Old pictures [well, not so much]

[Caster]

I dunno squat about pictures and the like. How would one go about taking an old photo and have it copied. I don't have the negatives. I can scan it obviously, but I mean a VERY high quality copy. I don't mind paying for it. They were printed in the early 90's, taken with a 35mm. If I wanted to get a super high quality copy, and have it blown up bigger, where'd be the best place around Nashville or Franklin to do that? It's worth the $$$ to me to get it done. I found some pictures of my wife when we were in high school. Damn was she stupid, she could have done SOOOO much better than what she ended up with[me].

I wouldn't mind getting it framed nice to hang up in my reloading shop.

Thanks.

Edited April 29, 2012 by Caster

[Steelharp]

Chromatics. That's the lab all the other places in town (Dury's, etc) send their stuff to.

[Caster]

Chromatics. That's the lab all the other places in town (Dury's, etc) send their stuff to.

Cool, thank you.

Funny their website says choosing the right kind of scan can be confusing, feel free to call. NO KIDDING! I'll give them a call next week.

Thanks again Steelharp.

[TripleDigitRide]

I'm no expert, but I'm thinking you'll lose picture quality if you blow it up. Then again, Photoshop can work wonders.

[Guest Victor9er]

The highest quality scan from a picture that can be made is on something called a "drum scanner"... what they do is they place the photo on this... well a cylinder kind of like a big drum (thus the name) and the scanner itself is stationary. The drum rolls very slowly and moves the picture across the scanner, which is supposed to give the highest quality. It's also expensive... but if that's what you want look for a lab that does that.

It's been a while since I've looked around but there are some pro labs that will list what equipment they use. You'll want them to scan the pics at a very high resolution, especially if you want to enlarge them. You can still get a high quality scan from other types of scanners, but usually the drum scanner is considered the top-notch.

Edit: Of course that was a few years back.... the newer crop of flat bed scanners may have improved in quality since then....

Edited April 29, 2012 by Victor9er

[VERO1]

The only problem you may have is if the photos were professionally taken. Some places will not copy them because of copyright issues. If they are just personal snapshots then you shouldnot have any problems.

[Westwindmike]

The only problem you may have is if the photos were professionally taken. Some places will not copy them because of copyright issues. If they are just personal snapshots then you shouldnot have any problems.

This.

My son and DIL tried to get copies of their wedding photos printed and no one would print them without a release from the photographer.

[Caster]

Yeah, they're just pictures taken by no telling who and developed at a photo hut somewhere nearly two decades ago. Thanks though, I didn't know that.

[dlm37015]

let me know how it turns out if all else failes we can do it at my house

[KahrMan]

Chromatics. That's the lab all the other places in town (Dury's, etc) send their stuff to.

Was in the printing business for 15 years. Anytime we needed high quality scan work done, it went to Chromatics. They really know there stuff.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Yep a perfessional who knows what he is doing will most likely squeeze as much quality as can be squoze out of em.

Have had a few flatbed scanners over the years, none real expensive. The price seems to come and go. Sometimes couldn't find decent scanners dirt cheap and other times not-awful USB scanners would be as cheap as consumer inkjet printers.

Maybe somebody makes real fast scanners even in a budget price range. The scanners I've had were slow as molasses, which is no problem for an occasional scan but maddening if you want to scan a bunch of stuff. Every picture or scan I ever made can't resist loading it in photoshop elements or photoshop and at least adjusting color balance and brightness. It is difficult to resist killing off dust specks and bad grain and such but gets time consuming. OCD perhaps.

Sometimes if one has a not-terrible little digital camera with macro focusing, it seems to make sense to try to set up pretty good shadow-less, reflection-less lighting and take pictures of the photos or documents. When that works it is lots faster than scanning, at least the slow scanners I've had.

When wife's gramps died near 100 years old, he had been a farmer or rural newspaperman or rural cop all his life. Nobody in the family realized he was an avid photographer until going thru his effects. He had his old ancient Kodak Pony 35mm camera, ancient flash-bulb lighting attachments, and boxes of hundreds of really good kodachrome slides of people and places long ago and far away. All the relatives wanted copies and I unwisely volunteered to digitize them. Thought I could knock em all out an hour here and there, but it turned into a mess. The slide attachment on the scanner didn't work very good and was slow slow slow.

So finally knocked together a temporary light-table with an ancient little "table top" illuminated slide viewer, with the 5" square magnifying lens removed, and the camera centered a few inches away from the slide to frame the image with a little bit of slop around the edges. Took some fiddling but finally got it making pretty good copies of the slides and got em all done over a weekend.

It is harder to get the lighting correct to avoid distortion and reflections on paper photographs, but might not be a crazy way to attempt digitizing hundreds of old paper photos. Maybe a flatbed scanner would do a slightly better job, but unless somebody makes a "nearly instant" good quality scanner, it is just daunting thinking about the time it would take to digitize big shoeboxes of old family photos.

[Caster]

When wife's gramps died near 100 years old, he had been a farmer or rural newspaperman or rural cop all his life. Nobody in the family realized he was an avid photographer until going thru his effects. He had his old ancient Kodak Pony 35mm camera, ancient flash-bulb lighting attachments, and boxes of hundreds of really good kodachrome slides of people and places long ago and far away. All the relatives wanted copies and I unwisely volunteered to digitize them. Thought I could knock em all out an hour here and there, but it turned into a mess. The slide attachment on the scanner didn't work very good and was slow slow slow.

They didn't say "Graflex" did they? They bring good money to Star Wars buffs as the first lightsabre in episode IV a New Hope was made from one of those.