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108 lines
6.2 KiB
Plaintext
108 lines
6.2 KiB
Plaintext
Episode: 4244
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Title: HPR4244: Two methods of digitizing photos.
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Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4244/hpr4244.mp3
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Transcribed: 2025-10-25 21:57:04
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---
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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4244 for Thursday the 7th of November 2024.
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Today's show is entitled Two Methods of Digitizing Photos.
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It is hosted by Henrik Hemrin and is about 8 minutes long.
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It carries a clean flag.
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The summary is a brief discussion about two methods of digitizing analog photos.
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Welcome to Hacker Public Radio.
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My name is Henrik Hemrin and I'm your host today.
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Today I will talk about digitizing analog photos.
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I will talk about two methods.
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I will not give the answer which met through this best, but I hope it gives you some thoughts
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on how you can do.
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I'm also eager to hear any experience you have or any thoughts.
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I have analog photos stored as prints, as negatives and as positive slides.
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They are in black and white and they are in colors.
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They are in various sizes.
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Only my positive slides are in all in one size, 24 x 36 mm.
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Some prints are glued on a paper sheet or in a book and are not easy to detach.
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I have digitized photos now and then for managers, mostly on a project basis when I need photos
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for a specific purpose.
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In my dreams I want to digitize in a structured way in the days to come.
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In one way, it's good I haven't done that yet because the hardware and software is so
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much better now than a decade or two ago.
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I have primarily used flat bed scanners for this.
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More recently I have added a dedicated film scanner for 24 x 36 mm to my equipment.
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I have scanners from different manufacturers.
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Each scanner is delivered with software.
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Each software is generally good, but it is a problem to manage several software.
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I wanted to simplify my software learning, so I wanted one software for all my existing
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and any future scanner.
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Secondly, I intended to migrate to a Linux operating system which I have done now.
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Those two requirements led me to switch over to View Scan Software.
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I had tested View Scan before and also gotten recommendations from photographic friends.
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View Scan is a proprietary software made by a small family-run company.
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It's available for Linux, Windows and Mac OS.
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View Scan supports very many hardware scanners.
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I do not know about any better software for Linux and it's maybe also the best choice
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for any operating system, so I do not regret my switch to View Scan.
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A second method to digitize photos is reproduction with a camera.
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That is to use a camera to shoot a photo of the photo.
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The concept is old.
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I remember from the old analog days that a special positive slide film existed that was
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optimized to duplicate positive slides with a camera.
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Since the days when I started to use scanners, the evolution of digital cameras has gone
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way forward and reproduction duplication method is indeed an alternative to scanners in quality.
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Some say it is a superior technology.
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I do not know.
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But as I'm coming from the scanning technology and starting to explore the repro technology,
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I will give my early thoughts from that perspective.
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My initial plan has been to use repro technology for prints that are glued into all bumps and
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therefore difficult to manage in the scanner.
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It is also an excellent method to digitize other papers in book format.
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But I have not really started to do that.
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However, a while ago I started to look into 6x9 centimeters negatives.
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My scanner can just manage 6x9.
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But I do not have a fixture for 6x9.
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So it's both somewhat tricky to position the negative as well as to keep it flat in
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the scanner.
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A thin plexiglass plate should be possible to use to keep it flat.
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But even without plexiglass, I have tested 6x9 in the scanner and I get well-acceptable
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result.
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Anyway, I started to try out the repro method on 6x9.
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I am not coming so far in my trials that I can decide which method is best for me.
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My camera is a modest digital camera compared to the state of the art.
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My flatbed beds should give a better or comparable resolution than my modest digital camera
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will give.
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The fixture I have for repro do not keep the negative fully flat because 6x9 is a rather
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big size.
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So I plan to explore if I can improve quality with the plexiglass plate above the negative.
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An issue with the repro method is to keep all angles in control to mount the camera in
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exactly correct angle in relation to the object.
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Focus can be another issue.
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I consider it is better to use the manual focus rather than auto focus.
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When I take repro photos, I have the camera connected to a laptop and I use the entangle
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software to control the camera settings from the laptop.
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I can use the camera live view to position the object as well as to focus.
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I then use raw therapy software to convert the negative photo from the camera to a normal
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photo.
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Raw therapy comes with pre-installed profiles for this process.
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The default profile values can be adjusted and also stored as a new personal profile.
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A major advantage of the repro method compared to the scanner method is the speed.
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Once all is configured in set, I mean it takes 100 of a second or so to do the digitizing
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itself with the camera while it can take minutes with the scanner.
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I use DigiCam as my photo catalog software.
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For me, this is an ongoing investigation.
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For time being, I will likely use scanners as my first to go option and repro photos for
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the other objects not suitable for my scanner.
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This may change later when I have better experience or eventually better equipment.
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All software I currently use with the exception of use scan of free and open source, I use
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them all on Linux operating system, some of them are available on other platforms as well.
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I will include links to their websites in the show notes.
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If you have any opinion or experience of digitizing analog photos, I will be happy to read
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your comments or listen to your show.
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Thank you for listening, take care and goodbye.
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You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio at HackerPublicRadio.org.
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Today's show was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself if you ever thought of recording
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a podcast, and click on our contribute link to find out how easy it really is.
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Hosting for HBR has been kindly provided by an honesthost.com, the internet archive
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and our syncs.net.
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On this otherwise stated, today's show is released under Creative Commons, Attribution 4.0
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International License.
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