workshop photography

Hi Everyone,

This has turned out to be an even longer (epic?) postings. As a result, I have been obliged to split this post into two or three parts, so here goes.

Part 1

To pick up from previous comments which were started by SLOTDRILLER Ian four days ago, had I known about the colour deterioration due to light exposure, perhaps I wouldn’t have projected my colour slides quite so often. Upon reflection (pun?), some of my slides were taken while I was stationed at RAF Nicosia (Cyprus) c1957-58 and would therefore be at least fifty-five years old. And yet, they don’t seem to have suffered the same amount of colour loss when compared with those taken in Holland c.1962.

In my early enthusiasm of the late fifties, I protected many of my slides by placing them between glass. About two hundred in all received this treatment. They were stored in a couple of partitioned slide boxes which were fitted snugly inside a larger box along with my projector. Light penetration was thus minimal. Perhaps being kept in a garage for forty plus years (while subjected to the fluctuations of our Melbourne temperatures and humidity), was responsible for some of the deterioration. As I began to digitise my slides, I found and had to contend with lots of dust, and tiny hints of fungal attack, while Newton had left quite a few of his rings.

Although I carefully disassembled and cleaned those slides sandwiched between glass, most of the remaining `grime’ was still transferred as part of the image during digitising. It was a relatively easy job to remove the spots by way of the `Healing Brush Tool’ and the `Spot Healing Brush Tool’ courtesy of Adobe Photoshop CS3. Much easier than the old way of a painstaking use of spotting brush and spotting ink. Confetti on black and white wedding pictures for example.

You can see what I mean from these two versions, `Before’ and `After’.

Continued in Part 2

Part 2

Here’s my continuation of Part 1.

I rather like Raymond G’s comments about the 64 LED photographic lights. One of the difficulties with flash off the camera, is knowing where to position the flash light(s) for best modelling.

As for my actual digitising as requested by David Littlewood, I thought it better to describe my setup, especially since building equipment etc. is the primary topic of ME.

I decided upon using my (at the time - newly purchased) 100mm macro lens and to photograph the slides directly. You can see from the setup that the lens was `buried’ inside a cardboard tube, thus while avoiding extraneous light. It did however remove access for manual focussing. This was not really an issue since the Canon lens was equipped with ultrasonic auto-focus. Wonderful stuff!

With a very limited workshop, I set about building (more like assembling) a slide copier. My photographs show the physical set up. To capture the whole setup and how the camera was positioned, I had to take a couple of pictures through a low cost digital camera, hence the poorer quality images.

The basic parts of the setup are a slide carrier `borrowed’ from my now rather ancient slide projector; a large diameter (about 95mm) cardboard post-office document tube with its plastic end caps; and a couple of MDF drinks coasters. These latter items were used to pack the underside of the camera until the centre-lines of camera and slides were properly lined up and square. All this was mounted onto a larger piece of MDF, while a piece of wooden dowel served to locate the camera via its 1/4" Whit tripod hole.

With the post-office tube, the camera to slide distance (minus the lens), turned out to be close to 320mm. However, for the lens to fit properly and be supported without any interference with the focussing mechanism, a shorter length (about 230mm) of tube was necessary.

Single central holes were cut into the two polyethylene tube end caps. One hole was about 45mm for the slide-carrier end (could have been slightly larger, but not critical), and one about 70mm into which the lens could slide neatly and would fully locate both the lens and the camera. This latter task was accomplished carefully by hand using a sharp scalpel. It should be emphasised that the plastic end caps are made from high-density polyethylene, which requires a fair degree of skill and extreme care to allow for this material’s very slippery nature. Be very careful if you take on this task, it’s easy for the knife/scalpel to slip.

Continued in Part 3

Part 3

The next part of the exercise was to arrange some bits of wood as a frame, onto which I could mount the slide carrier and some form of light diffuser. With a couple of Speedlites (flash guns) in my Canon camera kit, I planned to back illuminate the slides through a piece of thin, white, plastic sheet. The flash/camera link was set to master/slave, with a wireless Speedlite transmitter sitting on top of the camera.

With the arrangement as described in Part 2, it takes very little time to both set up and to take pictures. Focus and exposure are fully automatic, so there is little else to do but keep feeding slides into the slide carrier and pressing the cable release. For the number of slides I needed to digitise, it probably took me longer to build the device than it did to take the photographs.

In order to show the versatility of the CS3 Photoshop software (not that I have any commercial interests), I have included a `before and after picture’ in another album entitled `Workshop Photography’ (to suit this thread). To add a little more explanation, especially since my over-night memory has improved, the Cyprus slide of the swimming pool (RAF Nicosia), was installed between glass, while the ship and tug picture (taken in Oct ‘62) remained in its original cardboard mount.

Here's the Ship and tug, before and after Photoshop once again, this time as a means of comparing the original colouring renderings with the Nicosia swimming pool.

The swimming pool - RAF Nicosia Oct ‘62

Perhaps this (lack of protection) was responsible for the colour deterioration. I don’t know!

Regards to all,

Sam

Phew!!!

Hello Sam,

I also know the problems of slide deterioration. I have a vast collection of histopathology slides that I used for teaching over the years. They were recorded with light and electron microscopes onto colour film, B&W film and in the early days 2X2 glass plates. I have a Nikon Coolscan negative scanner that yields amazing results. Unfortunately, they are no longer manufactured. I was keen to digitise my collection for posterity, but soon found that many if not most had dust, moulds etc. in inconvenient spots in spite of the fact that they have been kept in plastic slide holders. The task of retouching is so onerous that I have given up except on rare slides that I use from time to time. Unfortunately, it appears that the old enemies of dust, scratches and moulds win: regardless of the kit used for copying.

The results that you show are most impressive and show a lot of skill and attention.

Ray

Back in the dim and distant past (about 15 years ago) in the later days of film photography, as I was a very extensive user of transparency film, I bought a copy of Wilhelm's "The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs". Rather expensive, but very comprehensive, and with lots of interesting detail about the scandals of mass produced material with very poor keeping properties. If you are interested in looking after old film, try to get hold of a copy, though it may be a bit out of date now.

The gist is that all film material deteriorates, the only difference is the speed. Kodachrome is excellent in the dark, terrible in light. Later E6 films (especially Fujichromes) are nearly as good as Kodachromes in the dark, and vastly better (in fact the best of all) in the light. I switched entirely to Fujichrome...

I do find E6 film is also easier to scan properly. Even using a fairly high level scanner (Nikon Super Coolscan 5000) with special settings for Kodachrome, the colours always seem to come out wrong for me, in a way I can never correct with Photoshop. Maybe I just haven't tried long enough, I just gave up and used a slide duplicator, which worked much better.

Sam, your setup is functionally just the same as mine, just a lot cheaper, and I guess a lot fiddlier (you can't have everything). The only extra function I have on the Illumitran is the contrast control, which helps prevent contrast increase. Even this is a lot less important when the end product is a digital file which you can manipulate anyway.

David

Edited By David Littlewood on 29/05/2013 13:02:51

I have an old Minolta slide scanner with Kodak ICE. This is a wonderful (but painfully slow) process for slides you can't get 100% clean. A pre-scan is made using infra red, this identifies any dirt on the slide/negative and makes a map of it (the IR passes through black parts of the image, but not dirt).

The full scan is then done and some clever algorithms use the colour gradients around the specks of dust, scratches etc. and the magivcally disappear - at least they disappear with a facility far better than you could do it by manual retouching, at least for more than the odd speck on a plain background.

If you have such issues, see if you can find a scanner with ICE (you WILL need a lot of patience - it can take 20 minutes to scan a very dusty slide with comelx content)

Neil

Thanks for your comments Neil.

I hadn’t realised that this ICE process (Image Correction and Enhancement) was possible/existed. My `Head-in-the-Sand’ perhaps.

However, to satisfy my own curiosity, I found a couple of interesting articles, which can be viewed via the links below.

Although appearing to be a translation into English by ScanDig, and a (sales) lead-in to having ones slides digitised, the first one explains some of the issues, especially about Kodachrome. It also explains to some extent why we can see a sort of surface rippling or undulation on the backs of the Kodachrome slides.

Some of the technology is explained to a lesser extent in the second http.

Thanks again for bringing this to our attention.

Best regards,

Sam

**LINK**

**LINK**

Edited By Sam Stones on 31/05/2013 00:11:14

Hi, my Nikon Coolscan has digital ICE and like Neil says you can use a prescan to crop in the process but scaning with the ICE on is a slow process but it really does work well.

The downside of my machine is it is not upgradeable past Windows 2000, so I have a computer dedicated just for this sccanner.

Regards Nick.

Hello all,

The useful and helpful comments above highlight the great value of these threads. Where else would you find such a breadth and depth of useful knowledge? I have a copy of the Nikon Scan programme that came with the Coolscan V. and it includes digital ICE. Over time, I have moved through Windows 7 and am now on Windows 8. For me, Win 8 is the best of the Windows series by a long way, in spite of the adverse comments in the media. Unfortunately, as noted by Nick, the Nikon software is not compatible with current Windows software. I gather that Nikon have no intention of upgrading it any further as they no longer make these instruments. I now use Vuescan software available on the Internet. There is a free version but I paid for the professional version as it is for life and cheap. It works well with my flatbed scanner and the Coolscan; a disadvantage is that it does not support digital ICE. Sam’s links to Kodachrome are interesting as my Coolscan has a “Kodachome” setting, and many of my slides are classic Kodachromes in a card mount.

The book "The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs" is available from Amazon.co.uk; a new copy is a bit expensive for, but at £15 for a used version seems good value for a specialist book and not much more than the cost of a pizza.

I have an old laptop in the workshop running Windows XP. It is used for my USB microscope and gets taken to local model exhibitions where Powerpoint shows demonstrate the construction of some of my steam engines. It may be useful to put the Nikon software onto that one, for the Coolscan; to make a return to digital ICE.

Regards

Ray

I run the Minolta software on a Vista machine using compatability mode. I also use this to run an old version of Corel. Find the program .exe file, right click it and select properties. Somewhere from there you should be able to find a tab called something like 'compatability settings'. I'd guess it's in W7 and W8 as well.

Neil

Hi Neil

I'm running the 64-bit version of Windows 7 which has the ability to run XP era versions of S/W in a mode known as "Virtual Machine" This is particularly useful as my home accounts package, with data going back to 1995, is there. I'm unsure if this will be able to run with Windows 8 however?

Norman

Hi, my Nikon Coolscan is connected to the computer via a SCSI cable and hence the computer needs a SCSI adapter. When I first bought this scanner, which is secound hand, SCSI adapters were fast going out of fashion and the seller was not willing to sell his, however at the time my local PC World store had two suitable ones left. Which was lucky for me.

I may well be able to get a SCSI to USB adapter, but these may not work with all SCSI devices, and not only that I don't have time to chase after one and only to find that some aspects of the scanner won't work correctly, therefore I'm happy to stick with my dedicated computer with Windows 2000 Pro. The upgraded software that I downloade from Nikon at the time works very well, and I've scaned many negative with very good success so far.

I do also have a Canoscan scanner, but that isn't as good as the Nikon, and the SCSI adapter that came with it, isn't supported past Windows 98 secound edition. I don't use that one very often.

Sam, I do like your setup for photograghing negatives. I had similar thoughts when figuring out how to scan a couple of black and white negatives of my farther in his shed, which were on the old 127 roll film. However I purchased one of Canon's latest flat bed scanners which had facilities for scanning 35mm film and slides, but a more expensive one could do 127 roll film as well, but that was not available locally. The two scanners were much the same, it was really just the mounts for holding the film that was the real differance, I was able to adapt mine using black card, it was just a bit fiddlely to get the negatives lineed up correctly, but it worked OK. There was some additional software with the more expensive one, but I had adequate sofware to use.

Regards Nick.

P.S. here's one of the photos that I scanned of my farther in his shed.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 31/05/2013 21:53:46