Some old photos (1940s)

[sleeping]

So, my dad sent me a whole bunch of old medium format negatives from my grandparents with the intent that I would digitize them. I didn’t really want to scan them, as there are quite a lot and it would take forever, so I’ve come up with something quite a bit faster that still gives more or less decent results:

Basically it’s a box with a negative carrier taped to it, and inside the box is my tablet providing a backlight to illuminate the film. Up top is my NEX5n on a small tripod.

It works OK, the photos are certainly viewable (also, these weren’t shot with a Hasselblad or anything, the negs aren’t super sharp)

[CauseISaidSo]

Good job; you’re right, they did turn out decently (given the apparent source quality). That’s gotta be much faster than scanning. That’s cool that you’ve got photos from your grandparents’ earlier lives; I’ve got a few of mine but not many. Did you do anything specific to tweak the color of the backlight on the tablet?

I’ve got bunches of old photos I need to digitize as well at some point. It’s a matter of making time to do it, but the longer I wait, the more they seem to deteriorize/fade so I keep telling myself I need to get to it.

// FYI, the link that is your setup goes to a Yahoo signin page. The link to the scanned photos works though.

[chupathingie]

Very cool macguyver. Looks like it worked very well!

And yup… permissions on your source image, maybe? set to private?

[sleeping]

Did you do anything specific to tweak the color of the backlight on the tablet?

It’s running a flashlight app so it’s more or less white. I batch converted the results to BW so there were no color artifacts, though.

FYI, the link that is your setup goes to a Yahoo signin page

Fixed, but there’s not much more to see there.

[lokisbong]

It sure is neat to see old photos like those. It’s a shame they were not sharper but no complaint. They look like a happy couple.

[fluffybunny]

At one point I tried my 7d in a scanner function similar to this idea but for OCR’ing books. It worked reasonably well. I imagine CISS’ 5DIII would be fantastic in roles such as these.

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