Cat Scans and Car Scans
OK, forget the cats. We’re really just going to talk about cars, and leave Computer Assisted Tomography for later (much later).
Recent work for Pano has taken me back to some really old slides and negatives, and I’ve learned several things and been reminded of others. First of all, film ages and contracts diseases just as we do. Color film is particularly problematic; it has more information to lose and is more vulnerable than silver-based black and white. Color film can fade over time, much as we have seen color prints shift from vibrant to bizarre as they age and are exposed to light, ozone, and other contaminants. The E6 processed films, such as Ektachrome and Fujichrome are particularly sensitive to fading compared to the recently discontinued Kodachrome.
This color negative was damaged by having been accidentally folded and has some small white spots; it is repairable.
LEONARD TURNER
Film and prints are also physically delicate and easily damaged by rough handling or improper processing or cleaning, and once the silver or dye is lost to physical injury, it’s gone forever. My most serious devil, though—perhaps related to living in a region that tends to heat and humidity—has been fungal infection on film. This may not be immediately obvious when looking at a bit of film, but shows up clearly under magnification. I have for many years carried in my pocket a 10X jeweler’s loupe, a Hastings triplet, which is excellent for judging sharpness and finding defects in film, but a simpler hand lens (or projection) can help too. You may be surprised at what you see when you look closely.
I did this shot of Jim Clark in 1965; it still looks pretty good at first glance, but---
LEONARD TURNER
Under closer magnification, there is damage on the left rear tire and an array of black spots above the car. Hard to fix on film, easy in a digital file.
LEONARD TURNER
Fungus actually physically damages the film; you may be able to kill it with an appropriate solvent, but the damage that has been done remains and can’t be cleaned off, leaving behind a spider web of damaged emulsion perhaps connecting to larger blobs of injury. Prints and film often get folded, stapled, written on and scratched.
An early shot of the future editor of Panorama, (who would not sit on the front of a 356 today); this trans needs lots of help—look at the sky—fungus!
LEONARD TURNER
This is the enemy up close—destructive and difficult to correct.
LEONARD TURNER
You see where we’re going here: film and prints are ephemeral, although they may take their hits so slowly that you don’t notice it from one year to the next. Most people shoot digital now, but haven’t been doing it all that long; unless you are very young, you probably have film-based images that are important to you, and even the very young have or may inherit valuable images.
The solution is to back up your film based archives in digital form. No, digital images don’t last forever either—CDs and DVDs can deteriorate, hard drives can and do give up the ghost, and storage methods evolve (anybody have a machine that will still read the big old floppy discs?) What digitizing does do is provide redundancy and the ability to easily duplicate—I can migrate all of my digital records to another resting place fairly easily and quickly. Digitized images are also much easier to repair and correct than pictures that live on film or paper.
To do this, you will need a scanner. Like many things electronic, these have become both more elegant and less expensive as time has gone by. Prices fall mostly into the $100 to $800 range, but less that $80 will buy a name-brand flatbed, and $100 will get you a decent flatbed machine that does both print scanning and has some transparency/negative capabilities to also address slides and negatives.
Although good results are easily obtained from scanning prints, particularly large ones, the very best quality scans of negatives still lie in the domain of a dedicated film scanner. These are a bit pricier; although there are some very cheap ones available, I’d avoid them. You may find that a medium or higher range flatbed with film capabilities is adequate for your needs.
Some things can never be made right. This is one. Do you think we can sell it as artistic intent?
LEONARD TURNER
In a later column we’ll talk more about how scanners are used, and how their digital files can be stored, improved and cataloged. Think of this as a long term project; what needs to be done first is to get started making good digital copies before your film and print files deteriorate further. Plan to copy the oldest and/or most deteriorated first: the originals will never get better on their own, and having a digital copy will both freeze the process of decay and give you a backup if the original is lost.
Until next time, keep shooting and let me hear from you; I’m at leonardt@pca.org.