Try your digital camera. The last restoration job I did was before I
got the 5D. I wasn't happy with the results from my low end flatbed
scanner so I copied the photo (an 8x10) with two shots from the A1 as
though it was a panorama. This gave me two 5MP raw images having a
fair amount of overlap. PTGui stitched the two of them together
beatifully and created an 8.6MP image.
The photo was copied laying on the floor directly below the tripod
mounted camera. The first half was shot and then the photo was simply
slid into position for the other half. I was afraid that PTGui might
have a little problem since the angle of the camera had not changed
between the two halves but it got it right. Apparently, being 4 feet
away from an 8x10 is OK for that. The lighting was from two flash units
spaced about 45 degrees on either side.
I did make a mistake which was converting to 8 bit too soon. The photo
was in really bad shape. Originally it was a B&W image which had been
hand tinted by the studio. It was of a then young woman (the client's
mother) circa 1942 and it had been torn in half by her father. The two
halves were stacked together with one of them exposed to considerable
light over the years. So one half was extremely faded and the other
half fairly normal. To make matters worse, the client had placed the
two halves together and then covered them with stick-on plastic sheeting
to hold them together. That job was not well done and managed to add a
wide, white vertical crease to the white horizontal tear. That plastic
covering had also yellowed and bubbled over the years and was totally
non-removable. Getting the two halves to the correct brightness and
contrast took more adjustment than available in 8 bits which caused a
little bit of posterization. However, that wasn't too bad and I was
able to correct with a little manual smoothing here and there. The
client was absolutely ecstatic. The damage to the photo was done when
she was a baby and she had never seen the photo as it originally looked.
Her first comment was: "Oh, my mother was so beautiful then."
Anyhow, I'd like to have a high end flatbed but I wouldn't hesitate to
do another restoration job the same way. But today I'd be smarter about
when I did the 8 bit conversion.
Chuck Norcutt
Wayne Culberson wrote:
> Okay, I admit that I don't follow these scanner threads until I need help.
> Here is my situation. I've been going through my father and mother's old
> pictures (dad recently passed away so both are gone now). Yesterday, I
> brought home some old Kodachrome slides, some B&W pics shot on probably a
> Brownie Hawkeye and some other smaller format, and some B&W studio photos,
> and some tin type pics. Some of the studio photos go back 100 years or more
> I think, as there are pictures of several generations back that came from my
> grandparents home as well. My brothers and sister would like copies of some
> of these old family photos. Some of theme will need some PS help, some the
> photo stores likely won't duplicate as they are from studios (long since
> closed and gone), and some are slides that I want to make prints from. Most
> of the color photos are faded beyond fixing in my opinion, but there might
> be a few I'd like to copy.
>
> So, is there a reasonably priced flat bed scanner that would handle both
> prints and 35mm slides that someone could recommend. I had an old 5100A HP
> Photo Smart that is now inoperable because of the connection and card
> incompatibility. Anyways, the photo scanning (5x7 max) mode of it didn't
> work at all, so I'm not interested in trying to resurrect it.
>
> Thanks,
> Wayne
>
>
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