TitusvileSurfer
New member
My family and I recently went over our annual Christmas portraits from years past. Everyone wants a copy of the family photos which date from the 1940’s to 2008. Some of these photographs were taken when Steve Wozniak was just a gleam in his daddy’s eye. As such, no digital copies of these prints have ever existed. Our first thought was to scan them all, but some are very large prints measuring as much as 20â€Âx30â€Â. I don’t know of any consumer scanner which can handle a print that big, let alone own one. My uncle suggested I just take a picture of the prints with my fancy equipment. I took the challenge and decided to document my method for anyone else who may want to do the same.
These pictures mean a lot to me and my family, so I didn’t just want to stoop over them and click the shutter button. I figured my high resolution DSLR was capable of churning out scanner quality digital copies. A couple problems presented themselves which had to be solved:
1) Most of these pictures had a glossy finish, and any direct light source would reflect off of the photograph with an unacceptable blob of highlight.
2) When photographing a 2D object, not being perfectly perpendicular to that object will distort it.
The first dilemma was easy enough; Take the picture in the shade. I chose an open garage specifically. Sufficient light to achieve exposure can come in, but I am in even shade eliminating any reflections or bright spots from a direct light source.
My second major problem took a little more thinking. I trust my garage floor is fairly even, so how do I point my camera straight up and down at it? Well having something to look down on to ensure it was even on all sides made sense. I was having a beer, so I set my beverage under my lens and tried to aim everything perfect. I am not sure if the can was a bad choice or I was drunk, but the process did not seem to be working as well as I had expected. I looked around the garage a little more. Every Floridian has a hurricane supply stash, and mine has some oil candles. I took off the glass heat shield of one and the gears started turning in my head. When placed upside down, the glass shield made three rings. If I lined up all three, I knew my lens was looking directly at the floor! I set my lens to 40mm and slid the largest print underneath it. Then the tripod was raised until the print filled the frame. I figured there would be minimal barrel distortion this way. Now all I had to do was line the lens up, then throw the pictures underneath and shoot, taking care to refocus if I zoomed in or out. I also used mirror lockup and a 2 second timer to reduce any blur.
First I took my best guess and aimed the lens at the garage floor. Then I put my sight under to see how I did.
I didn’t do so well, so I corrected the contraption until I decided it was good enough.
And here are the fruits of my labor, minimal PP (just white balance):
I'm in the 2nd row, grey sweater, holding the kid in the blue shirt.
These pictures mean a lot to me and my family, so I didn’t just want to stoop over them and click the shutter button. I figured my high resolution DSLR was capable of churning out scanner quality digital copies. A couple problems presented themselves which had to be solved:
1) Most of these pictures had a glossy finish, and any direct light source would reflect off of the photograph with an unacceptable blob of highlight.
2) When photographing a 2D object, not being perfectly perpendicular to that object will distort it.
The first dilemma was easy enough; Take the picture in the shade. I chose an open garage specifically. Sufficient light to achieve exposure can come in, but I am in even shade eliminating any reflections or bright spots from a direct light source.
My second major problem took a little more thinking. I trust my garage floor is fairly even, so how do I point my camera straight up and down at it? Well having something to look down on to ensure it was even on all sides made sense. I was having a beer, so I set my beverage under my lens and tried to aim everything perfect. I am not sure if the can was a bad choice or I was drunk, but the process did not seem to be working as well as I had expected. I looked around the garage a little more. Every Floridian has a hurricane supply stash, and mine has some oil candles. I took off the glass heat shield of one and the gears started turning in my head. When placed upside down, the glass shield made three rings. If I lined up all three, I knew my lens was looking directly at the floor! I set my lens to 40mm and slid the largest print underneath it. Then the tripod was raised until the print filled the frame. I figured there would be minimal barrel distortion this way. Now all I had to do was line the lens up, then throw the pictures underneath and shoot, taking care to refocus if I zoomed in or out. I also used mirror lockup and a 2 second timer to reduce any blur.
First I took my best guess and aimed the lens at the garage floor. Then I put my sight under to see how I did.
I didn’t do so well, so I corrected the contraption until I decided it was good enough.
And here are the fruits of my labor, minimal PP (just white balance):
I'm in the 2nd row, grey sweater, holding the kid in the blue shirt.
