Old negatives scanned
Discussion
I have just bought a flatbed scanner (Epson 4990 Photo) and decided to sample a few things I found lying around from my father's 2 1/4in square films. (One of the reasons for a flatbed rather than a dedicated 35mm scanner was to see what could be done with the older negatives.
Suprisingly I came across this (and a few other shots) which I had either completely forgotten or knew nothing about. Don't think I took it so this must have been taken with a Rolliecord!
Not sure what it will look like output from PS Elements 2 saved 'for the web' as a gif but here goes.
Taken at Brands Hatch during a BOAC sponsored endurance race (BOAC 1000km?) sometime in the mid sixties I would imagine. Easter time I would guess, the shots with people suggest it may not be very warm and it certainly looks dull - the negatives are quite underexposed.
Edit to add that it all looks a little dark on my desktop monitor compared to the original on my hi-res notebook screen. Hmm.
Still, the original original is a 63Mb file ...
There's never a Safety Car around when you need one!
>> Edited by LongQ on Wednesday 21st September 00:20
Suprisingly I came across this (and a few other shots) which I had either completely forgotten or knew nothing about. Don't think I took it so this must have been taken with a Rolliecord!
Not sure what it will look like output from PS Elements 2 saved 'for the web' as a gif but here goes.
Taken at Brands Hatch during a BOAC sponsored endurance race (BOAC 1000km?) sometime in the mid sixties I would imagine. Easter time I would guess, the shots with people suggest it may not be very warm and it certainly looks dull - the negatives are quite underexposed.
Edit to add that it all looks a little dark on my desktop monitor compared to the original on my hi-res notebook screen. Hmm.
Still, the original original is a 63Mb file ...
There's never a Safety Car around when you need one!
>> Edited by LongQ on Wednesday 21st September 00:20
Just beautiful! With a GT40 it would have been late '60s. I know they won the BOAC 500 miles at Brands in '68, although I think BOAC also ran some 1000kms races at Brands during that era.
Looking here: www.gt40.org.uk/Gallery/Gulf.htm I guess it must have been '68, and that would be the Ickx car. Unfortunately the full size images seem to be down.
Results here: http://wspr-racing.com/wspr/results/bscc/bscc1968.html Since Ickx is listed as Class S, I'm pretty sure it's the same car.
Any more?
>> Edited by MarkBarton on Wednesday 21st September 11:45
Looking here: www.gt40.org.uk/Gallery/Gulf.htm I guess it must have been '68, and that would be the Ickx car. Unfortunately the full size images seem to be down.
Results here: http://wspr-racing.com/wspr/results/bscc/bscc1968.html Since Ickx is listed as Class S, I'm pretty sure it's the same car.
Any more?
>> Edited by MarkBarton on Wednesday 21st September 11:45
Bee_Jay said:
VERY, VERY cool...
Cheers.
Some of the more general shots show just how open Brands was in those days - hardly any barriers at all and certainly no fences.
I'll add a few more at some point but, as you can see in the second pic, they can require some dust and scratch removal and the software effort available seems to affect sharpness and miss bits anyway so at the moment I am doing it manually and it takes a while. Maybe I will find the solution to getting the software to do more of the work and a way to avoid Newton's Rings (clean comments only please) without going to extreme lengths of negative support.
PS Elements 2 seems very good at cloning over scratches though - much better than the other options I have. Except I can never see where the cursor is on the screen.
That said I hate its cropping facility - unless I am missing something. Why does the crop marquee only extend half the distance that I move the cursor? Is there some fancy setting that I need to alter to get the behaviour to change?
MarkBarton said:
Just beautiful! With a GT40 it would have been late '60s. I know they won the BOAC 500 miles at Brands in '68, although I think BOAC also ran some 1000kms races at Brands during that era.
Hi Mark,
You're right! Late sixties makes much more sense of course (it's my age you know - the brain's going ...) and I think it has to be the Ickx car as you have identified. The original negative is so sharp I have to wonder if it was taken on the victory lap rather than at full race speed! And of course it was the BOAC 500 rather than 1000 since UK was still referring to Imperial measurements back then. Good old days.
There are a few more shots I have come across so far but not of GT40's. Many are fairly general views, but interesting. There's a reasonably sharp Chevron at speed, a Lotus Europa heading up towards Druids and a few that I have not really checked in detail yet.
The results page you referenced seems to be down at the moment but I will try it again later - I was wondering who it was parked up amongst the comms wiring!
simpo two said:
Ah yes, they had real men in those days - looks like Steve McQueen! Caption 'Bugger'. Or 'Taxi!'
Smash your car up at 200mph, get out, have a fag then off to a nightclub.
Not like today's squeaky-clean PC bunch!
Yep, though since he is wearing a soft cap of a type favoured by drivers around that time one has to wonder if he was expecting a problem and therefore carried the cap with him 'just in case'.
I have to say that, assuming the race was still running (there is one subsequent action shot on the strip that suggests it probably was) he chose in interesting place to spectate!
LongQ said:
The results page you referenced seems to be down at the moment but I will try it again later - I was wondering who it was parked up amongst the comms wiring!
My fault - there's a full stop at the end of the link that shouldn't be there - I'll correct the original.
http://wspr-racing.com/wspr/results/bscc/bscc1968.html
I think the crashed car is the Dutch entered Porsche 910 - you can probably see the number better on the original. Is it 46?
MarkBarton said:
The results page you referenced seems to be down at the moment but I will try it again later - I was wondering who it was parked up amongst the comms wiring!
My fault - there's a full stop at the end of the link that shouldn't be there - I'll correct the original.
http://wspr-racing.com/wspr/results/bscc/bscc1968.html
I think the crashed car is the Dutch entered Porsche 910 - you can probably see the number better on the original. Is it 46?
AH! Should have checked the URL for that but I was hurrying so didn't - apologies.
Yep, the shunted car is 46 (can just make out the number on the very high definition setting I used for the original scan. Quite impressive really as the original is a very very small part of the whole negative.)
I have now dug out what I think is the rest of the film used - there are a few more shots of No. 4 but nothing taken as close as the one already posted. In fact most of the rest are distance shots over the heads of the crowd.
On the other hand that makes them more interesting in many ways. Health and Safety would go ballistic if things were the same these days. I'm just finishing off the scans and will try to process them to a sensible size and post some examples later.
Really nice photo.
Photos are always faster+look better if saved as a JPEG.
GIFs are used for flat colour images - like say the PH logo on the top right.
Your first photo is about 100k, save it as a medium quality JPEG and it will be about 1/3 to 1/2 the filesize !
Really nice photos - I've also been experimenting with photos my father took in Europe in the 60's.
***Photoshop tip***
I use Photoshop (not elements) but I'm sure you can set the type of cursor in the preferences.
You choose an arrowhead, or a cross-hair and one more I believe.
Good Luck
R
>> Edited by RameshUK on Wednesday 21st September 13:51
Photos are always faster+look better if saved as a JPEG.
GIFs are used for flat colour images - like say the PH logo on the top right.
Your first photo is about 100k, save it as a medium quality JPEG and it will be about 1/3 to 1/2 the filesize !
Really nice photos - I've also been experimenting with photos my father took in Europe in the 60's.
***Photoshop tip***
LongQ said:
PS Elements 2 seems very good at cloning over scratches though - much better than the other options I have. Except I can never see where the cursor is on the screen.
I use Photoshop (not elements) but I'm sure you can set the type of cursor in the preferences.
You choose an arrowhead, or a cross-hair and one more I believe.
Good Luck
R
>> Edited by RameshUK on Wednesday 21st September 13:51
RameshUK said:
Really nice photo.
Photos are always faster+look better if saved as a JPEG.
GIFs are used for flat colour images - like say the PH logo on the top right.
Your first photo is about 100k, save it as a medium quality JPEG and it will be about 1/3 to 1/2 the filesize !
It was just an experiment but, to be honest, the gif looks just as good as the jpeg and possibly better after any 'external' compression - which surprised me. Whichever way I do it the compression, compared with the huge original scanned at 16-bit greyscale and 4800 dpi resolution, loses some of the subtlety of the shading but gains a little vitality.
Experiments continue ...
RameshUK said:
Really nice photos - I've also been experimenting with photos my father took in Europe in the 60's.
***Photoshop tip***
LongQ said:
PS Elements 2 seems very good at cloning over scratches though - much better than the other options I have. Except I can never see where the cursor is on the screen.
I use Photoshop (not elements) but I'm sure you can set the type of cursor in the preferences.
You choose an arrowhead, or a cross-hair and one more I believe.
Good Luck
Thanks.
Just discovered that there are also a few shots from a Silverstone GP in the same section of negatives (I think there must be more somewhere else as well.) The GP would have been about the saem time I guess, or maybe the previous year. The negatives are not as good and the subject matter much further away but I'll see what comes out.
I think the problem with the cursor is simply that it varies with the size of brush - so on a huge file using a small brush you need to be zoomed in a long way for it to be readily visible on a high res screen. It is currently set for cross hair for positioning and then whatever shape is available according to the type of brush selected - samll square for example. Some of the other shapes seem to be completely invisible so I have no odea where the cursor is! Working on greyscale does not help I suspect. But I will take some time if I can find some and see what options there are. Thanks for the suggestions.
simpo two said:
You can change the size of the brush using the brackets [] keys, if that helps? And Ctrl +/- to change viewing size.
Can't say I've ever had any cursor visibility problems regardless of image size.
Ah yes, thanks for the brush size change keys - up until recently I have had Elements 1 which was bundled on the desktop system I use for main tasks but preferred to use the notebook (better screen) for editing and stuck with ACDSee which is adequate for most things I wanted to do. And had more RAM available normally!
The new scanner came with Elements 2 so I installed on the laptop. I remember now I had found the [] keys before, but the problem here is not the brush size - I had set a good size for the purpose anyway via the menu - rather the position indicating cursor when moving around the screen with the brush inactive. For some reason of the combination of B&W, screen resolution and cursor symbol it just becomes invisible. However bear in mind that the 'dust' which looms large on image displayed is almost invisible to the naked eye - or at least MY naked eye. So with the brush just the right size to correct the problem we are talking a very small brush. No problem with that except that when I zoom out to find the next marks to correct I have no idea where the cursor is! Cursor size is related to brush size and zooms with the picture, so it can get very small very quickly. And being a thin hair design (of whatever shape requested) it's not too visible in the first place. On very light or very dark background it's OK but against mid-greys the lines just disappear! The only option seems to be to change the cursor to an icon rather than an outline for the brush.
Not to worry - I figure I will work out a way around it. Must get the graphics tablet attached - I think that might resolve the issue anyway by different means.
I'm hoping to get back to the B&W stuff soon but in the meantime I wanted to do some comparative tests for the results obtained from high street (i.e. 'cheap') digitised images compared to hi-res samples of the same negs from the scanner.
Quite enlightening. There is a clear difference as far as viewing is concerned but the total on-screen visual effect, if you don't put the shots too close, is little different. In fact sometimes the lesser quality looks sharper. It isn't, but it looks like it is. The same principle that sharpening in software uses.
However I had some reasonably well exposed shots from the Silverstone Classic which suffer from blown out white highlights when the metering system seemed to expose for the overcast flat light and averaged out against grey tarmac and green grass. Good results till is came to the whites and very light colours.
So I stuck some strips in the scanner and ran the scan. Not much better than Asda's kit managed.
Hmm.
So I thought I would browse the menus in Epson Scan. (I may move on to other apps later but the supplied control software seems to get acceptable write-ups from testers so worth using to start with I thought.)
There are some curves type settings to allow adjustment of things so I though I would play a bit. One supplied profile called 'darken' seemed worth a punt ... incredible results. Whilst the entire output is darkened it still looks balanced yet all sorts of detail appears from the blown white areas. The net effect is to make the entire shot look sharper as well.
Now I'm beginning to wonder how far I can push it all.
Why are there only 24 hours in a day?
I'll try and post some samples soon, though I am not sure the differences will be as obvious after compression has taken its toll.
Quite enlightening. There is a clear difference as far as viewing is concerned but the total on-screen visual effect, if you don't put the shots too close, is little different. In fact sometimes the lesser quality looks sharper. It isn't, but it looks like it is. The same principle that sharpening in software uses.
However I had some reasonably well exposed shots from the Silverstone Classic which suffer from blown out white highlights when the metering system seemed to expose for the overcast flat light and averaged out against grey tarmac and green grass. Good results till is came to the whites and very light colours.
So I stuck some strips in the scanner and ran the scan. Not much better than Asda's kit managed.
Hmm.
So I thought I would browse the menus in Epson Scan. (I may move on to other apps later but the supplied control software seems to get acceptable write-ups from testers so worth using to start with I thought.)
There are some curves type settings to allow adjustment of things so I though I would play a bit. One supplied profile called 'darken' seemed worth a punt ... incredible results. Whilst the entire output is darkened it still looks balanced yet all sorts of detail appears from the blown white areas. The net effect is to make the entire shot look sharper as well.
Now I'm beginning to wonder how far I can push it all.
Why are there only 24 hours in a day?
I'll try and post some samples soon, though I am not sure the differences will be as obvious after compression has taken its toll.
Brands Hatch BOAC 500 Mile April 1968
The Start at Paddock Hill Bend.
More views from Paddock
Spot the rarity.
Not sure where this was taken - Clearways?
Druids shortly after the Howmet crashed out (see lower right of shot). All rather laid back. Photographer almost on the track, marshalls gathered behind a straw bale and a chap wearing a tweed jacket with an armband and (I suspect) smoking a pipe standing just where the cars coming up the hill are heading.
Health and safety would have a fit!
Still, the circuit management have obviously had some pressure applied in the safety department according to the words on the sign.
>> Edited by LongQ on Saturday 24th September 11:44
The Start at Paddock Hill Bend.
More views from Paddock
Spot the rarity.
Not sure where this was taken - Clearways?
Druids shortly after the Howmet crashed out (see lower right of shot). All rather laid back. Photographer almost on the track, marshalls gathered behind a straw bale and a chap wearing a tweed jacket with an armband and (I suspect) smoking a pipe standing just where the cars coming up the hill are heading.
Health and safety would have a fit!
Still, the circuit management have obviously had some pressure applied in the safety department according to the words on the sign.
>> Edited by LongQ on Saturday 24th September 11:44
OK, by popular request 
here are some more BH shots - pretty much the rest of the film bar a couple where the content is not very interesting.
I had another go at the exposure on the shunted Porsche.
And here's an alterntive shot for the H&S message.
An Alfa.
A Pair of Alfas.
A queue at Druids.
More Druids.
And a shot of the Howmet embedded in the bank. But what I like about this - apart from some amazing sharpness that you probably can't see at web size - is the detail in the crown.
It's busy for certain. There are people climbing trees, hanging off the advertising hoarding and trying any vantage point the can think of. The marshalls seem to have their linch packs lying on the ground behind them. The bloke with the arm band seems not to move. The driver (I think) is just hanging around with the marshalls. There's a guy who may be a photographer crouching beside the marshall's post and the 'hi-tech' TV camera platform is ... unoccupied except for the camera. I wonder if he caught the action during the Howmet crash and he's rushed the film off for processing?
The winner - at South Bank I think.
Lola
Chevron with rear damage
And finally - the winners in the back of the Rolls with the mechanics (I assume) driving the GT40 with the doors open. Anyone else remember when that used to happen? (This is a VERY dark output and am still working out how to improve it. The original scan is mostly black except for the lettering on the trackside sign and the window frames on the Rolls.)
Now for the 3 or 4 from Silverstone - a couple may be usable but they are a bit more challenging. I'm sure there are some more somewhere - no doubt they will turn up eventually.
>> Edited by LongQ on Sunday 25th September 01:47
here are some more BH shots - pretty much the rest of the film bar a couple where the content is not very interesting. I had another go at the exposure on the shunted Porsche.
And here's an alterntive shot for the H&S message.
An Alfa.
A Pair of Alfas.
A queue at Druids.
More Druids.
And a shot of the Howmet embedded in the bank. But what I like about this - apart from some amazing sharpness that you probably can't see at web size - is the detail in the crown.
It's busy for certain. There are people climbing trees, hanging off the advertising hoarding and trying any vantage point the can think of. The marshalls seem to have their linch packs lying on the ground behind them. The bloke with the arm band seems not to move. The driver (I think) is just hanging around with the marshalls. There's a guy who may be a photographer crouching beside the marshall's post and the 'hi-tech' TV camera platform is ... unoccupied except for the camera. I wonder if he caught the action during the Howmet crash and he's rushed the film off for processing?
The winner - at South Bank I think.
Lola
Chevron with rear damage
And finally - the winners in the back of the Rolls with the mechanics (I assume) driving the GT40 with the doors open. Anyone else remember when that used to happen? (This is a VERY dark output and am still working out how to improve it. The original scan is mostly black except for the lettering on the trackside sign and the window frames on the Rolls.)
Now for the 3 or 4 from Silverstone - a couple may be usable but they are a bit more challenging. I'm sure there are some more somewhere - no doubt they will turn up eventually.
>> Edited by LongQ on Sunday 25th September 01:47
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