Scanning Glass Plate Negatives

 

Recently I was given a number of glass plate negatives to scan.  Their owner thought they dated from the late 1800s but wasn’t too sure what the images were as they were difficult to see.   The negatives had been stored away flat in wads of newspaper...

 

 

We have a special tray in our scanner that enables us to scan glass plate negatives with the emulsion side uppermost so the delicate emulsion does not need to be in contact with the glass of the scanner - many other scanners cannot do this. 

 

Can you imagine my excitment, these images had not been seen for many years! ....What would we uncover?  Below are a couple of images from the collection....



Click to enlarge

 

 

Glass plate negatives require careful handling and storing to avoid damage.  To protect these negatives it is best that they are stored vertically on their longest side and in individual archival envelopes. For more advice see http://natlib.govt.nz/collections/caring-for-your-collections/photographs

 

Copyright Carterworks (NZ)

Hidden information - Neville's Discovery

Some time ago I was asked to restore a small photo of Neville's father who was a scout in the early 1900s in Wellington.  The photo was quite small and faded and was taken in Hay Street, Oriental Bay.

 

I restored the photo and printed it at a larger size.  I was able to enlarge this photo because the original image was quite sharp and I can scan and print photos at a high resolution.  The resulting print showed a lot of the detail not obvious in the original. 
 

After looking at the print, Neville was surprised to notice an officer's ranking shoulder of his father's uniform.  He said he never realised his father had obtained that rank as it was not obvious in the original photo.

Copyright Carterworks NZ

Early colour photography





Sergey Prokudin-Gorskii

One of the most amazing collections of early colour photographs is held by the Library of Congress, known as the Sergey Prokudin -Gorskii collection.  These early colour photos were not easily viewable because the images were made up of three separate black and white glass plates which had been shot simultaneously with three separate lenses covered with a different coloured filter-  red, green and blue.  The colour image was formed when the plates were combined in a specialist viewer.  It is believed Gorskii's camera was similar to one developed by Miethe in 1903.   Between 1909 and 1915  Gorskii travelled around Russia documenting the country at the time producing both colour and sepia images. He managed to leave the country with around half of his collection that was later bought by the Library of Congress. 

 

 

In 2000 the Library started scanning these images and many have now been restored, using the process of digichromatography.  http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/making.html 

 

 

One of the striking things about these images is the fact they are so real, yet they document a time that we most commonly see in black and white or sepia. 

 

 

View of Vitebsk taken in 1912

 

 

Copyright Carterworks NZ

Retouching Photos the old fashioned way

In the days before Photoshop.....editing photos was an involved process ....everything was done manually....

 

See http://petapixel.com/2013/05/08/how-photographers-photoshopped-their-pictures-back-in-1946/

 

 

 

 

The Nanotechnology of the Daguerreotype

I recently found this interesting article about how early photographs used high tech nanotechnology!

New Portable Scanner
 

We can now visit you at your place to scan your documents, photos, 35mm slides and negatives!

We have a number of different specialised scanners that enable us to capture images at different resolutions.  Scanners are specialist machines and some are not easily transportable.  While our negative/ slide scanner and book scanner are highly portable our specialist large media scanner is not.
 

There are a number of small scanners on the market - many of these have inbuilt automatic functions which cannot be turned off and they do not have the ability to be colour profiled. This limits their suitability for photographic restoration.
 

Recently we found a good solution, a small portable Epson scanner with professional features and we can now scan your photos in your own home. In professional mode the Epson offers all the features required to capture a good image suitable for a large number of restoration purposes.  Our large scanner is used for images that require more extensive work, large negatives and glass-plate negatives.

A piece of family history discovered

 

 

 

So often we only know part of the story behind a family photo.  One of the advantages of digitisation is the ability to reproduce and share our photos, not only with family members but others in the community....this can lead to interesting discoveries.....

 

Recently I scanned and restored some photographs from a photograph album belonging an early Wellington family who settled here in the later part of the 1800s.  A family album dating from the late 1800s to early 1900s contained a number of beautiful sailing boat images, including one of a large ship stranded on the beach.  Neville, the photograph album owner thought the ship was wrecked somewhere down south, but knew nothing of its history.  I used this image recently, with Nevilles permission, in a pamphlet about my work, which I  took along  with me to a recent open day of the Southern Heritage Group,  held at the Island Bay Community Centre. When Marion from the group saw my brochure she instantly recognised the image and said “that’s the Bella, which was stranded at Owhiro Bay”.  She pulled out a file full of newspaper articles and including an image similar to, but not the same as the image I had scanned and restored from Neville’s album.  It was indeed the Bella.   I was delighted as I knew Neville did not have any information on the ship, its name, the date or where the stranding occurred so I was able to copy this and pass this information to Neville.  Neville was thrilled to discover new information about a piece of his family history.

 Copyright Carterworks NZ