Family Photo Archive

My Grandfather was a fairly well known outdoor photographer in his time. He took photos that were published in Fur Fish Game, Colliers and Michigan Outdoors. He was a member of the Michigan Outdoor Writers Association and was the Deputy Director of the Michigan Department of Agriculture. He has a very large collection of photos, negatives and slides.

What would be the best way to digitally archive these to preserve and share with the rest of the family. Also what is the best way to organize and store photos, negatives ect. to preserve them.

I would really appreciate some in depth ideas and direction. It is a large volume so some type of automated scanning device or similar would be needed. Majority of photos being standard 4x6.

Thank you

Michigandr said:

My Grandfather was a fairly well known outdoor photographer in his time. He took photos that were published in Fur Fish Game, Colliers and Michigan Outdoors. He was a member of the Michigan Outdoor Writers Association and was the Deputy Director of the Michigan Department of Agriculture. He has a very large collection of photos, negatives and slides.

What would be the best way to digitally archive these to preserve and share with the rest of the family. Also what is the best way to organize and store photos, negatives ect. to preserve them.

I would really appreciate some in depth ideas and direction. It is a large volume so some type of automated scanning device or similar would be needed. Majority of photos being standard 4x6.

Thank you

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Automation is expensive, though if I remember correctly, Capture Integration do offer solutions to libraries and museums for automating digital archiving. But the costs run into hundreds of thousands of dollars.

There are a large number of home built rigs described on the net with detailed user feed back. From what I have been able to glean

A.) Prints.
. Best to set up a table top rig with flat lighting at 45 degrees from left and right.
. Use the tripod to hold the camera absolutely vertical.
. Use a lens with flat field. The 60mm Macro is one of the best. The "D" version is sharper and has less CA than the "G" version.
. If you want you can use tethering software, like DigiCam Control. It works perfectly with my D3300. You can check the focus, flatness and lighting on a large screen.

B) B & W negatives.
. Best to use the 60mm Macro with the Nikon Slide adapter. If you use a DX body, then an extra tube is required, as the 60mm+Adapter are 1:1, while with DX you need 1:1.5 (approximately).
. After taking the image you just invert it in any software.
Scanning thousands of slides? Try a digital camera

C) Colour negatives.
. The camera setup is same as for B&W.
. Post processing is a bit more involved.
- You have to invert the colours
- Then get rid of the orange mask
This can be done either in Photoshop, or if you want better results use dedicated software

Here are some links
Scanning Film Negatives with a DSLR
Using a DSLR to scan Negative film by Stefan Schmidt | STEVE HUFF PHOTOS
https://www.trippingthroughthedark....5mm-black-and-white-negatives-with-the-d800e/

You could buy a scanner for ~$100 (I have an Epson V300 Photo) that will allow you to scan 35mm and slides. If you have medium format film, look for one that can handle that, too. I've scanned well over 4,000 pictures this way - primarily from my parents' 35mm film - and the worst problems I've had were:

1. Cat hair on the scanner glass...we have cats. Their fur getting everywhere is a fact of life. Use a microfiber cloth to clean the glass and the film as necessary.
2. Cameras that handle the film in a reverse manner - our SLRs don't do it, but at least some models would unwind the entire roll of film when you loaded it, then as you took pictures, would wind the film back in. Those pictures often ended up being out of logical order in the files. This is a minor issue in the grand scheme of things, of course.

As for organizing it, I'm still working on that part. I simply scanned everything into separate rolls, usually by using different directories. Then I "family-sourced" and got my brothers and parents to fill in some details, a project which got some traction but didn't ever really finish.

Only down side: Since then, I've had to scan my wife's pictures and a friend's pictures. (Fortunately, theirs were much smaller jobs than my parents' were.) I still kind of want to re-scan my 35mm pictures; I had scanned the prints years ago but now want to re-do using the negatives because the results are much better.

If you're looking to put them online and you already have a website/server space, my suggestion would be to check into setting up a Gallery installation. I use it on a forum site I run, and it seems pretty decent. (I don't use it for my own pictures - I have a home-brew solution with it's own quirks. Not a solution I'd recommend.)