A common problem with family photos is that only one person has physical possession of an old family photo album. It might be an aunt or uncle, who will eventually pass it on to some grandchild, niece or nephew. How to make these photos easily available to all members of current and future generations? The solution is here with the digital camera. A digital camera makes a great copying tool, better in some respects than a flatbed scanner since the object that is being photographed doesn't have to be physically handled as much and of course a digital camera is fully portable. Another issue are the dozens or perhaps hundreds of colour family photos your family might have that were taken in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s that are now starting to colour shift into the red spectrum. Unless these are preserved, they will be lost forever. One preservation method is to capture them digitally.
A Tripod – this is a must have. Ideally you want a tripod where the centre column can be reversed so that the camera will sit upside down between the tripod legs, shooting straight down. Lighting – if you can afford it, or plan to do a lot of copying, a couple of small studio lamps are ideal. You will need two of these to create shadowless lighting. If you don't have any lamps, natural daylight is a good substitute (indirect daylight, not direct sunlight). The problem with daylight is that it can be uneven (clouds moving around) and it is generally not available at night. Exposure bracketing can help to alleviate the problem with shifting levels of light (three photos taken one after the other, one properly exposed, one overexposed and one underexposed). Things to remember:
Before you make your first copy, run through this checklist:
For the details of how I specifically do it with my own digital camera, view my Digital Copying of Old Photos - Workflow Page. I generally hate to do head to head comparisons, but I get asked this question a lot. So, the answer in a nutshell is that if you already have a good scanner, you don't need a digital camera to copy old photos. Both can provide about the same digital quality but there are advantages to each: Digital Camera - it's portable and can be easily brought to the subject (i.e. your old Aunt's photo or letter collection, cemeteries, archives(with permission), etc.) and used on location. It can be used to photograph 3D objects (heirlooms and such). Delicate albums in which you don't want to remove the photos or bend the album flat over a scanner can be photographed in place. Larger items that won't fit on a scanner such as family artwork can be digitized with a camera. Once setup, a digital camera is generally much faster than a scanner. Scanner - a good scanner is cheaper than a good digital camera, current scanners are higher resolution than current digital cameras, photographs are pressed flat by the scanner cover (no distortion/focus problems), some scanners do a good job with slides (digital cameras, in general, do not - see below) Of note is that depending on the quality of the original photo, taking a digital photo or doing a scan is only half the job. The other half is the post processing using good photo software. It is here that marks and scratches can be fixed, colours adjusted, tonal quality improved, sharpening applied, etc. So it pays to acquire skills in post-processing (i.e. digital darkroom) techniques. This is also a reason I always include my original scans/digital photos on my distribution CDs - so that when better software comes around, or someone with more digital darkroom skills than me gets the CD, the original scans/digital photos are available for re-processing. Slides - slides are a problem in that you cannot use most digital cameras to take the best quality digital photographs of slides. Part of the problem is the quality of slide copying equipment required for use with a digital camera, and the general lack of dynamic range that most digital cameras offers (the amount of gradation between light and dark in the photo - this affects shadow detail). The lack of dynamic range generally results in the copied slide looking more "dense" than the same slide copied with a flatbed scanner or dedicated film scanner. It should be noted that digital cameras can do a generally acceptable job of slide copying, it is just for the picky person such as myself that would rather get the better results a good scanner can offer. Scanners also offer higher resolution (a 3200 optical dpi scanner is equivalent to having a 12 megapixel digital camera) The best method is to use a high resolution film/slide scanner. If you have enough slides this might be worth buying yourself. But note, they are quite expensive and generally very slow. If you are making digital copies with the intent of making large photographic prints, this is the way to go, but for most of us, a flatbed scanner is the best option. Some good quality flatbed scanners do a good job at slide copying. Check out reviews on the web regarding a flatbed you might be interested in. Just because a flatbed scanner has the ability to scan slides and negatives doesn't mean it can do a good job at it, some are much better than others (so be sure to read the reviews before you buy). In general what you should be looking for is a flatbed that has been designed to scan negatives and slides and has an optical resolution of 2400 dpi or greater. Good software is critical. A scanner that comes with software that allows the use of exposure curves, especially ones that enhance shadow detail, will provide better results. A excellent alternative to the software that come bundled with a scanner is the program Vuescan that can be used with most USB and SCSI scanners. It is a commercial program available from www.hamrick.com. Note though that Vuescan is best used by those with some familiarity with computer programs and scanners (it has lots of bells and whistles). Another slide digitization option is to take them into your local good quality photo shop and have them transfer the slides to Kodak Photo CD. Kodak has four digital processes at the time of this writing, the professional Photo CD, regular Photo CD, the Picture CD and the Picture Disk. The process you want in order to digitally archive your old slides is the Photo CD, which will capture five images of each slide or negative with resolutions up to 3072 x 2048.
If you don't want to muck about at all with digital, except to archive what you have, take photos of your old photos using regular film and then have these developed and put onto a Kodak Photo CD (note, a Kodak Photo CD is different than a Kodak Picture CD - the "Photo CD" is much higher quality). |
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