod looking down on it, perhaps tethering the camera to a laptop if that's possible with the Canon 1100D. Need to check if extra software is needed to handle the tethering and the file management. I will use continuous lighting from table lamps with colour matched lightbulbs, rather than flash, in the first instance.
Have any YACFers digitised their print albums by photographing them? Care to share your choice of software or your workflow?
Much obliged.
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I'm not sure I'd bother, to be honest!
I think I'd splash out on getting a commercial service to do the job.
They've got the spendy kit and experience.
I got this http://www.pixave.co.uk/photo-scanning-service/tags/Convert-Old-Photos-To-Digital-Service (http://www.pixave.co.uk/photo-scanning-service/tags/Convert-Old-Photos-To-Digital-Service) from a quick Google.
Looks like you'd get over 5,000 pics digitised for £500 but could easily spend this on kit and occupy time you could spend otherwise.
ETA Over ten years ago, I had the dubious pleasure of presenting a slide show to a large family gathering to celebrate my parents' Golden Wedding. 50 years of assorted photographs needed to be scanned and digitised. Even a small selection was a LOT of work!
Having the deadline of the event meant I did the job but I don't think I touched as much as 10% of the material. I really would get someone else to do this. They won't procrastinate the way you and I might!
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I've done both methods, easiest and best was tripod and DSLR approach. I did a page at a time if the pages were removable and then cropped the individual photos later in Photoshop.
Lighting is crucial, if you haven't got nice diffused lighting it won't work well. If the album pages are not detachable then it takes longer to remove each print from the photo corners. If the pages nor the photos are removable then you you have a problem, in my case I just left those albums and 10 years later they are still waiting.
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Our pool table is currently covered (where current = for the past 2 months and counting) with Mrs T42's family photos going back to the early 1900s. The colour ones are turning orange, "but you can fix that in Photoshop". Oh, joy.
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I've done some using a flatbed scanner - then lost interest. Still pick them up to do occasionally so in years to come I may complete the job.
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I found dlsr on a scanner much easier than a scanner, with 2 flashguns bouncing off the walls either side and a cable release it was pretty quick.
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Why do it yourself?.. You can send them off you know!
Talk to a few companies, we found one that basically accepted them in year/decade/epoch-labelled boxes, and came back in a zip file corresponding to that time period.
They have to be loose, you have to take them out of the albums but then you just box them up and send them off. You get a nice memory stick through the post.
Depending on a lot of factors, obviously, but the end result could be cheaper (assuming you use the time it takes profitably) and better than doing it yourself.
(It's one of those things like servicing your own car, doing your own plumbing, building your own bike wheels - yes, you can do it yourself, but it will be better if done by a professional, and thinking you're saving money is a false economy because you might as well spend the time doing what you are actually professional at yourself instead.)
We found we actually looked at them when they came back digital, in a way that we wouldn't have bothered rummaging through the old albums in the loft.
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It's one of those things like servicing your own car, doing your own plumbing, building your own bike wheels - yes, you can do it yourself, but it will be better if done by a professional, and thinking you're saving money is a false economy because you might as well spend the time doing what you are actually professional at yourself instead.
The corollary to that is that, assuming you're competent and suitably equipped, you're likely to take more time and care about it than many professionals would.
Pragmatically, if the pros do a decent job on 95% of the images, then you can bung the tricky ones through the flatbed scanner yourself to get a better result and it hasn't sucked up hours of your life.
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Google photo scan on a phone for a few pictures.
Sent from my XT1562 using Tapatalk
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Why do it yourself?.. You can send them off you know!
<stuff>
We found we actually looked at them when they came back digital, in a way that we wouldn't have bothered rummaging through the old albums in the loft.
Good to see I'm not alone with this view!
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I've done some using a flatbed scanner - then lost interest. Still pick them up to do occasionally so in years to come I may complete the job.
Pretty much my experience. Those I have scanned were to put images up here, or create a birthday presentation, or similar.
I also invested in a Nikon slide scanner and started digitising my negatives.
Both involve tearing open a large packet of tedious and mixing it in a bucket until it is very gloopy. And Dull. Monstrously Dull; something to be done when you have mountains to look at.
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I'm in the same boat - would cost thousands to have them all scanned by someone else.
My plan is to set up a fixture with wooden guides forming a corner in which to place the photo, then digitally photograph with diffuse flash. Camera on heavy tripod so it can be aligned to just crop out the guides. Cable (Or electronic - phone/wifi) release.
No filing as I go - just photo a blank image between each film, then sort electronically later.
EDIT:
Then there is this:
https://www.google.com/photos/scan/
I'm going to try it...
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I ‘scan’ film with my dslr on an old enlarger with a copy stand Adaptor and an led light table. Works very well and much faster than a dedicated scanner. You still don’t get away from the dust bunnies though, but at least it’s in a different place on each negative/slide;)
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I used the same process that I used for my slides.
I ordered some 35mm slide mounts (empty slides that clip together around a 35mm negative) like these - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reflecta-Slide-Mounts-100-Pieces/dp/B000KZ5WTO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521497841&sr=8-1&keywords=slide+mounts+35mm (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reflecta-Slide-Mounts-100-Pieces/dp/B000KZ5WTO/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521497841&sr=8-1&keywords=slide+mounts+35mm)
I chopped my negatives into individual negs and mounted them in the mounts.
Then I loaded them into a carousel, projected them, photographed them and inverted them into positives in Photoshop.
Because you can project them very large you can get extremely detailed results (I should really do them again now I have a nice white wall and a better camera)
This is a 35mm black & white I took at college on a Pentax ME Super, using (probably) Ilford FP4. The year was 1980ish so it's a 38 year old image and the digital (post-processed) image looks better then the original print.
The digital images were taken on a 2Mp Fuji (basically a piece of crap by today's standards) but they still hold up I think. I used spot-removal in Photoshop to remove the worst of the dust.
(https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4776/39098337250_1f77b42163_o.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/22yZcuW)
Same era, maybe a year earlier. Same process. Once again, it's great to use Camera RAW (Lightroom) and Photoshop on these old favourites.
(https://farm1.staticflickr.com/800/40199678674_9126b5009d_o.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/24fiRWb)
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I'm currently working my way through 62 rolls of b&w negatives, from 1971-73, digitising and outputting positives. Soul destroying job and wonder why I ever started. At least I'm getting to see them again.
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I'm now using an iphone 6s with an app called PicScanner Gold to scan from prints. I've got through 333 pictures in about two hours work so far (not including set up)
Here *is* the setup
(http://www.collinsho.me/photos/PicScanSetup.jpg)
And one of the results (Me, circa 1980 :-) ) Note, that was shot on 110 cartridge film - not bad considering. I'll be getting onto prints from 35mm in a few days.
(http://www.collinsho.me/photos/Me1980.jpg)
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And one of the results (Me, circa 1980 :-) ) Note, that was shot on 110 cartridge film - not bad considering. I'll be getting onto prints from 35mm in a few days.
(http://www.collinsho.me/photos/Me1980.jpg)
Looks surprisingly good all things considered*
*Considering that most 110 photos weren't that good in the first place.
I tend to convert to monochrome/greyscale because it's almost impossible to correct the white balance on old prints since so many hues are lost over time.
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That is one of the best of the 110 films - I've got some appalling ones. They're all getting scanned though - this is personal and family history. Quality is less of an issue than having the memories accessible. Window light (daylight) gives better results than the uplighters shown above.
Process is reasonably quick - 100 photos takes about 1/2 hour.
Each envelope gets a number label on, and is scanned before the photos - that way I can always go back, and do a negative scan if one is particularly important (where I have the negs)
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Also included in the photographic bequest from my Dad are roughly seven thousand* colour slides, going back to the early 60s.
I'm exploring options for digitising them. So far I've got
1. Scan at home on the scanner he left me. It's old and taqkes about 10 minutes per slide
2. Load a bunch into a magazine, project onto a screen and photograph with a DSLR. This will be faster, but loading the magazine will take time.
3. Send them away and pay someone to do it. Any recommendations?
4. Throw them out and forget about them.
5. Put them in my loft and leave them to become someone else's problem.
Thoughts?
* I've not counted them, but there's 10 shoe box sized boxes, one which I've looked at has 20 AGFA slide boxes with 36 slides in.
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I have a basic projector going spare if you are passing NW Hampshire.
I used it for slide copying. Slow but very effective.
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I bought a reasonably high-spec Epson slide and transparency scanner which worked well (although the process is quite time and labour intensive) and sold it afterwards on ebay for not much less than I paid for it.
There are many people in your position so there will always be demand for decent scanners in good working condition.
You can do much better than 10 minutes per slide! Forget how many the bed took at one time but think it was 8 or more, and the scan was seconds rather than minutes.
IMO it's worth doing. If your Dad thought it worthwhile taking and keeping the pictures then it should be worth at least having a look, and you may find some real treasures.
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Using a slide projector and a DSLR mounted on a tripod will let you copy about 120 an hour.
If his slides are anything like mine then only 1 in 10 have anything worth copying. Best to weed these out with a backlight before wasting time loading up a slide magazine.
Add extra time for some post-processing and don't forget to set a custom white-balance to offset the horrendous yellow light from the projector bulb.
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I recently had a brief test of Google Photoscan and was quite impressed. The results of a 6x4 print, were definitely better in strong/diffuse natural light, as opposed to a mix of fluorescent/natural indoors. I'm going to test a DIY diffuser tent outside on a suitable day, thinking thick white sheet over a tripod or summat bigger. Will test Photoscan Vs just taking a photo with phone camera.
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I did quite a lot of dad's slides for for his funeral, with the camera and projector method. You need a good camera, projector and screen, because and need to make sure you get things like the focus right - accidentally nudge it off a little bit and you can find you've wasted a night's work to get poor results. I ended up buying another projector, borrowing a friend's camera and doing it at work so I could use their screens. It was a job of work, the results still weren't excellent and I'm not going near his negative collection, those can go to a professional.
I did it myself because I was in a hurry (funeral upcoming) but given the cost of the projector, the cost of driving over to collect it and the time and tiredness cost of doing it at night at work, I don't think I saved anything by DIYing it. Spend a little bit of time to do a triage on the pics and then send the ones you want to a pro.
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See my post in the other thread: get someone else to do it.
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Not as high tech as other posters but i used an ipad app - photomyne.
I just flicked through the album taking a picture of each page and you end up with a digital album.
Quality was good enough on an ipad - considering the originals were from 1960/70s on 126/127 ? film.
The best thing is that its less faff to look at or show them as it doesn't involve climbing into the loft !
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I would use the same approach that I used to ‘digitise’ all my old audio cassettes: put them all in a black bin bag and drop them off at the local tip.
Srsly, if all they’re doing is sitting in a shelf gathering dust, that suggests you’re not looking at them often enough to be worth keeping - and certainly not often enough to justify the cost and/or expense of digitising them. Life is too short - and you can’t take them with you.
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I thought that was the point; you can't take them with you but what is left behind might be treasured by those left behind.
Photos of my great grandparents and grandparents adorn my parents' home and they have had Tech Savvy Grandson help them sort and digitise some photographs.
There were some very old pictures in the book we compiled for my mothers 80th birthday, three years ago and various descendants LOVE perusing this, and old albums.
I would be very reluctant to destroy old photographs!
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I would use the same approach that I used to ‘digitise’ all my old audio cassettes: put them all in a black bin bag and drop them off at the local tip.
Srsly, if all they’re doing is sitting in a shelf gathering dust, that suggests you’re not looking at them often enough to be worth keeping - and certainly not often enough to justify the cost and/or expense of digitising them. Life is too short - and you can’t take them with you.
That's not very well thought through on several levels.
- Audio cassette content can be replaced.
- Photos are a valuable resource to some.
- The reason they weren't looked at, and gathered dust, is probably why digitizing them is a good idea.
I've digitised my 35mm slides to make them available to my wider family.
If someone wants to digitize their 35mm slides I have a (Free) projector to anyone willing to collect from Andover in Hampshire.
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I bought a Epson 4990 from Ebay and a 4x5" film holder: Works better than expected!
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48614963537_0d846cbefd_b.jpg) (https://flic.kr/p/2h4WoWv)UBC_1 (https://flic.kr/p/2h4WoWv) by Jakob Schmidt (https://www.flickr.com/photos/kigurai/), on Flickr
Full size is 22k x 17k!
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Here *is* the setup
(http://www.collinsho.me/photos/PicScanSetup.jpg)
Looking at this again as I've been asked to share some of my pics from 20 years ago. I reckon the tripod extension arm in the shot above is the key to this set up.
Here's another arrangement that also relies on the extension arm of the tripod. This time a DSLR is used to capture the image, with a slide as the subject. https://nikonrumors.com/2018/04/21/copying-photographic-film-with-the-nikon-d810-and-a-shoe-box.aspx/ (https://nikonrumors.com/2018/04/21/copying-photographic-film-with-the-nikon-d810-and-a-shoe-box.aspx/)
They describe a neat little technique for ensuring the subject lines up with the camera, using the spirit level on a smartphone.
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An alternative to a tripod for (some) SLRs is the Pentax Copipod. This vintage item is a four-legged stand that supports the camera lens directly above the table top it is placed on.
(https://www.pentaxforums.com/accessoryreviews/data/102/large/Copypod.jpg)