Five "bankers" boxes have arrived with my grandparents' photo collection. I am tasked with digitizing everything, as they are old, and some are losing their emulsion.
I am looking for info on how best to do this. I do not want to scan them.
What do you recommend?
@BlueStateBabe i had good luck digitizing an 1800's montana law book putting a digital camera on a tripod facing down and a glass plate on the book to flatten the pages. moves pretty fast that way. course your pictures are all different sizes so will take more fiddling. you can just number them 1,2,3,4... till they're on the computer. then go back and retitle, change brightness and contrast, etc. hope that helps.
Great ideas. May I ask where you found the glass plate? I am wondering if a clear plastic panel would also work.
@BlueStateBabe @Iceman_Bob Any glass shop can provide you with that for not too much money.
Glass is generally more rigid than plastic. You want it to be held as flat as possible. If you use two glass pieces and sandwich the photos together between them, that would help even more.
The more you can rig it up so your angles are precise, ie the lens kept perfectly perpendicular to the art, the better your results will be. It's probably going to take days, so remember to clean the glass as needed.
Am reluctant to do the sandwiching, as these photos are already so delicate. Hoping to leave in album, flatten with glass/plexiglass, and take photos using a stand to hold the camera in place.
@sumpnlikefaith @Iceman_Bob
Days if not months. I need to set tiny goals, otherwise this will burn me out big time.