[Leica] Digital storage etc.

[Jim at hemenway.com (Jim Hemenway)]

My parents, born in 1903 and 1907, kept every negative beginning in 1934 
when my older brother was born.  That's him on the barrel in this photo 
from a huge negative about 3.5 x 5 inches:
http://www.hemenway.com/Clann/pages/Barrel.htm

and here in the middle from an equally large negative:
http://www.hemenway.com/Clann/pages/UncleBingo_JackDad.htm

Because of the Great Depression, they were barely able to afford even 
that camera. Their parents, country folks all, didn't own cameras. so 
there ar no negatives from before the 30s.

I have a large cardboard box full of these negatives but haven't done 
much with them since I digitized these about ten years ago, by first 
photographing them with a Repronar, (basically a 35mm camera with macro 
lens) onto Kodachrome, and then by scanning the resulting slide in my 
first scanner, a Nikon CoolscanII.

I also still have thousands of my own negatives and slides, representing 
a lot of different cameras, beginning in the mid 50s with a crappy 
Brownie Hawkeye.

I'll probably never scan them all, (any more than I'll ever be able to 
read all the books that I've collected)... but there they are for any of 
the next generation(s).

All of my digital stuff used to be backed up on a 47gb SCSI drive which 
sufficed for about five years. Now I back them up to a 250gb Firewire 
drive which is usually left unconnected and unplugged... and I expect 
I'll need to upgrade to something else as technology renders Firewire 
obsolete.

I'm using the Pentax isDS digital a lot these days, with both 
contemporary and screwmount lenses from the 60s and 70s, but I also 
still shoot film with my R8 and with my Rolleis and some with the 11x14.

Here's some photos taken with a Pentax 1000mm mounted on my isDS last 
October.  I set the ISO to 1600 in order to shoot with fast shutter 
speeds at f8 and f11.

The distance from where I was shooting is 1.6 nautical miles to the
first lighthouse and 3 to the second.

http://www.hemenway.com/Takumar1000/

I also shot some Provia with the Spotmatic but haven't got around to 
scanning them yet.

I still like looking at big transparencies but am worried that E6 
processing will disappear before I've had a chance to shoot all of the 
film in the freezer.

Jim





GREG LORENZO wrote:

> Nathan Wajsman writes in part:
> 
> 
>>Not wishing to pick a fight--everyone has different experiences. I 
>>merely note that nobody in my family, nor in my wife's family, nor in 
>>any of the families I know, keep their negatives--unless they have 
>>photography as a serious hobby, but then we are talking casual 
>>snapshooters.
> 
> 
> Hi Nathan,
> 
> I certainly didn't think we were fighting(?). But quite the reverse is 
> true here. More print film was shot than slides by my parents and they 
> owned a kodak projector and shot slides as well.
> 
> Slides of vacations on the lake. Lots of slides of local parades, etc. 
> They did not own a movie camera, so no moving picture film. But some of 
> the parents of neighbour friends of my youth have kept their movies as 
> well.
> 
> I mentioned to Adam in another post that I think the previous generation 
> to my parents here don't have negs. but have their prints as most people 
> didn't own a 35mm or other format camera prior to WWII. 
> 
> I am referring to snaps shooters.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Greg 
> 
> 
> 
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