Batt Family Photos

ABOUT THE PROJECT

My mother-in-law Beatrice (Batt) Leous was the youngest of 13 children born to Paul Joseph Batt and Antoinette (Czerwinski) Batt. When she passed away in 2018, Betsy and I were fortunate enough to buy the Leous family home at 72 Leicester.

While Betsy was going through her closet (which used to be Bea's closet), she found a vintage Kodak film box tucked away on the top shelf. In the box were several hundred 90+ year old photo negatives.

Without knowing exactly what was on these negatives, I set about trying to figure out what was on them, and if it was anything worthwhile, figure out how to turn them into digital photographs without breaking the bank or having to buy new equipment.

From the size of the negatives, I found that they were from 122 size film rolls. That's the same size film that was used in a Kodak No. 3a Model B camera that was part of the estate left after Bea passed away. A visual inspection of a large batch of negatives found 100 or so that were definitely photos of people or groups of people.

After deciding that the project was going to be worth the time and effort, it was time to do some reading on how to digitize negatives. Everything I read essentially led to the same three options:

Send the negatives out to a digitizing service.
Pros: Negatives scanned on professional equipment. Fast.
Cons: Very expensive for large format, not standard size negatives.
Use a conventional flatbed scanner.
Pros: I have a scanner. No cost.
Cons: Scanning negatives requires a light source to illuminate them and a means for holding them flat against the scanner bed. Scanning at a high enough resolution for decent quality is slow. Scanned images then need to be cropped into individual images.
“Scan” the negatives by taking a picture of them with a digital SLR.
Pros: I have a DSLR. Taking a photo is faster than a hi-res scan. More control over the settings.
Cons: Like a scanner, it also requires a light source, and a way to hold the negative flat. Requires somewhat complicated equipment setup. Can only photograph one negative at a time.

Sending the negatives out was cost prohibitive, so that option was quickly eliminated. That left me with either using my scanner or using my camera to digitize them myself. After exchanging emails with a photographer friend who works with film and does his own prints, I decided to try the flatbed scanner based on ease of setup.

I set up some small LED work lights above my scanner to use as a light source and found a clean pane of glass from a picture frame to hold the negatives down. I scanned three negatives at a time. The results were not great. Reflections from the glass left some areas of the negatives under-illuminated while other areas were too bright.

The next step was to try the scanner again, but this time use a sheet of paper between the negatives and the pane of glass to act as a light diffuser. Even with that simple DIY setup, there was clearly enough image quality on the negatives to keep at this, just not like this. The biggest issues were with keeping the negatives flat, and the time it took to place them on the scanner, scan them, and repeat for the next batch. Not to mention the editing each scan would require.

More emails with my friend to discuss the lighting issue led to this exchange:

“That’s why I was asking about some sort of DIY holder that could keep the negatives secure then use a lightbox and my DSLR. I suppose I could use some sort of thin template or tape outline on the scanner bed to keep the negatives from sliding around, then cover that with glass to hold them flat.

Either way, scanner or DSLR, I think I definitely need a better light source to illuminate the negatives.”

“Your approach is good. Can’t you just use higher dpi on the scanner? I doubt your camera will do better.”

“I can, but its not a general purpose scanner so there’s some weird light artifacts and lines from the scanner itself, plus I think I need to use better glass on top of the negatives, the light is still too uneven.

Scanner can do multiples but the scanning takes longer than just snapping a pic on the DSLR. Flip side is I have a scanner here (or I can simply rent a better one for a week) vs. having to create a rig for using my camera.”

“What is the resolutionion of the DSLR? What type of paper are you using?”

“It’s a Nikon D7500, max resolution in RAW format is 5568 x 3712 pixels. My scanner has a max resolution of 1200 DPI so that’s probably a wash. Applying my software development guidelines: fast, easy, or cheap, pick two to determine the best approach for doing a large number of negatives. There’s probably 200+ good ones in the batch."

So after struggling to get consistent results using the flatbed scanner (uneven lighting, negatives not lying flat, diffuser, etc.) I thought I would try the digital SLR approach.

As it turns out, Kodak 122 large format negatives fit almost perfectly on top of an old 7" Android tablet I had laying around. So I downloaded a basic lightbox app and used that to light the negatives from underneath. Then I found a different pane of glass that was just slightly bigger than the negatives to lay on top of them so they would lay reasonably flat.

Next was to set up the camera. I used my tripod on a table positioning the camera over the tablet. I eyeballed it to get it as perpendicular to the tablet as possible, then put a mirror over the tablet and used my camera’s live view to center the lens over the reflection of the lens.

With all of that done, it was time to lay stuff out and figure out workflows. The downside to using the camera is I can only do one shot at a time, but the benefit is I don’t have to crop a scan, and snapping pics is faster than hi-res scans and then having to crop into separate images. Setting this all up I learned a few things. (Most of these things I should have known beforehand)

Tablet was too easy to knock around when changing negatives so I taped it down.
Lightbox app eats tablet battery life faster than a fat kid at a cheeseburger museum so the tablet needs to be on AC power. (power cable taped down too)
No lights other than the tablet app. Even the tiny amount of light from the camera viewfinder created weird reflections and slight light consistency issues.
Using a remote shutter release was a must. Taped the cord down so it wouldn't bump anything when I picked it up or put it down to switch negatives.
Keep a small light source handy that I could easily turn on and off if I needed to see things.
Clean and prepare the negatives to scan in advance. Ninety year old negatives collect a lot of dust that needs to be cleaned off before digitizing. Lightly wiped both the emulsion side and the backing side of any loose particles of dust and smudges.
Work in small to moderate size batches. Set it, cover it, shoot it, lift the glass and remove the negative and load the next one. The goal is consistency of process.
Lay things out so using the camera doesn’t bump the negatives and so that changing the negatives doesn’t bump the camera. Having to reset either one of those takes extra time.
Continually placing and then removing the negatives and the glass in the dark dirties up the glass quickly. Using nitrile gloves helped A LOT, but the negatives also leave small amounts of dirt and specks on the glass. I had to check and occasionally clean the glass with a microfiber every 10 to 20 scans.

With all of that done, it was FINALLY time to snap some pictures. I set up the camera with the negatives in front of me and the camera live view screen flipped up so I could use it to frame the shots without cutting off anything. I set my image format to camera RAW, ISO 100 using a 17-55 f/2.8 lens set to aperture priority at f/8. I set the zoom on the lens to fit just slightly more than the negative in the camera frame.

After getting things framed, I set the first negative and turned off the live view. Then I went through the first batch one at a time with an occasional glimpse of the camera live view to make sure I was lining the negatives up consistently.

Note: If I had anything close to a popular standard size negative, I would have definitely bought a film holder for that specific size. Since 122 format film was discontinued in the 70's, that was not an option. I may still spend some time making one, as getting the film square and as flat as possible was the most time consuming part of the whole thing. A better lightbox might yield better results too.

I used Adobe Lightroom software to edit the camera images because I’m most familiar with it and already have some basic workflows I use with it, but I could have also used Adobe Photoshop or the Nikon Camera RAW software to get the same images. The only edits made were to invert the negative image to a positive, then straighten and crop them to their original 122 film size of 3 ¼ x 5 ½ inches. The only drawback in Lightroom is that all the adjustment sliders work opposite after flipping the tonal curve.

The last step was to save the edited images to my computer as jpg files and upload them to a folder on my photo gallery site. Thats where you will find all of the 250+ photographs from the project and where you can order prints of any picture. Betsy and I have tried to identify people in the photos as best we could. When looking at the gallery, if you recognize anyone or any place in any of the photos, please leave a comment.

The finished photos are not perfect, by any means. There are still lots of smudges, some have slight damage to the original negatives, scratches, not always in sharp focus, etc, but overall I'm really pleased with how these came out using a simple homemade rig.

The detail is amazing and having played with the actual 1917 Kodak 3A camera used to take these, I have an amazing amount of respect for whoever was using it, and a greater appreciation for how easy we have things with digital cameras and now smartphones.

When I was done, I emailed my friend and sent along a couple of the finished images.

“All I can say is wow! You certainly put a lot of effort in. It might have been easier to buy a better scanner. I applaud your efforts! How do you plan to print them?”

“I Was afraid you would ask me that. Ha! Haven't gotten that far yet, I typically just upload to Printique (an online photo print service). Any better suggestions?

If my negatives were a more standard size like slides, or a 120 roll where I could have gotten an inexpensive film holder, I probably would have just rented a dedicated film scanner with a light source and done them all in a day or two.

Right now, if I was going to spend money I'd probably get a better lightbox and maybe a sharper fixed length macro lens. But I doubt buying more gear would fly with the Mrs.”

“I am not familiar with printique. I do my own printing with an Eason 9800. I also own the Epson 850 scanner.”

I may end up doing my own printing, or I may use the print service from the gallery site where I uploaded all of the photos. I haven’t decided yet, but I will definitely be printing several of these.

I used to tease Bea when she was alive about never throwing anything out. This is definitely one time I am glad that she kept everything. I only wish that she was here to reminisce with us about all of these family memories. Betsy and I hope these photos bring back many memories for all of you too.

Cheers,
Fred