"The Warehouse never gets filled": And the lord said...

Saturday, June 20, 2015

And the lord said...

"Go Sawx".

Amen.

It's not Sunday, nor am I in The Dirty Bean. I am, however, transferring all my old black and white 35mm film negatives into a digital format. That means, all the photos that I took around Boston during some "well spent college years" in 2004, finally get their turn at being shared. I'm glad they can be finally cleaned up and viewed because I've been wanting to do this for a while. Yes, I was taking film pictures then; and yes, I still would be, if I had access to a darkroom or somewhere to take my film for development. Up until 2012, I had been using the Canon Rebel G. Now I'm using it's hipper sibling, the digital T3 (which like the G, is "outdated". The new EOS Rebel line is all about the promotion (and use) of the Canon EOS Rebel T5 and the Canon EOS Rebel T6. Which I would definitely look in to, should something fail with my T3... not that I am looking for my current camera to go tits up, mind you, I don't want to upgrade so quickly. Although, I am sure when it's time, these two models will be far from top of the line).

What I've been doing, simply stated, is scanning the negatives into the computer. I guess you could say that one of the "privileges" or "perks" of working for a photo studio is access to an Epson Perfection V800 Photo scanner. Yes, it's a bit on the pricey side (Amazon is retailing it at 650 dollars, currently. However, it does get the job done. All you need to do is tweak the settings a bit to your liking, and all the old slides and film are scanned right into whatever computeryou're using. I'm finding 2400 DPI works well, and as long as the program is told you're scanning "film (with holder)" and it's black and white, you're good to go. It gives you several options, depending on what you're actually doing - film, slides, prints. Color vs black and white. Just play around with the settings and see what works best. The setting I've been using for this project is good for me, because I want to be able to edit and share my photos, along with archive them. The Epson drivers install a real basic editing software in preview mode for this scanner... for those who do not have access to the new Adobe Creative Cloud Photography plan (Photoshop CC + Lightroom), (or any other photo editing software) it's an okay thing to use. It does lighten or darken the images or removes the faintest trace of dust. It's especially good if all you really want to do is archive your film (I happen to be using Photoshop, pre Creative Cloud release to do my "formal" editing).

The scanning can be a little tedious, especially if you do not know what you're doing at first. It takes practice and time to figure out everything. It also is draining because it can take f o r e v e r, depending how everything plays with each other. Just 186 separate thumb nails were created at work, and it took me about 7 hours. I have to say there were points where I had to stop and work with customers, but for the most part, I was sitting there scanning. Working on a computer with Windows Vista doesn't help either. However, I'm almost done, as I probably have 30 more pictures to scan. I'm glad, too, as I was really hoping to start editing them all this weekend, but will wait until next weekend, when I've got everything scanned in. I have to re-scan a few, as they weren't fully caught in the first pass.Word of advice for those wanting to put their black and white film to digital: any amateur night shots that aren't too lit, won't completely show up in the scan. The scanner only shows what it sees, and if the entire thumbnail isn't there, you have to go into the "normal" mode and select the rectangle you want. Also goes for harsh lit rooms with cola machines (I learned that by having scanned a picture of a soda machine that was the only thing lighting a small stairwell. All you saw was the bottle in the preview scan, not the entire machine - with words and all).

I think once I get everything done, I'll start on all my color film. Only problem is, I've got over 1,000 negatives to input and not enough hours in the day!

Picture proof or it didn't happen: