Historic Restore Project needs Help

[twtracy]

Craig,

I have put together an interesting set of historical facts and old photos pertaining to the picture, the camera, and how photo was made.

Have posted excerps into an Email that I can send to send to anyone interested.

Don't know any other way to get it out. Tom

[Dmax]

I dinnt read all the posts and dont know what u want exactly and what others are doing thought maybe this one is what you want

[twtracy]

Dmax,

What you have accomplished with that snapshot is truly technical magic.
If I were to provide you with a high res scan of the same scene, from the original print, would that in any way change the result?

As to what I want: My early posts would explain my position. The print is fading and I wanted to try and preserve its image for my family. Without technical ability, I turned to this site for insight as to what was being accomplished with photo restoration. What I have found is mind blowing, and their have been good folks on the site who have lead me in a direction I did not think possible at this stage of my life.
The restoration that you have accomplished provides proof certain, that it can be done. What I want, my goal, is to duplicate what you have done.

I am very grateful and thank you for shearing it with me, Tom

PS: How they accomplished that photo is also mind blowing.

[Kraellin]

twtracy,

feel free to post any facts and such about the photo and the process used to take it here in this thread. you might also wish to send such information to the library of congress, where OlBaldy found that other print.

and speaking of that print in the lib of congress, i downloaded the larger version just now and took a much closer look. lol. this is why we like the highest resolution pics we can get. the one i worked on was of a lower resolution and in looking at the higher one, i can now see that i was treating the san francisco bay as hills. lol. so, there's a perfect example of garbage in/garbage out... you can only make a proper evaluation with proper data. if the data is off, then the evalution is going to likely be off as well. so, if i were doing this again, the bay would be the bay and not hills

nice job, dmax. great detail there!

also, twtracy, since you took a photo and now have it in the computer, would it be possible to post that on a site that would allow the full image and file size to be displayed and to then post a link to that site/image?

[Flora]

I had worked on the 'CloseUp Snap' .. but, not really knowing if that was twtracy's wish, I hadn't posted my result ...

In my restoration, I kept a 'softer' contrast because I 'felt' that it was like that in the original .... and I tried to minimize the .jpg compression artefacts without sacrificing the sharpness too much.

Attachment 1 = a soft B&W version
Attachment 2 = restored the 'pinkish' cast of the original

twtracy

Originally Posted by twtracy

....If I were to provide you with a high res scan of the same scene, from the original print, would that in any way change the result....

.... It would certainly give us a lot more details to work on... with possible much more accurate results!!!

Dmax,

great job!!

[twtracy]

The facts and photos I referred to were extracted from a large collection of sites I have bookmarked. I copied the extracts into an Email. I can again copy the text onto this page, but not the photos. But I will attempt to go to the source and make it happen.

Have photos of camera and drawing, Example:
"Aerial photography was quite an art in 1906. Airplanes could barely get off the ground then, and lighter-than-air ships were expensive and cumbersome. An enterprising mid westerner, George Lawrence, devised and patented this ingenious system of kites and wires, right, that carried a 46-pound panoramic camera 800 feet into the air. It was with this arrangement that these three pictures were taken. Lawrence and his local associate, Harry Myers, played out half a mile of line before the camera was at the proper altitude. When they were ready to shoot, they checked with binoculars to make sure the lens was lined up, and then tripped the shutter with an electrical impulse generated by an old style telephone magneto. A device within the camera then swept across a 90-degree arc to expose the image to a 22 by 55 inch negative (Oakland Tribune)"

Am in the process of scanning the entire print. Will send as you suggest when complete.

[twtracy]

I really do like your approach, will be interesting to see results obtained from the scanned image.

I have made no attempt to clean the surface of the print. It had been laying on the floor of a collapsed shack, in a banana patch. in tropical rain forest Monoa Valley, Hawaii for many years before I found it. I've had it in high humidity Hawaii and Florida for 50 yrs. So there has got to be lots of crud on the surface, but it is not readily apparent.

Thank you for sharing, Tom

[twtracy]

Hi Folks, I need some help with the Scanning of the SF print for your use.
SF Print size is 14” x 33”. My Epson 4490 Photo scanner offers:
Resolution to: 12,800 dpi, Color to: 48 bit,
BUT restricts scan size to 10,500 x 30,000 pixels.
Attempting to get you the Max resolution within the max pixel restriction, I end up with this:

48 bit Color, 12800 dpi, 10422x29842 pixels, Image size= 0.81 in x 2.33 in, file= 1.73 GB.
24 bit Color, 12800 dpi, 10422x29842 pixels, Image size= 0.81 in x 2.33 in, file= 889.81 MB

What I wanted to sent you (above) would take 326 separate scans, allowing 33% overlap for Stitching. Scan total time: 233 hours.

So, those of you who ask for scans, provide me with specifics: Resolution, Color Bit, File Type, Area/Portion/Object of the Print you desire, and the transfer Host if you have a preference, or direct your Email/Web site, or your choice.

I will provide that which you ask for, in exchange I ask that you provide me with a copy of your work, and as much as practical, the method/approach used to achieve it. This is very important to me, as I will use your technique to learn. Goal is to duplicate the result you achieved.

This is all completely new for me, and Yes, it is as suggested early on, over head. But I need the challenge and I accomplish it.

This project is taking a whole lot of my time and effort. But his is the only way that I can repay those of you who have shared with on this site, and I am very much indebted to those many who have generously make available to all, their work, techniques, and tutorials.

The great advantage to being a “NewBe” is the Thrill, Enjoyment, and Pride, of each new little success. Sadly this fades away with experience, until only the failures generate any emotion.

In 1947-49 I operated a professional photography studio. Top customer was the Bendix Aviation Co. Handling the cameras and the lab processing. For a yr after work I rode a bus, 3 hrs into Detroit to a photo lab night school. Retouching was a real art back then, done using pencil shading directly onto the negative. A very sensitive and unforgiving process. But very High Tech back then. Haven’t done any retouching since, so
I really appreciate today digital applications.

[Kraellin]

utterly amazing, kites and wires and half mile of it, no less. totally 'high tech' for the time and quite innovative!

ok, keep that extremely high resolution as an archive file. save it off on a dvd for safe keeping. you probably dont need that high of a resolution for restoration purposes. turn the settings on your scanner down. there shld be an 'options' or 'preferences' or some other file name in the software that came with the scanner that would allow you to do this. what we generally ask folks here is to scan at around 600 ppi/dpi. this is generally sufficient for the work we do. turn off all settings on the scanner, like if it has any auto-dust removal features and that sort of thing. what we want is a raw image with no mechanical/electronic treatments done to it. you could also use a camera with a good resolution and perhaps shoot the image in several sections. the one you did shoot already is kind of blurred and not as good as some of the scans posted. it's also a bit difficult to post a really high resolution image directly on the forum since we limit the file sizes here to 100kb. but, you can help that by keeping the image size fairly large or, by posting the higher resolution image on another site that allows larger file sizes (like image shack and flikr and so on) and then giving us a link to where you have it posted so we can download it from there.

i know this is a lot of new stuff, so always feel free to ask 'how? what-the-hell? who?' and so on you're doing remarkably well, btw.

ppi = pixels per inch (digital images, especially when referring to images on monitors). dpi = dots per inch (printers, as in newspaper dots in images). resolution = the number of pixels per inch. file size = the overall number of bytes in a file. byte = 8 bits, a bit being the smallest representation of data in digital - a byte is like a digital 'word', where a bit is like a digital 'letter'. image size = the number of pixels in width and the number of pixels in height, e.g. 800 x 600 pixels. when we talk about image size in digital, we're NOT talking inches usually. saying it's a 4 x 6 inch image means almost nothing, except in printing. this is because a 4 x 6 inch image can have any number of dots per inch making the actual size of the image unknown when just saying 4 x 6. that's because that 4 can mean 4 at 100 pixels per inch or 200 pixels per inch, or 300 or 3000. so, at 4 inches by 100 pixels per inch, that side is 400 pixels, but at 200 pixels it's 800, 300 would be 1200 and 3000 would be 12,000 pixels as the actual size of that side. now, for printing, that's fine, go ahead and talk inches and the computer and the printer will compensate for whatever the resolution is and print at your specified inches. so, for posting on the web, working in photoshop, talking about what you see on the monitor, checking actual image sizes in digital, you want ppi, pixels per inch. oh, and a pixel is a (pic)ture (el)ement or pix el, pixel. it's one dot on a monitor, tiny as hell these days with the newer higher resolution monitors, but that's what it is.

some day we'll get to nano-screening or nano-streaming for monitors, but that's a long ways off and is also dependent on not blowing up the planet before we get there

i posted those definitions, tom, because it's one thing that folks have to pick up if they're going to communicate on the subject. i dont know how much you do or dont know and hopefully that will fill in some blanks if you have them. if not, why no harm, no foul.

also, if you'd like to send me a copy of that extremely high resolution image on a dvd, i'd be happy to help break it down into a managable size for others to work on. just send me a private message if you'd be willing to do that.