Scanning, scanning and more scanning...

[Deon]

Gwilliam Lake Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada. Hasselblad 501 C/M w/60mm f=3.5 CF lens - Kodak Ektar 100 film.

• EPSON Perfection V700/V750

My wife and I have been in our home for three years now. It's a very small modest home on acreage with multiple studio/shop spaces. It took us a year to clean and paint everything, including turning one space into a wet darkroom (Omega D5XL Chromega and D5XL cold light), with connecting space to a digital darkroom (Mac Studio/Studio display, Epson V700 scanner and Epson Surecolor P6000 printer, plus a full frame shop to finish up anything. While on the road I shot 40,000 digital files (after ruthless editing) and over 300 rolls of film. My studio space has been functional for almost two years now and I have not made much progress! I have developed all film to date, made contact sheets and filed negatives/contact sheets. All digital fils are organized and files in order of exposure and place (backed up X3). Now, I'm going through every negative and transparency I have ever created since 1984. I am taking a really close look at everything, do I want this anymore? Is it worthy? As I do this I'm scanning my favorite images as I go. All my older color images were shot using Fuji Velvia or Provia film and some early Kodak Ektachromes, now for color I shot Kodak Ektar 100 film. Although, these days I'm mostly shooting black and white film (Ilford FP-4 and Pan-F). I'm making my scans using an old Epson V700 PHOTO scanner and a Betterscan scan bed to focus on the grain of the film. I'm using Silverfast Ai9 Studio software. I create scans as big as they will go without interpolation and scan them using multiple passes (infrared). Switching from color transparencies to color negatives was an initial challenge, but once I figured out the profiles in silverfast things look pretty good. Sometimes using the wrong color profile makes for a better scan. Anyway I've been making scans as fast as I can, so I can create an entirely new look for my aging website. Plus, I'm seeking a place to leave all my photographic art with when I'm gone. I have found several major institutions that are interested. But, they all have one request. The work MUST be filed, cataloged and organized, in other words, ready for the archive, as they will not touch it. I have a long way to go! On my ruthless pass through my catalog of images I'm disposing of more than half and scanning less than a quarter, at this point in time I'm almost finished with 1996... Time to get back to scanning...

 

[Roger Lee]

Nice shot. Kudos on your film challenge and work.

 

[gillib]

Windjana Gorge WA Australia, Mamiya 67

 

[adischaub]

Gwilliam Lake Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada. Hasselblad 501 C/M w/60mm f=3.5 CF lens - Kodak Ektar 100 film.
View attachment 7696
My wife and I have been in our home for three years now. It's a very small modest home on acreage with multiple studio/shop spaces. It took us a year to clean and paint everything, including turning one space into a wet darkroom (Omega D5XL Chromega and D5XL cold light), with connecting space to a digital darkroom (Mac Studio/Studio display, Epson V700 scanner and Epson Surecolor P6000 printer, plus a full frame shop to finish up anything. While on the road I shot 40,000 digital files (after ruthless editing) and over 300 rolls of film. My studio space has been functional for almost two years now and I have not made much progress! I have developed all film to date, made contact sheets and filed negatives/contact sheets. All digital fils are organized and files in order of exposure and place (backed up X3). Now, I'm going through every negative and transparency I have ever created since 1984. I am taking a really close look at everything, do I want this anymore? Is it worthy? As I do this I'm scanning my favorite images as I go. All my older color images were shot using Fuji Velvia or Provia film and some early Kodak Ektachromes, now for color I shot Kodak Ektar 100 film. Although, these days I'm mostly shooting black and white film (Ilford FP-4 and Pan-F). I'm making my scans using an old Epson V700 PHOTO scanner and a Betterscan scan bed to focus on the grain of the film. I'm using Silverfast Ai9 Studio software. I create scans as big as they will go without interpolation and scan them using multiple passes (infrared). Switching from color transparencies to color negatives was an initial challenge, but once I figured out the profiles in silverfast things look pretty good. Sometimes using the wrong color profile makes for a better scan. Anyway I've been making scans as fast as I can, so I can create an entirely new look for my aging website. Plus, I'm seeking a place to leave all my photographic art with when I'm gone. I have found several major institutions that are interested. But, they all have one request. The work MUST be filed, cataloged and organized, in other words, ready for the archive, as they will not touch it. I have a long way to go! On my ruthless pass through my catalog of images I'm disposing of more than half and scanning less than a quarter, at this point in time I'm almost finished with 1996... Time to get back to scanning...

many thanks for the detailed description (I am currently looking for a medium format scanner myself and find this not a particular easy task...) and all the best with your efforts. Great pictures, congratulations!

 

[superwhite]

Gwilliam Lake Provincial Park, British Columbia, Canada. Hasselblad 501 C/M w/60mm f=3.5 CF lens - Kodak Ektar 100 film.
View attachment 7696
My wife and I have been in our home for three years now. It's a very small modest home on acreage with multiple studio/shop spaces. It took us a year to clean and paint everything, including turning one space into a wet darkroom (Omega D5XL Chromega and D5XL cold light), with connecting space to a digital darkroom (Mac Studio/Studio display, Epson V700 scanner and Epson Surecolor P6000 printer, plus a full frame shop to finish up anything. While on the road I shot 40,000 digital files (after ruthless editing) and over 300 rolls of film. My studio space has been functional for almost two years now and I have not made much progress! I have developed all film to date, made contact sheets and filed negatives/contact sheets. All digital fils are organized and files in order of exposure and place (backed up X3). Now, I'm going through every negative and transparency I have ever created since 1984. I am taking a really close look at everything, do I want this anymore? Is it worthy? As I do this I'm scanning my favorite images as I go. All my older color images were shot using Fuji Velvia or Provia film and some early Kodak Ektachromes, now for color I shot Kodak Ektar 100 film. Although, these days I'm mostly shooting black and white film (Ilford FP-4 and Pan-F). I'm making my scans using an old Epson V700 PHOTO scanner and a Betterscan scan bed to focus on the grain of the film. I'm using Silverfast Ai9 Studio software. I create scans as big as they will go without interpolation and scan them using multiple passes (infrared). Switching from color transparencies to color negatives was an initial challenge, but once I figured out the profiles in silverfast things look pretty good. Sometimes using the wrong color profile makes for a better scan. Anyway I've been making scans as fast as I can, so I can create an entirely new look for my aging website. Plus, I'm seeking a place to leave all my photographic art with when I'm gone. I have found several major institutions that are interested. But, they all have one request. The work MUST be filed, cataloged and organized, in other words, ready for the archive, as they will not touch it. I have a long way to go! On my ruthless pass through my catalog of images I'm disposing of more than half and scanning less than a quarter, at this point in time I'm almost finished with 1996... Time to get back to scanning...

Love the image.
Do you have a daily time slot or a day a week when you just set time aside and don't get distracted to do just the scanning & archiving?
I'm facing a similar situation with trying to organise and catalogue 30 odd years of shooting artworks in London. I decided to take a leaf out of the big museums book and not to make hi-Res scans of all I shot but a lot lower tech solution. One museum I know for instance has an image collection going back to glass plate neg era so they wait until some one requests an image and then scan it and charge for it.
During the Lockdown I set up a quick copy system for copying the mainly 5x4 trans with a D200 tethered into Capture One, tweeking them and loading them in to a data base so that should anybody be interested in the archive, the transparencies are there in the physical envelopes and findable and then can be scanned properly.
I didn't want to get all the transparencies out of their sleeves to minimise handling, so I rigged the umbrella over the top to kill the reflections and aid the contrast.
After Lockdown we all went back to work and I had only managed to log about a quarter of the files so now I've retired its a race to the finish line between the archive me and death.

 

[Deon]

I'm pretty much obsessed with getting this project behind me, so I can get back to more fun photographic art projects. Most days I'm at it for eight or more hours a day starting predawn so I can do something different later. Scanning and photoshop sessions bore me to tears, so I'm almost always doing three or more things at once in the studio/darkroom. The pandemic ended my commercial photographic career. As you can tell I'm terribly worried about that... Working full time on my photographic art is way more fun (no client).