photos from the archives

Having taken SLR photos on our holidays since about 1970 (we didn’t go digital until 1999) we have ended up with a shedload of slides and negatives. In 2009 we decided that it was time to drag these in to the digital age, and convert them to files that could be stored on the LAN (locally) and the web (globally). If we’d known in advance how long it would take, then it’s fair to say we would not have begun. But having invested in a film/transparency scanner (a plustek OpticFilm 7300; highly recommended by the way) we processed the majority of what we had.

The biggest issue (apart from the time taken) was the state of the slides and negs. OK, so they hadn’t been stored under laboratory conditions, but many of them they were pitted or crazed, or simply covered in dust speckles. Photoshop can obviously help to clean the resulting files, but some were in a pretty poor state. If they are still noteworthy, you’ll see them in the gallery — complete with dust speckles. Where the photo was a card-mounted slide then if you don’t crop it, you end up up with a positively ‘hairy’ border; in a few instances we have deliberately left the card mount border on, as well as not working too hard to clean up the speckles, which certainly gives it an antique feel; for example the picture at the right was taken in 1980, but could pass for 1880!

To view the archive gallery, click here  [requires login]