Experience creating a catalog and indexing family photo archives. Indexing and digitization of films
Good afternoon, this article was written to summarize the interim results of my work on digitizing a large number of different family photos. The work is not finished and is still far away, but many conclusions can already be drawn and shared with all who are interested in the topic.
The first step is to create a directory in Excel. Now it has 3 tabs: Albums, Films, Slides. I am going to expand on film materials in the future too, but digitizing 8 mm films is a separate big topic.
')
Albums. Lists of photo albums, packages with photos and individual frames in a frame or sometimes without it. Currently 57 pieces. The oldest photograph is marked on the back with a pencil “1922”. In an Excel document, it is convenient to make the “Appearance” cell background the same as the color of the album cover - then find it faster, just in Habré we could not paint the background in the td tag.
The films. A packet with a skein of negative photographic films of the 1950s and 1960s was found with parents Apparently, each subsequent film was wound on top of the previous one. Here is this:
Thus, a weighty cylinder turned out, although according to his father’s recollection, he pulled out some films from the bundle in his childhood in order to burn them with matches and see how they burn. Pieces 40 just left. Newer films are usually arranged in boxes of Swem’s factory, which are signed by the year and place, and there are considerably more of them.
There were also several boxes of very good quality color slides. Looking ahead, I will say that all of them were digitized in a specialized firm on the Nikon Cool Scan 3000.
All used digitization equipment.
1. Several types of simple flatbed scanners, usually HP Scanjet. Now I use Scanjet 3970. It is quite good for scanning individual prints, and frames in albums. If the print is glued in (and it was usually glued into Soviet albums), then in most cases you have to be tricky with attaching the page to the scanner and holding it during scanning. In the very old albums, photos were often not glued in, but were inserted into the slots in the corners, but this was rare.
Not suitable for high-quality digitization of negatives and slides. I tried.
2. Two kinds of Noritsu stationary minilabs in photo studios. Scanned a significant number of films, not going to redo it. The quality of negative scanning is very good, but you need to ask that the JPG compression option be set to 95% + True, the Nikon Super Coolscan beats them in all respects.
3. Nikon Super Coolscan 3000 ED Film Scanner. It gives the best quality, it is available in some studios in Moscow, but they take expensive films for digitizing - hundreds of rubles. He himself costs about $ 2.5K, which made the purchase for my tasks unreasonable. The number in the title is 3000 - not fundamentally, the new models are 4000, 5000, etc. increase the maximum scan resolution and speed. So far, the scan quality is better I have not seen. The scanner has various options for retouching and detecting darkened parts, I tried them, but it’s better not to use them, but to process the frames received by the standard algorithm one by one in any editor.
Photos from the official site . Often it can be seen with nozzles in front for slides and films. There was also information about a good Epson film scanner, but it didn’t work. According to rumors, he scans a little less quality than Nikon, but also very worthy.
4. The simplest digital cameras - in my case they were Canon A510 compacts and later A480. Used to index photo albums and films.
5. Soviet diascope Leningrad (or Diascope-2). When it became clear that the flatbed scanner was no good, and carrying all the films to the Super Coolscan 3000 company at once was expensive, the solution described below came. The diascope was found in a box with junk with school things, but now I look at similar things on the network - there was also Filmoscope-2. Obviously, he took into account that the frame goes in a film, whereas the diascope is suitable for slides in a frame - there are special plastic clips.
What to do with color positive slides. The answer - scan in Nikon Super Coolscan - here without options. A bunch of square frames in a box with very high quality frames, for a history, the scan quality should be maximum. And here it’s not a matter of dpi, but in scanning technology - a flatbed scanner cannot provide such quality, and Noritsu minilabs available in the district did not take separate frames - only films or pieces of films for at least 5 frames. So only Super Coolscan. An example of a digitized slide. This is 50% of the original frame, but it is still 2654x1743. The size of the source file is about 6 MB. Post-processing of colors, contrast and shadows was not needed for 95 +% frames.
Why do you need indexing albums? To qualitatively digitize the album, you need a lot of time. You need to dodge with the placement of sheets of the album on the scanner, or embroider it (if possible) or, in exceptional cases, take a print to scan the front and back sides - then paste it back. The number of albums and photos in them is such that it leaves only such a quick way. Turns page after page, a paper with an album number is superimposed on each turn, one or several frames are made with a soap box, depending on the interesting frames. Yes, sometimes the soap dish does not focus, the hand trembles and quite often the frame gloss reflects reflections from the lamp. But it's still better than nothing. The sequence of the shot frames and auto-numbering make it possible to view the album after a page by page.
Example of manual re-shooting of a separate page from an album 5. A number is transferred to each page:
After a thoughtful analysis, it will become clear what and how to scan. This will be a work plan for a long time.
Why need indexing films. What is on the films can clearly be said only after viewing the frames in a positive way, although a lot of it comes off in its original negative form. Since it is expensive to carry all the films for scanning at once, you need to compile a catalog and understand what is worth digitizing first and what should be left for later.
If there was free space on the tails of the films, I simply scratched the serial number of the film and put it in the catalog in Excel. If possible - from two edges of the film. Of course, it would be better to make some kind of sticker with a printed number, but I decided to scratch the numbers - I was afraid of the appearance of glue from the stickers on the negatives. It happened that there was no room for the number at all on one of the edges - some films were filmed to the last, and the tail was cut off after the development. In this case, I just accurately counted the number of frames, entered into the catalog and added a description more precisely with an indication of the marks near the perforation. Between the perforations, you can often find the name and type of film, such as AGFA ISOPAN F or DEKO.
When selective scanning revealed an unpleasant feature - the company asked permission to cut off the tail of the film, Super Coolscan could chew up the film with a tail.
So, the catalog is formed, the next step is indexing. At home, after several experiments, the simplest option was chosen. A film is inserted into the diascope, and a digital compact is leaning against the eye. On the rear screen of the compact otdichno can see the position of the frame, in the diascope is the light from the usual matte table lamp. Half-press the shutter focuses the focus and focuses very well. Full tap - and ready for a new frame for the story.
Having got a little indulgence with a manual shiver, installed the compact on a small tripod for 200 rubles, it became better. One film takes 2-3 minutes. At the beginning or end of the re-filming, the scratched film number is photographed in the very same Dralascope, then it is convenient to split the series of frames into folders. Such a re-filming is not as fundamental as, say, in this article, but very effective at minimal cost. As I understood as a result of my experiments, I still cannot achieve great quality in such a mechanical system, no matter how hard you try - even if you use a machine with a tripod, SLR, screen and frame for the negative.
The photo editors that I used before could not do complex sequences of actions for mass processing. These were ACDSee and Picassa 3. Searching the net, I found a suitable editor - this is XnView . He allowed to make a macro that inverted all frames in the folder into positives. Then you can manually rotate the frames lying on your side in two steps and sometimes, in some cases, experiment with auto-contrast and shadows / Lights rulers. Perhaps there are other editors who can do it, this one just caught me first, except for those that I had, I tried searching for pieces 5.
A side effect of the diascope - a slight blur around the perimeter, creates an additional effect of antiquity - to yourself Instagram:
An example of scanning a print from an album with a regular tablet:
In most cases, enough auto-correction of contrast, occasionally worth playing with adjusting the shadows and lighting.
The resulting digital archive can be viewed from different historical and thematic sections. Processed and reprinted photos often make a strong impression on the people with whom they are associated.
After scanning and indexing a significant amount of photos and negatives, it turned out that there are:
1. Photos without negatives. With these, everything is clear - frames are invaluable for the history, they need to be scanned with a tablet.
2. Photos for which there was a negative. When scanning a negative, the quality is naturally better, but the prints also have their value. When printing, cropping is usually done, a set of cropping and curing time in the developer and fixer sometimes, though infrequently, make the print unique in itself.
3. Many times there were negatives that were not printed, and quite a lot. These are either duplicates of the same type or blurred frames, or those that were deemed unworthy of print and photo album. But after tens of years, everything seems completely different!
The first step is to create a directory in Excel. Now it has 3 tabs: Albums, Films, Slides. I am going to expand on film materials in the future too, but digitizing 8 mm films is a separate big topic.
| No | Title | Approx. N pages | Approx.N photo | Period from | Before | Description | External view | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| one | I.M. Student Album ... 3 course 1975 - Family by approx. 1984 | 35 | 120 | 1975 | 1985 | Many unglued photos at the end | Beige.Albom.Leningrad Leningrad.Isobro-Aurora | 4 screens scanned |
| 9 | Insert sheets of the old album 20-40s. Relatives and parents of EL, photo K.C, I. | 20 | 100 | 1922 | 1950 | Insert white sheets. Pasted carved flowers from it. postcards. Omsk, Biysk, military photos, the oldest 22, 27 years Omsk. Many torn / torn, lie nearby. inscriptions on the back | Lilac cardboard. Album. The inscription "Album" in italics. Star with Kremlin and flowers. | 2009-01-10 Rejected. OK. 30 screens at 400 dpi. Left approx. thirds. |
')
Albums. Lists of photo albums, packages with photos and individual frames in a frame or sometimes without it. Currently 57 pieces. The oldest photograph is marked on the back with a pencil “1922”. In an Excel document, it is convenient to make the “Appearance” cell background the same as the color of the album cover - then find it faster, just in Habré we could not paint the background in the td tag.
The films. A packet with a skein of negative photographic films of the 1950s and 1960s was found with parents Apparently, each subsequent film was wound on top of the previous one. Here is this:
Thus, a weighty cylinder turned out, although according to his father’s recollection, he pulled out some films from the bundle in his childhood in order to burn them with matches and see how they burn. Pieces 40 just left. Newer films are usually arranged in boxes of Swem’s factory, which are signed by the year and place, and there are considerably more of them.
| No | Code | Description | Frames | Year | In detail | Note | Scanning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 | 33 | Boris is playing cards with friends. Winter, children in the yard. | 18 | 53-54 | A.S. on a horse, 1-2 years old. Other people. | AGFA ISOPAN F, strong yellow veil on film. |
There were also several boxes of very good quality color slides. Looking ahead, I will say that all of them were digitized in a specialized firm on the Nikon Cool Scan 3000.
All used digitization equipment.
1. Several types of simple flatbed scanners, usually HP Scanjet. Now I use Scanjet 3970. It is quite good for scanning individual prints, and frames in albums. If the print is glued in (and it was usually glued into Soviet albums), then in most cases you have to be tricky with attaching the page to the scanner and holding it during scanning. In the very old albums, photos were often not glued in, but were inserted into the slots in the corners, but this was rare.
Not suitable for high-quality digitization of negatives and slides. I tried.
2. Two kinds of Noritsu stationary minilabs in photo studios. Scanned a significant number of films, not going to redo it. The quality of negative scanning is very good, but you need to ask that the JPG compression option be set to 95% + True, the Nikon Super Coolscan beats them in all respects.
3. Nikon Super Coolscan 3000 ED Film Scanner. It gives the best quality, it is available in some studios in Moscow, but they take expensive films for digitizing - hundreds of rubles. He himself costs about $ 2.5K, which made the purchase for my tasks unreasonable. The number in the title is 3000 - not fundamentally, the new models are 4000, 5000, etc. increase the maximum scan resolution and speed. So far, the scan quality is better I have not seen. The scanner has various options for retouching and detecting darkened parts, I tried them, but it’s better not to use them, but to process the frames received by the standard algorithm one by one in any editor.
Photos from the official site . Often it can be seen with nozzles in front for slides and films. There was also information about a good Epson film scanner, but it didn’t work. According to rumors, he scans a little less quality than Nikon, but also very worthy.
4. The simplest digital cameras - in my case they were Canon A510 compacts and later A480. Used to index photo albums and films.
5. Soviet diascope Leningrad (or Diascope-2). When it became clear that the flatbed scanner was no good, and carrying all the films to the Super Coolscan 3000 company at once was expensive, the solution described below came. The diascope was found in a box with junk with school things, but now I look at similar things on the network - there was also Filmoscope-2. Obviously, he took into account that the frame goes in a film, whereas the diascope is suitable for slides in a frame - there are special plastic clips.
What to do with color positive slides. The answer - scan in Nikon Super Coolscan - here without options. A bunch of square frames in a box with very high quality frames, for a history, the scan quality should be maximum. And here it’s not a matter of dpi, but in scanning technology - a flatbed scanner cannot provide such quality, and Noritsu minilabs available in the district did not take separate frames - only films or pieces of films for at least 5 frames. So only Super Coolscan. An example of a digitized slide. This is 50% of the original frame, but it is still 2654x1743. The size of the source file is about 6 MB. Post-processing of colors, contrast and shadows was not needed for 95 +% frames.
Why do you need indexing albums? To qualitatively digitize the album, you need a lot of time. You need to dodge with the placement of sheets of the album on the scanner, or embroider it (if possible) or, in exceptional cases, take a print to scan the front and back sides - then paste it back. The number of albums and photos in them is such that it leaves only such a quick way. Turns page after page, a paper with an album number is superimposed on each turn, one or several frames are made with a soap box, depending on the interesting frames. Yes, sometimes the soap dish does not focus, the hand trembles and quite often the frame gloss reflects reflections from the lamp. But it's still better than nothing. The sequence of the shot frames and auto-numbering make it possible to view the album after a page by page.
Example of manual re-shooting of a separate page from an album 5. A number is transferred to each page:
After a thoughtful analysis, it will become clear what and how to scan. This will be a work plan for a long time.
Why need indexing films. What is on the films can clearly be said only after viewing the frames in a positive way, although a lot of it comes off in its original negative form. Since it is expensive to carry all the films for scanning at once, you need to compile a catalog and understand what is worth digitizing first and what should be left for later.
If there was free space on the tails of the films, I simply scratched the serial number of the film and put it in the catalog in Excel. If possible - from two edges of the film. Of course, it would be better to make some kind of sticker with a printed number, but I decided to scratch the numbers - I was afraid of the appearance of glue from the stickers on the negatives. It happened that there was no room for the number at all on one of the edges - some films were filmed to the last, and the tail was cut off after the development. In this case, I just accurately counted the number of frames, entered into the catalog and added a description more precisely with an indication of the marks near the perforation. Between the perforations, you can often find the name and type of film, such as AGFA ISOPAN F or DEKO.
When selective scanning revealed an unpleasant feature - the company asked permission to cut off the tail of the film, Super Coolscan could chew up the film with a tail.
So, the catalog is formed, the next step is indexing. At home, after several experiments, the simplest option was chosen. A film is inserted into the diascope, and a digital compact is leaning against the eye. On the rear screen of the compact otdichno can see the position of the frame, in the diascope is the light from the usual matte table lamp. Half-press the shutter focuses the focus and focuses very well. Full tap - and ready for a new frame for the story.
Having got a little indulgence with a manual shiver, installed the compact on a small tripod for 200 rubles, it became better. One film takes 2-3 minutes. At the beginning or end of the re-filming, the scratched film number is photographed in the very same Dralascope, then it is convenient to split the series of frames into folders. Such a re-filming is not as fundamental as, say, in this article, but very effective at minimal cost. As I understood as a result of my experiments, I still cannot achieve great quality in such a mechanical system, no matter how hard you try - even if you use a machine with a tripod, SLR, screen and frame for the negative.
The photo editors that I used before could not do complex sequences of actions for mass processing. These were ACDSee and Picassa 3. Searching the net, I found a suitable editor - this is XnView . He allowed to make a macro that inverted all frames in the folder into positives. Then you can manually rotate the frames lying on your side in two steps and sometimes, in some cases, experiment with auto-contrast and shadows / Lights rulers. Perhaps there are other editors who can do it, this one just caught me first, except for those that I had, I tried searching for pieces 5.
A side effect of the diascope - a slight blur around the perimeter, creates an additional effect of antiquity - to yourself Instagram:
An example of scanning a print from an album with a regular tablet:
In most cases, enough auto-correction of contrast, occasionally worth playing with adjusting the shadows and lighting.
The resulting digital archive can be viewed from different historical and thematic sections. Processed and reprinted photos often make a strong impression on the people with whom they are associated.
After scanning and indexing a significant amount of photos and negatives, it turned out that there are:
1. Photos without negatives. With these, everything is clear - frames are invaluable for the history, they need to be scanned with a tablet.
2. Photos for which there was a negative. When scanning a negative, the quality is naturally better, but the prints also have their value. When printing, cropping is usually done, a set of cropping and curing time in the developer and fixer sometimes, though infrequently, make the print unique in itself.
3. Many times there were negatives that were not printed, and quite a lot. These are either duplicates of the same type or blurred frames, or those that were deemed unworthy of print and photo album. But after tens of years, everything seems completely different!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/164829/
All Articles