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

 

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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.

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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

 

 

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