Friends!
Here is a brother who has acquired a vast photo archive with great cultural and economic potential.
Rolls and rolls of black n’white aerial photographs picturing country farms from the years 1950 through 1957 (that’s when they went color). And it’s solely from the country of Sweden.
But the issue, and the questions that arise may be of “global” interest.
We are talking big negatives, 90 x 70 mm each, in rolls of 50 (makes 5 meter rolls) neatly locked up in hand soldered metal cans of German origin. Film brand is Aviphot. (Gevaert).
The archive consists of some 3.700 of these cans which makes up for slightly under 200.000 images (there are some additional material in there also, about 15.000 post card negs).
That many farms should represent a good portion, if not a majority, of all farms in Sweden at the time. And my ambition is to put the whole lot on the internet. Smart eh?
I reckon people would want to buy photos, pictures for the wall, or digital copies. As a matter of fact I’m in the business already, doing some sales and have as of now digitized some 10.000 pics. A few hundred are on my home page (Swedish language, but give it a try:
www.flygfotohistoria.se/ Click on Bilder fran hela landet, to see a list of places in Sweden.
I would like to line out my digitizing routine:
Firstly: there is NO equipment in store shelves for my 80 mm (physichal) film width. And anything driven by electric motor would have to face the fact that distances between negs range from 0 to 15 mm.
So I have a Nikon D70s that’s hanging in a post vertically pointing at a 80 mm wide table track with a 90 x 70 mm opening beneath and over which I pull the film frame by frame. Further down (out of focus) is a light source that gives even daylight. The camera is connected to a laptop with external hard drive and shooting is managed with a foot pedal (big toe button to be precise).
With this and naming software (Nikon’s Camera Control Pro) I have so far managed to populate that hard drive with folders with correctly named picture files in them, at a rate of more than 1.000 pictures an hour. So it’s a 200 hour job you may argue. Well not quite. Some rolls are cut up in sections, they can often be rolled up backwards (starting with picture no 50) and little nicks and nacks that you just stumble on. Plus that I wouldn’t put even my enemy at such a tedious work. I am heading for a few hours a day aiming at having reached the end before coming Christmas (I need to do some sales also not to forget).
Batch conversion is a key issue here. Each pic needs to be cropped, rotated, inverted and watermarked + IPTC tagged. I use GraphicConverter 6.0 and iWatermark for that purpose. File name changes are very swift in File List. I rely on a 15” PowerBook + extra screen.
All this said I simply want to share my joy over this project with you out there. I have a copy of the DAM book and it’s given me great confidence to proceed. I still don’t know if I’m stupid not setting the Nikon to NEF RAW, it runs quicker at JPEG levels that are good for the net, and orders I do by hand anyway. The D70s gives 14 meg TIFFs to work on which is maybe in the lower order for photos up to a half meter widths. A 10 megapixel camera maybe would work fast enough (less than three seconds between shots) plus give print width. My web page will be MySQL fitted later this fall. So my consultant tells/advices me. Comments?
Also: Each roll is numbered and the same numbers appear on maps that come with the films. It seems I have no competition with the 1950:s material. At least none is older. But I can’t afford to hesitate. The kids in the pictures, with a hand over their forehead, are now coming of age. Some even remembering the airplane.
I work alone but I like to share my experience. I suppose this is a good place to do so.
Johan Ahlén
Sweden
Author
