I've been scanning a treasure trove of old family photos...

[tk2kewl]

Last edited Thu Apr 2, 2015, 01:21 PM - Edit history (1)

I just had to share a couple of gems...


[p]
My grandfather's yacht:

[p]
Lucy and Ricky impersonators:



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Brooklyn Edison softball team 12-0 season:

[northoftheborder]

1. What equipment are you using to scan, and how storing?

I need to do this - question whether my printer scanner is good enough, wondering about the NeatScan product, how to save - to discs, another drive,????etc.. Would welcome process advice. Thanks.

[sir pball]

6. Rule 1, make sure your scanner and software can do batch jobs!

I had a perfectly reasonable little flatbed, and then I was handed 2500 slides and over four thousand frames of color negative film...I spent a pretty hefty chunk on an Epson V750; it's right at the top of the "prosumer" line so it handles 18 slides or 24 negatives (4 6-cut strips). A big part of the cost of that model is the SilverFast software, it's no-holds-barred "pro" stuff. Color calibration, auto adjustments, and most importantly an incredibly efficient batch scanning workflow. After 15 minutes or so of setup and calibration I can do 24 scans in about 15 minutes, of which two minutes is actual work. Four years and 6000+ scans later I'd recommend it to any DIY-er.

Of course, I'd first recommend just shipping the films out to a scanning house, if you *aren't* a DIY-er. So much easier.

[csziggy]

7. I'd worry about putting some of the old fragile slides I'm scanning

In an automated setup! I cracked the mount on one slide I was working with today just putting it on the flatbed (Epson Perfection V500 Photo scanner). Some of the slides have warped mounts so I doubt they could be done automatically. A few were so bad I removed the mount, put the film directly on the scanner and scanned them without a mount.

But most of what I have to scan are old odd sized negatives. I got the V500 to do medium format sizes, but the damned Epson software will NOT let me adjust the size. I bought VueScan which gives me a lot more flexibility but it turns out some of my medium format negatives are wider than the scan area so I have to "glue" them together in PhotoShop.

The worst to scan were the 1890 era glass slides. Next worst are the 35mm we just found in Dad's stuff that were folded and/or tightly wound. I found one negative, probably 620 film, that was literally folded in half - I think is is of my Dad as a kid, probably around 1935. I'm still working on getting those flat enough to scan.

I have boxes and boxes of the old negatives and slides as well as stacks of old photos to scan and sort. I'm trying to digitize the family history of four families of hoarders (both sides of my family and both sides of my husband's) that never threw anything away.

[sir pball]

8. Sounds like you should try fluid mounting..

The 750 comes with the rig, but it's also available for the lower-end models. If you aren't familiar, you soak the loose negative in an emulsion-and-base safe fluid (usually a hydrocarbon) and adhere them to a glass carrier with acetate. The fluid washes away dust and hairs as well as raising the resolution - with a 750 you can run a full 9600 DPI.

It's also about $200 for the fluid, tools and acetate, plus the mounting gear for your scanner. But, with fragile and odd sized negatives it may well be your best, if not only, option.

[csziggy]

9. Most of these are coming out very nicely on the V500

At 3200dpi I start to see the grain of the film and that gives me satisfactory sized images as recommended to me by the Florida Photographic Archives specialists. As long as I handle the mounts carefully, I can process them without further damage. The slide guide on the V500 does not require that the slide be "snapped" into it - they are just dropped into pockets and lie loose. So for the fragile slides I can just pick up the guide and get complete access to the slides to pick them up.

My dedicated slide/negative scanners require me to snap the slides into the carriers which bends and stresses the mounts. That, and the fact that the older dedicated scanners do not have Digital Ice to remove dust, are why I upgraded to the V500 in addition to the need for medium format scanning.

Next time I upgrade my scanner I will try to fit a 750 into my budget. Even the refurbished ones from Epson are $600, which I simply could not afford when I bought the V500 (for under $150 refurbished). I just bought an Epson Workforce WF-7520 to scan oversized items (only $170 refurbished from Epson) and spent several hundred dollars printing photo books of my late sister's life (for her sons who were very young when she died). The WF-7520 can scan 11x17" and print 13x19" - great for those 80 year old scrapbooks with pages made of pulp paper that shatters when bent. In fact, I found a scrapbook that is from the 1870s that I need to scan - but its pages are in better shape, probably because of the earlier paper manufacturing techniques.

The refurbished V750 comes with the wet mount so that is a decent deal. Since I seem to be the family archivist, I will have the opportunity to re-scan the slides and negatives down the road. Right now, I am just trying to salvage them, scan them to archive as much as possible, and move them into archival storage. When you find 60-70 year old negatives in crumbled, yellowed envelopes or even just loose in a wooden drawer with no protection at all (unless you count a rubber band that has hardened around the roll), any effort to improve the storage is a major step. Considering that the latest batch of slides and negatives have been very badly stored in non or poorly air conditioned buildings in Florida with little or no humidity control, they have survived very well.

That's the other reason my budget is limited - I am buying all the archival storage materials. As I work with each group, I move the originals into an appropriate storage method and put that into boxes to keep dust off. Right now I can't afford acid free boxes for everything, but the archival storage pages and containers will help buffer the originals.

I will have to start getting things wet soon though - if for nothing else to try to "relax" those tightly coiled negatives. But it is pollen season here in North Florida and I don't have any place to hang film that is dust free.

[sir pball]

10. I'm in the same boat - the entire extended family has sent me materials

That was one reason I went with a flatbed instead of a Coolscan; there's several boxes of prints that I still have to get around to. Luckily all the mounted slides are in good enough condition that the 750s slide holder will work; I guess if you have really bad mounts you could snap the "fingers" off the holder and the slides would just drop in, like on the 500.

My mom had a penchant for taking the uncut negatives, pulling them from the protective sleeve, wrapping them as tightly as possible around a pencil stub, and cinching them down with 3-4 rubber bands, then tossing them into a box in the attic. They were so curled they'd drop into a film canister even after they were cut loose. Even a relatively long soak in warm photoflo with a weighted hang-dry made no difference - I got the best results by cutting them into 6-frame strips, carefully working them into archival negative holders, and just putting them in between the pages of a large book. For almost a year. They were at least modern (70s-90s) film so there was no aging or damage issues, I'm not sure how well your old stuff has held up but it's worth a try. I still have no idea what I'm going to do with the very large packet of 20s/30s era negs I have...they're in very good condition so for now I've put them upright in a small filing box; given their entirely random and nonstandard sizes (I have no idea who shot them, or how) I'm probably going to have to wetmount them.

[csziggy]

11. Isn't fun to go through all of this stuff!?

With the odd sized negative, if they are reasonably flat, I just lay them on the glass. I cut a piece of cardstock to allow the Epson V500 to calibrate the scan area and by using VueScan I can define the correct area to be scanned. For the ones that want to curl, I'm setting up a rig using clear acetate attached to my cardstock template that will gently hold the negative flatter.

I was going to upload one of the images I got this way, but between a new router and some problem with my web host sign in, I have not been able to get the upgraded version of FileZilla to connect to my server.

My Mom has a closet just for genealogical stuff. While Dad was still alive, they wouldn't let me bring anything home to scan. Since Dad passed away in August of 2013 I've been working my way through the closet - but nothing is in any kind of order. There are photo albums from Mom & Dad, Mom's parents, Dad's parents, Dad's aunt, Dad's father's cousin (whose only child died), and more.

A bit over a month ago Mom's house flooded and my sister had to empty closets and found a bunch more stuff that we didn't know about. And in moving the bedroom furniture, she got into Dad's dresser and found this cache of badly stored negatives and 8mm film.

At least my mother in law organized her materials. I have four underbed storage boxes full of original papers and photos, then four file boxes with the papers and records of genealogical research. The most valuable pictures - those that Dr. Thomas Sadler Roberts took as an amateur ornithologist and "father" of Minnesota birding - were donated to a Minnesota museum and are now at a university. So I don't have to deal with those.

There are still photos in the collection MIL gave me that are of value to researchers. Just yesterday I got a request for a higher resolution scan of a portrait of Thomas Sadler Roberts' wife, Emma. The author who wrote his biography is writing an article about her and other Minnesota women artists. The scan she has of the portrait is low res and the publisher needs a better one for publication. As soon as I get finished with this last batch of slides, I'll scan the portrait and email it to the publisher.

I'm going to have to try what you did with the coiled negatives - but not until my appointment with the photo archivist at the Florida Archives on Tuesday. He has a place they send some of their more problematic film - that place restored old 8mm Footage of a segregation-era African-American tourist attraction part of Silver Springs. He told me they were about ready to give up on getting anything usable until they sent the film to their source. Here is the piece: https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/273952

Or I might send them off to the place another DUer recommended : Film Rescue International http://www.filmrescue.com/

[csziggy]

12. Update - I may end up with a V750

My sister, who has more money than I do, wants her thousands of slides scanned but neither she or her husband have the time or patience to do the job. She bought a V550 over a year ago and has never gotten it installed on her Apple computer. Now they've lost the software and instructions and want me to go to Tampa to hook it up. I don't do Apple. Period.

I told her if she bought me a 750 I would scan her slides. With the larger batch size, I could set up a set, go do other stuff and come back when time to put in a new batch. She's thinking about it.

BUT I also found a way to scan some of the slightly curled negatives that don't fit my carriers. I found three rolls of probably 120 negatives from 1969 that my husband's grandmother took. It took me a day to figure out that although they fit in the 35mm carriers, not all of the frame is scanned. And I can't just lay them on the flatbed, they curl up so the middle doesn't come out good.

I have a box of unused transparency pages that my husband brought home from work instead of throwing them away. And I have a piece of dark color card stock I had cut so the scanner can calibrate to the transparency scan area. I marked the scan area on one transparency sheet, lay the film in that area, put another transparency sheet over it and put the card stock on top. With the whole arrangement in the scanner, I used VueScan to select the scan area.

The transparency pages have enough weight and static attraction to keep this film flat. (I have not been able to test this with the older negatives - I left those with the Florida Photographic Archives for them to scan. They are particularly interested in the late 1930s pictures of a phosphate mine village and processing plant.)

It's working great though I will have to digitally cut the frames and adjust the color for each.

I put the tightly coiled negatives into a bath of purified water - they are beginning to uncoil! I don't have the right clips to hang the film to let it dry so I am going to leave the rolls in the water until tomorrow night when my husband brings home some clips and then hang them to dry in the upstairs bathroom where we can close the door.

With the other rolled up negatives that were not so tightly coiled, I put the strips into protective pages, then put those pages into 12"x12" scrapbook pages in a scrapbook. That lets them lie flat with moderate pressure and gives me a good dust protected way to store them. The Florida Photographic Archives people were very approving of this method so I feel good about it.

I can't wait to see what is on those coiled rolls! One roll, the only image I could see is of my oldest sister at about 2-3 years old which means it is from 1949-1950. I recognized the frame from a print we have of her - but I don't know if we have any other prints from that roll.

[jmowreader]

13. The "fluid" is easy to make and a hell of a lot cheaper if you do

Kami 2001 Scanner Mounting Fluid is 75 percent naphtha and 25 percent mineral spirits. For this they charge $45 per liter. You can also use straight naphtha.

Really old school is mineral oil, which I will use on a tricky mount because it's thicker. It is, however, a LOT harder to get off.

Film cleaner? The very best film cleaner ever made was Kodak's film cleaner, but the Montreal Protocol says they can't make it anymore. (One of the two ingredients in it is Freon 113.) The second best is Vitafilm, which you can get at http://stewartmps.com. It's $80 per gallon, but if you have film that's starting to deteriorate, this shit will bring it back if anything can. I use pure naphtha.

[northoftheborder]

2. PS. Also are you using any editing programs to correct color, etc.., & which ones?

[tk2kewl]

3. I'm not doing anything too fancy...

I am scanning on CanoScan 9000F Mark II using "Windows Fax and Scan" on a Window 7 Dell laptop.

Occasionally I am using Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/) to crop and rotate if I scan a page of an old album when removing the photos would damage them. Then I am uploading to Picasa in my Google+ account and using the edit tools there to rotate, crop and adjust image quality.

[Sherman A1]

4. Great pics!

I too have a bunch of photos my Mom gave me. Apparently my Grandmother who died in 1927 was something of a camera buff and took lots of pics that were combined with all the others through the years. It's is great fun to look them over from time to time and I have scanned in a few.

[tk2kewl]

5. we're lucky to have them