AboutJim Delillo Expertise ALmost any question about traditional (film) or digital photography including techical, technique, lighting, darkroom, Photoshop, marketing and business.
Question I have lots of b & white(greyscale) photos of relatives from 1900 and wanted to put an album together for my sons. I tried scanning and it was very tedious and time consuming and not very good. I have a Pentax optio s5i is it possible to photograph such pictures and then get the memory disc developed. I have tried but the pictures come out blurred or/and faded. Vincent
Answer The best solution would be to use a copy stand, either bought or home-built.
It is two lights at 45 degree angles on a vertical post pointing down to a table where the photo is secured with weights or magnets on its edges.
You will also have to carefully meter the light, use a gray card or an incident light meter. Set the camera manually. BRacket your shots.
Use photo editing software to convert to desaturate, increase contrast, increase sharpness.
Use of desaturate is better than grey scale, because grey scale will reduce the number "colors" or shades of grey.
