Business is Booming

Fuck that's a lot of images. I've got ~5000.. but many of those (at least two thirds) are dodgy.. how long's the collection been building up?

You might want to buy yourself a film scanner.. the one I use at work's a Nikon Super Coolscan LS-4000.. very nice device. Only real issue is the cost.. AUD$3k when we bought it.

Well, he's 84. He says over 60 years for what he's taken, longer if you include negatives that have been given to him. That's just and estimate he came up with as to how many he has. Looking at all the file drawers of negatives, I think it's a good figure. We've already gone through them and eliminated ones that are no good.. out of focus... pictures of a thumb... that sort of thing. I really don't think we're gonna be digitizing all of them, he did a lot of bracket shooting of a subject to be sure he got the shot he wanted and wind up with 4 or 5 negs of basically the same image with different exposures. I think we'll wind up picking the sharpest one or two of each and scanning those. Once digitized, they can be manipulated in Photoshop or some other program.

We already have a film scanner. Minolta Dimage Multi Scan II. it's several years old and doesn't have the advanced features [ ROC, GEM, ICE ] like the Nikon does, all of which make restoration *much* easier. I'd like to upgrade to new one. There are software plug-ins for all three of those restoration processes too.

We were using it before and were making slow progress, but neither of us have a lot of experience doing this. It was a steep learning curve. Then he fell and fractured his leg so we had to bench the process for a while. He's recovered pretty much now, but he doesn't have the stamina or manual dexterity to do it easily anymore, and I'm red-green color blind.

I think we'll have to contract out the work to someone who is more of an expert on doing that type of work, some are quite reasonably priced. With as old or often used as some of the negatives are, they are close to the point where they need to be digitized to preserve them.

But it stil sounds like yer doing Ok though. :)

It was a hobby / avocation for him up to now. It has been a 'business' for over 30 years but never made a real profit. Hopefully that will be changing.

No wonder you've been so busy lately... wow. That's a lot of work to pick up.

I don't think I've seen 50,000 images in my lifetime, let alone taken that many. Damn!

Well, Get Busy. Digital has made it a lot simpler, easier, and cheaper.

The viewing, or the taking them?