Copying 19th Century Photos

[pflower]

I have recently taken delivery of a large number of early 19th century family albums which I have agreed to copy digitally.

Most are small (2x3 inch) sepia snapshots dating from 1903.  The idea is to produce a digital record which can be viewed on a computer or, if so desired, printed out.  I intend to copy each page (containing 6 pix) and then some individual pix.

How to copy?  Using a D2x with a 50mm lens gives me a good clean copy of each page of the album.  Using the same lens with extension tubes allows a single picture to be copied.  Cleaning up with levels and Curves in PS works well.  The major problem lies in aligning lights so as to avoid glare but I think I can manage that.

Before actually embarking on this, I am wondering whether I would do better with a scanner.  But I do not actually have a flatbed scanner to test against.  I am loathe to go off and spend £500 on one of the Epsons since I probably will have little use for it afterwards.  But possibly something might be arranged if the quality benefits would be worth it.  however the down side, I expect, would be that it would take a lot longer with a scanner.

Anyone been through the same process and come to a conclusion or got any tips?

Thanks

[shootergirl]

Before actually embarking on this, I am wondering whether I would do better with a scanner.

I scanned in several hundred family photographs for our family trees several years ago, dating from the mid to late 1800s up to the 1940s. I never would have attempted to do it using a camera. I use Photoshop and it has a nice feature where you can just toss as many photos as will fit onto your scanner, scan, and then Photoshop will extract and straighten all of them into individual files. This was an incredible timesaver for me. It went much faster once I found this feature. Scanning one at a time was taking forever.

I just checked and that feature is still in CS4. I believe it's the "crop and straighten photos" selection under "automate."

I hope this helped.

Donna

[Chris_Brown]

How to copy? . . . I am wondering whether I would do better with a scanner.

I have done it both ways and find that with the limited contrast range of a print, I get better results, in far less time, using a digital camera and processing raw images.

I use the basic polarized lighting (2 polarized lights equidistant from the subject elevated at 45˚ to the plane of focus) and a 90mm TS-E with circular polarizer. The photos/artwork is placed on black velvet and once everything is aligned the process is a quick production.

As for lenses, a "flat field" lens is best and with DSLR gear those are typically given the "macro" designation. Back in the day, I had a Canon FD 50mm macro with extension tube, and for large pieces of art it worked very well. It was extremely sharp at f8 - f11 and had virtually no pincushion/barrel distortion. For the small photos you're copying, the camera-to-subject distance will be very short so you might consider a focal length of 90-110mm to give you a better working situation.

[dalethorn]

If your camera setup is as good as one person has described here, go for it. Still, some photos will scan better, esp. if they have any wrinkles or contours. I've also done very well with some tintypes and a flatbed scanner.

[EricWHiss]

If your camera setup is as good as one person has described here, go for it. Still, some photos will scan better, esp. if they have any wrinkles or contours. I've also done very well with some tintypes and a flatbed scanner.

I have to agree with the above - I've also done it both ways.  Where a digital camera works okay is when they are flat and smooth without texture and you'll want to use a planar macro lens for the copy work, but in my experience scanning always produces a better result.

[nicholask]

I have done lots of this kind of work. I prefer to do it with a camera for the flexibility. You will probably require a copy stand, or at the very least a tripod that you extend out over a table top.

'If the photos are curled or not flat, I simply place a piece of glass over them, with a black cloth over the camera to hide it from the glass.

Try to use a greyscale card so you can neutralize the raw files afterwards. A 50mm macro is the way to go, too.

With care and attention you can get fantastic results.