Ryan submitted a new blog post: Through Bob Roddick’s Lens: A Grainy Glimpse from 75 Years Ago Continue reading the Original Blog Post
Ryan, I hope someday you leave your vast collection to the NHRA Museum or Peterson, some place that will keep the history going. You seem to always come up with pretty cool stuff!
I’ve managed to put together a decent collection of early photographs over the years—not as big or as complete as some others, but enough to keep me satisfied. That said, I don’t see myself as the owner of this imagery. Ownership is too possessive... My role is simpler: preserve it, share it, make sure it survives the passage of time intact and accessible. Now, when it comes to the photos I’ve taken myself, my goal is clear: when I’m dead and gone, every single shot is fair game for anyone who wants it. No gates, no strings. And let me be perfectly clear—NO GODDAMNED WATERMARKS. Not now, not ever, not for any reason. Nothing pisses me off more than the modern scourge of watermarks slapped onto vintage images like a dog marking its territory. Unless you took the photo, watermarking it is absolute, unadulterated bullshit. An insult to the art, the history, and the spirit of the original photographer. Are there exceptions? Maybe. A rare few that might slip through the cracks of my hardline rule. But they’d better be exceptional. And even then, I’d probably side-eye them until my dying breath. This isn’t just my own personal rule—it’s my crusade.
Yes, the old pics and film really cement the Culture to the timelines. Bringing negatives to light must be very exciting...thanks for sharing them. Mr Roddick sure hung around with some movers and shakers. I certainly get why these are so important to stepping back in time which is what I say happens when I hop in the Ole Hotrod...in a plausible way...
My uncle, who passed away recently, had a bunch of old drag racing pics at his funeral. I spoke with his kids about letting me borrow them and make digital copies for everyone. They also said he had a lot of 8mm film. He campaigned a lot of cars over the years.
Finding someone to print picture from negatives is getting harder to do. As a kid my dad was into photographic we developed our own pictures at home. We had an enlarger and all the chemicals and a dark room.
They do make digital convertors now. Not sure on the quality they produce, but I am investing in some of this technology to save old photos etc in the near future.
Send them to Ryan...he can do a Thread on your behalf...and we'll all be ooing and aweing...AND they are archived for longer than we'll be around. This stuff is right up his alley too. He's busy I know but if the content is relevant it would be really make for some great recollection. Your relatives would have some pics for a photo album to boot... I archived a ton of historic Aviation pics from the plant I worked at dating back to its early beginnings in 1938 and put them all on a DVD that I've passed out to anyone who's connected to that history. That would be a good thing to do perhaps in lieu of an Album. Lots of scanning.
It's expensive and very time consuming. It takes me a good couple of hours per print... lots of dead time waiting in that, but it's not something you can really walk away from. Typically, I have to really want a print to go through the process... but I am going through a phase at the moment and working on my skills. The best way to scan negatives is with a digital camera, a macro lens, and a setup like this: https://kamerastore.com/en-us/pages/360-system If you are scanning prints, a decent flatbed will do a decent job. I use a Epson V700. I can have them all done within 10 years!
I hear you Ryan. I suppose a thorough look through the entire collection to narrow things down to what makes sense to fulfill the objective is a good start. Root has a pretty good handle on what jives around here. Truly not all imagery will make the cut. It really makes sense to get it digitized as stuff gets lost and damaged...
I fear that in the future there will be no "old" (nowadays) photos as so few get printed. phones and computers crash, and as I sadly found out recently photos on CD deteriorate over time. I recently gathered up all my car photos on to one external hard drive, 24,000 car show images taken since 2004 when I got my digital camera. some of the early ones were just gone, others had deteriorated significantly.
Contrary to popular belief, digital photos are far more archivable than film. Film negatives and even prints deteriorate over time. And while you can preserve film and prints, it takes far more effort and it's far less fool proof... With digital, however, a person that knows what they are doing can archive photos literally forever with far less effort... Just some resources (drives) and a few clicks.... All with ZERO loss of quality.
20 years ago in the midst of a very bad divorce I took every negative out of the house. I'd be damned if I let her steal the memories of my kids growing up from me. Purchased a very high end flat bed photo scanner that did film as well as photos at a very high quality (up to 2400 dpi). Cutting edge at an affordable price at the time. The idea was to digitally archive all the negatives. Finally, this past December I unearthed all the negatives, sat at my desk for a few weeks and scanned all 4500 images. Yes, some of the negatives have degraded over time but the quality is there for the most part. Saved them all into separate folders by date or event and gave them to my kids for Xmas on a portable hard drive. It would have been impossible to print every negative and incredibly costly but now they have all the images of themselves when they were young and it's all finally archived. Andy
These are the basics for external storage for safe keeping. They are pocket size, hold a ton of photos and other stuff. A 4tb took me 4 years to fill up so it was struggling to load any more bits of information, let along color photos and PDF files. The 5TB I recently purchased is a “copy and paste” location for all of my laptop files I recently backed up. That is 5tb file drive number three. One goes in our safe deposit box along with the usual stuff most folks put in those bank secured boxes. The other two are back ups located in our “go bag.” Nothing else is needed other than my wife, cars, granddaughter if she is staying with us, my laptop, and the go bag. Clothes, papers, old photo albums are useful in daily life, but in an emergency, no need to save them if a fast exit is indicated. All photo albums are scanned into the external hard drives. Updated monthly and sometimes at low activity, copied and pasted as I am sitting around drawing my next art project. At one time our son said to us: “…in an emergency grab those 15 photo albums… and our granddaughter,” if their house was being attacked in a fire storm. Yea, right, 15 heavy, bulky photo albums, upstairs in a closet shelf, with a little dog, toddler granddaughter and us all rushing around getting out. So, we started the external hard drive backups. It started off with a 500 gb drive. that seemed huge, but within a year, we had to go to a 1 TB drive. Many 1 tb drives, later, led to the current 5TB drives for longer life. Now, those albums are nice to sit around and look, but are not necessary to grab and save. Even one small 4tb external hard drive with all files on it fits in our pockets for a fast escape. Hello, In order to get our old film photos copied and digitized, we had to get a full on scanner. It was a multiple use scanner for daily scans, but in our case, there were tons of films, negatives, color slides and old photos to save digitally. This scanner had one purpose: scan everything using the provided metal stencils for negatives and color slides. Then, once that was finished, flat photos and other copied items. A scanner built for just copying in mass quantities or scanning photos and slides. Now, those dark room saves can be copied and the hard work in the dark moments can be useful as digital products safe from being destroyed. I have a nice scanner that is simple to use, an Epson 600 flatbed scanner. I scanned all of my photos from negatives and color slides. They, too, came out fine. But, the one thing I did not like is that there were bound books I wanted to scan a page or two. But, the bound part of the book did not allow me to scan to a flat readable page. For some, scanned pages with edges crooked and slightly at angles drives a normal person reading them crazy. So, I stopped after several tries. But, if the book or manual has rings and can be folded flat, now we are in a good mode and the scanning is fine. I have a wonderful book written by a good friend. His artwork is outstanding and the photos are superb. It is a bound book and that prevents copying or scanning the stories or art/stories. So, I guess that it serves a purpose. Jnaki Home printers have built in scanners. They scan copies of flat pdf files and loose leaf papers from tax prep folks and such. So, they have value. But the scanning for specific color quality reproduction of slides and photos is so much better in a scanner built for such activity, only. Those results are your choice to peruse, when finished. In comparison of both of my printer/scanner and pure scanner, it is a hands down winner for pure quality color and b/w scanning. For all others, the office paper printer is fast and the resulting scan is simple. The normal office everyday printer/scanner/copier not as good for scanning color slides or film of any kind… Unless it is an utmost value to you to be able to read a flat copy of a page or two, it is not worth the effort to copy a lot of manuals. They become storage nightmares and for what? Unless they are manuals that you use everyday, the big question is WHY??? SO… “NO” to your question... This Epson 600 scanner opens flat and sits on top of open books or manuals. But, even with all of the adaptability, the scans still are not flat and clear. The bound portion of the books or manuals prevented a clear flat copy for my files. Have I read those files? No, so, they are on the file clean out list when I get to my file drawer clean out days. If I haven’t used it in two years, it gets the local trash day vacation. YRMV 2023 STORY: Some of the old color slides and negatives I found in my own box of photos ended up staying in those boxes for years. I had no idea that they could be resurrected. Some old photos are too far gone, but if the actual color transparencies are in fairly good condition, they are salvageable. Once those color transparencies are scanned in high resolution or for simplicity sake, 300 dpi is used for most scans. But high quality photos can be scanned at 600 dpi. Once I scanned at 1200 dpi and it took forever for one simple scan. The results were not as good as the 300-600 dpi range. That sounds like a bunch of “gobblygook.” But, scanning transparencies can be done on most color printers, all in one printers. The better the all in one, specs, the better the scan results. Sometimes if all you want to do is scan some color photos, black and white and other prints, a simple scanner as a stand alone, will pay for itself in the long run and it won’t take up the household all in one printer/scanner/copier. The stand alone scanner will have the negative holders, the transparency plates and other things to make scanning easy and simple. A first time photographer that can read instructions can make quality scans with the scanning procedures. Plus, all scans are automatically sent to your folder of choice on your home computer or if the scanner is hooked up to your laptop, you are in business. Don’t even think about hooking up a scanner to your phone for storage… With all that said, the first thing is to clean the negatives or color transparencies. Wipe or dust with a air bulb or clean photo cleaning cloth. The idea is that, what you don’t clean off the transparency, will definitely show up on the scanning procedure and results. If a mistake is shown on the transparency, usually it is hard to remove. So, you have to work around that. The above photo was not scanned. I copied it to my standard photo program built into most Windows computers. The Apple Computers also have an outstanding built in photo program, too. The miracle of modern scanning and/or these computer programs makes it a different way to get a better overall photo results. The computer colorized programs are ok, but are not the best for old hot rod photos to come to life as if it were 1961. Unless they were already taken in color and the program reads the nearby color correctly. As for the purists of old photos however bad they are and become prized possessions, that is one thing. Some old photos cannot be cleaned up as it just won’t happen correctly. But, you can still make the old photos come to life with a little help from your computer and programs. YRMV
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