Scanning Photos and Negatives

Do you have negatives or photos that you say you will have reprinted or scanned "some day"? I have for over 25 years.

When I picked up my Honeymoon photos, I wanted to keep them in order so I wrote a number on the back of them. This was before I knew to use a photo safe pencil/pen. As I stacked them, the ink from the pen made a mark on the next photo.

If the ink marks are in the sky, they can be cropped out, but if they're in a main part of the photo like in the wave below or in someone's face, it's more of a problem.

Since then, I have wanted to get reprints of the photos and make a honeymoon photo album but I never did. As I have quoted before, "something that can be done at any time is often done at no time".

For years, I had "lost" the negatives. I couldn't find them in the box of negatives I had at my house. When we were visiting my in-laws, I recognized a box in the closet and remembered that I had stored my first box of negatives there.

It's a tip I had heard, to keep your photos and negatives in a separate place. It's equivalent to the reason we back up our photos today. Ideally, your back-up drive should be in another location or on the cloud. If anything happens to the originals in your home, you always have your back-ups.

When I started my Revive55 Project last summer, reprinting these photos and making a photo album was one of the things I wanted to get accomplished. Our anniversary is this month, and this was my plan but with non-essential businesses closed, I can't take in my negatives to be reprinted.

That's not a big problem because I also wanted to digitize the photos. I wasn't sure whether I would get the photo lab to digitize them or if I would do it myself. Years ago, we bought a scanner - maybe it was purchased at the same time as the Elgato Video Capture we bought for our 20th anniversary. Click here to read my post about digitizing home videos.

I have used the scanner to preserve photos and negatives in the past but never got to my honeymoon negatives.

I got the scanner out this week and was disheartened to see that it was no longer compatible with the updated OS on my Mac. Our older iMac was updated as well. I started searching for a new scanner. I consoled myself with the thought that maybe a new one will be more efficient and better quality.

This is what my scanner looks like. The first photo shows the negative film holder installed in the lid of the scanner. The lid closes and the negative gets scanned. The second photo shows the white cover that is used to cover the black holder when you want to scan photos or documents.

The third photo shows the other side of the negative film holder where you load the negative as can be seen in the fourth photo. You lift the top that holds the negative down when closed.

                          

It's not the simplest process which is why I thought that over the years, something better would be on the market.

The reviews did not reassure me. I found the negative holder awkward on my scanner but the new ones were labelled as flimsy. The better quality scanners were over $1200. I was almost convinced to purchase a medium priced one for $275 that I had read and heard was a great scanner since starting my Revive55 Project. I felt though, that it was wasted money because I didn't think it would be any better than the one I already had. Bummer.

I then found online software that we could buy that would make it work again. It was a cheaper solution but was it a trustworthy solution?

When I was quarantined in April, I had tried to use my old MacBook (circa 2008) but couldn't get it to work. I used a refurbished Linus laptop instead. My scanner wasn't compatible with the laptop so I got the MacBook out again and got it to work.

I downloaded the scanner software, and it WORKED!!! I was SO happy and relieved. I'm so happy that we still had it. We hadn't used the MacBook in years and when it was in the process of crashing, I managed to export the valuable photos, music and documents from it before it completely crashed and we needed to wipe it.

I was happy to scan the negatives. Some of the printed photos are markedly improved just by scanning the negative. Going back to that first photo I showed with the ink marks:

Original photo printed (1990's)

Scanned from negative film (2020)

Scanned from negative film (2020)
edited to straighten the horizon line, correct yellowish tinge
and lighten shadows possibly due to age of negative

By scanning the negative, the sun is visible and there are parts of the photo that was cropped on the initial photo. In this case, seeing the extra chair doesn't add value but sometimes a critical part is missing. The negative is not 4x6 so when a photo is printed, it cuts off part of the photo. If you have printed photos online, you will see this when you choose whether you want to crop a little on either side or more on one side.

As technology changes, I am being reminded that we should preserve things while we still can. I had old negatives from a disc camera that became obsolete. I'm not sure if I kept them or not, but I googled and learned that I may be able to scan them with my scanner.

I will now scan as many negatives and photos as I can before technology changes again and I'll have to spend more or lose my memories preserved in these images.

Reviving Home Video (and Audio)

For our 20th wedding anniversary, almost a decade ago, I wanted to preserve our memories so rather than regular gifts or a trip to celebrate, we purchased an iMac to optimize our photo editing and organization with Photoshop and purchased Elgato Video Capture to transfer our home videos.

This post is about Video Capture. We purchased the Elgato one, but there are other brands available that do the same thing. Video Capture allows you to connect a camcorder, VCR, DVD player or other analog video or audio sources to your computer.

You can preserve your home videos by connecting your camcorder to your computer. You press play on the camcorder and capture the video on your computer. With the video digitized, you can also edit it to save the best parts in a shorter highlights video.

Tip: If your camcorder or analog video source has an S video output, it will give better quality result than the yellow video output. The red and white outputs are for audio.

I would advise to still keep the original cassettes (and cameras) in case technology changes and improves in the next decade(s). Perhaps in the future, there will be technology to improve the quality of old film. Looking back, our home videos were first transferred to videocassettes that were of okay quality. To get better quality, we then transferred them to DVD. We can now transfer them digitally. How long will we have DVD players for? Who knows what future technology will be available?

We used to save VCR cassettes of shows we recorded or VHS movies we purchased. We can't imagine watching those anymore. Many of those films or television shows can be streamed or purchased at higher quality now. We're happy we can digitize from our original camera cassettes and not the VCR tapes or DVDs we made that may be lower quality than the originals.

In some cases, lower quality is better than nothing so there are times that I digitized a VHS tape or DVD with Video Capture. Before donating your VCR or allowing it to break, it's a good idea to transfer them if you want to do it yourself.

There are companies who provide this service if you don't want to take the time to do it yourself.

Although my home videos were digitized years ago, I recently took my Video Capture out to record songs I wrote. 

My digital piano has audio outputs so I connected it with Video Capture to my computer. It's a bit of a cheat because there's no video output. The file I get is a greyed out video with the piano audio. I edited the file in iMovie to remove the video and only keep the audio. I can then upload the audio MP3 to my music collection to listen to them.

Celebrating Cinco de Mayo

May 5th is Cinco de Mayo in Mexico. My parents spend their winters in a small town on the west coast of Mexico. The first time I visited, I ordered a shrimp cocktail from the menu and was surprised when it came in a cold tomato based broth. It was delicious. Every time I go back, I order it and it's just as good as the first time.

It's the perfect dish for me to make when I want to reminisce about my time in Mexico.

 

My breakfast on Cinco de Mayo is a tribute to two coffee shops I like in the small town.

I would have a caramel latte at the shop we went to the most. At the other, I had fresh honey with toasted homemade bread that was amazing! I didn't think I liked honey until that day. to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, I made a caramel latte using Nespresso's Mexico coffee served with toasted fresh bread and honey.

For afternoon snack, I was reminded of our time at Mexico City airport where we would have a layover. On our way there, we saw people carrying boxes of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. We walked all over the airport trying to find the shop but couldn't find it. We didn't have that much time so I promised my daughter that we would find it on our way home when our layover was a little longer.

That day, we asked at the information desk and we were told that we had to go out of the security area for the shop. I wasn't going to let that stop me, so I went out to find it. I thought that I spoke enough Spanish to order a dozen regular doughnuts but the worker could not understand what I wanted. It was a reminder that I should really improve my Spanish in the future.

 

Going back through security with only my purse and doughnuts, I wondered if this was a regular sight for the security agents. My daughter was thrilled. We enjoyed a couple and had some interesting looks and comments when we boarded the plane with the box in the bag. 

We didn't know it at the time, but it turns out that there are still a few Krispy Kreme doughnut shops left in Toronto. I thought they had all closed.

Every once in a while we get doughnuts (or my daughter receives some as a gift). I was happy that we had some in the freezer to enjoy and reminisce about that day in Mexico.

We enjoyed looking at our photos and videos from our trips to Mexico.

Like I wrote in my last blog post when I celebrated Lei Day, if you haven't curated photos or videos from past trips, this is a great way to use a deadline to get them done. You can use a national holiday date, use the date when you went or even better, choose now to get started.

Celebrating Lei Day

Following up on my previous post about celebrating trip memories, Wearing my Hawaiian dress, I made Hawaiian themed foods to celebrate Lei Day.

I was ordering groceries every two weeks at that time so without early planning, the celebration would have to be done with foods I already had in our house.

We started the day like we did at the resort with fresh berries and watermelon.

I also ordered Hawaiian pizza a few days before (not thinking about Lei Day) and froze leftovers so although it's not a Hawaiian dish, I enjoyed it for lunch.

    

Without ingredients to make a mai tai, I made a fruit punch like I had from a food truck in Hanalei.

While in Hawaii, we had a lot of fish and seafood. In the freezer, I had lobster meat and shrimp so I made a lobster cheese dip for an appetizer and lobster & shrimp on baguette for dinner.

                        

                     

My husband and I used this deadline to curate the photos and videos from our trip. My husband made a highlight video using Final Cut Pro and we enjoyed reminiscing while watching it.

If you haven't curated photos or videos from past trips, this is a great way to use a deadline to get them done. You can use a national holiday date or use the date when you went or even better, choose now to get started.