Prior to the digital age, for pretty much every photograph printed, somewhere there’s a negative. Whether it’s your childhood photos or something produced by a Brownie in the forties, there was once a negative produced. On the other hand, the alternative to a movie camera on many a boring family vacation were slides — which consist of the developed positive film mounted in a little frame. In both cases, the fragile and tiny images are not particularly displayable without putting the originals at risk of damage, but they still represent the first-generation image, right off the camera.

Photography fans with a stash of negatives and slides used to rely on the skills of a talented photo-developing lab to produce prints and copies of their collection, potentially handing off some irreplacable images to someone who doesn’t understand the care required to ensure the aging images survive. Today, however, a regular PC and a cheap but specialized scanner can make digital copies of transparent negatives — which can be burned to CD and taken to anyplace that can do digital prints.

Prices have dropped to where a consumer-grade scanner capable of doing negatives can be had for around $100, but people’s accessibility to negative scanners have been limited in the past. Negative scanners were once quite expensive, and some would only accept one size of film — and people often didn’t know that many consumer-grade scanners actually have add-ons for scanning film. The key to scanning a semi-transparent medium, like a negative or slide, is ‘transmissive’ scanning. The usual method of scanning is like a photocopier, where the sensor that scans the page and the light source are on the same side — or ‘reflective’ scanning. The glossy coating of a negative makes ‘reflective’ scanning akin to flash photography in a mirror — lots of light, little image. ‘Transmissive’ has the light source behind the object to be scanned, like a movie projector, so the imaging sensor sees the image on the film, and not the film itself.

Many scanners have options for transmissive scanning, ranging from a small add-on that plugs in to the scanner and rests on the glass, to replacement covers for flatbed scanners. My scanner, a UMax Astra 4450 originally bought for scanning slide film, was specially designed with a transmissive light source built into the cover. It doesn’t span the entire scanning surface, so it comes with a template to help line up the negative. The 4×6 source in the scanner is large enough for all but the larger of glass negatives.

Having the light source on the back means that nearly any semi-transparent image can be scanned — glass negative plates, movie film, slides, large-format negatives. Anything that can fit in the scanner’s tramissive area will work.

Because of the wide variety of media, a little experimentation is needed to make sure it works. If you have any familiarity with developing black-and-white photos, using a transmissive scanner is the digital version of using an enlarger…and that always required a little trial-and-error to fine tune exposure and quality.

Much like an enlarger, you’ll need to do some calculation to get your image’s size correct. A scanner’s DPI, or ‘dots-per-inch,’ is a measure of image quality: the more ‘dots’ per inch, the better the print will be. For example, my 4 megapixel camera produces an approximately 400 DPI 4×6 photo. If I were to put a 4×6 photo on my scanner, and set it for 400 DPI, the scan should be of similar size and quality to my digital camera. However, do not forget that a negative is far smaller than the photo, while the scanner’s DPI is a measure of what’s actually being scanned on the glass. A 35mm frame is a little under an inch-and-a-half across, or 1/4 the width of a 4×6 photo. To produce a digital image of similar quality to a 4MP digital camera, the negative will have to be scanned at 4 x 400dpi, or 1600dpi. If you were to scan at 400dpi, you’d get a 400×600 image, which is far too grainy for anything but emailing or posting in a webpage. Scanning a 35mm frame at 600dpi or 800dpi should be the minimum level of quality to get a reasonable photo print, and most consumer-level scanners can do this or better. Don’t think that Photoshop can work magic: if the scanner was set at too low of quality, increasing the image’s size in Photoshop only makes the graininess bigger.

My examples are negatives from the 1930s in two sizes: 3-1/2″ x 2-1/2″ and 2-3/4″ x 1-3/4″. I’m scanning both at 600dpi, which should produce a relatively high quality scan, given the age and quality of the negatives. The negative is placed on the scanner flatbed, in the region of the template, the cover is closed, and the ‘transmissive-negative’ option is selected. When the scanner passes across the negative, taking in the light that passes through the negative, the software will invert the brightness, producing a positive image. If I were to scan a color slide — which is not negative — my scanner has the option to just scan, without inverting. Once I have the image in Photoshop, I can adjust and fine tune the levels and contrast to my tastes, and then save it. After I have my settings figured out to produce a good image, the process becomes quicker. Because I do the converting in the comfort of my home, the negatives are ar far less risk for damage or loss, compared to delivering them to a photo studio for enlarging.

Once you have the image scanned, the negatives can be returned to their acid-free, cool, dry storage, and you’re left with a high-quality digital version. Burn it to a CD, and even Wal-Mart can print them for you on high-quality photo paper. Upload them to Flickr and show off your collection. If your photos are family or historic, use them in a website devoted to the photo’s subject. These negatives and slides, once hidden away for their own safety, can now be reproduced and shared without putting them at significant risk of damage.

Short notes:

• Transparent images are scanned using a ‘transmissive’ technique, with the light behind the image. Scanners can be purchased with it built-in, or added as an option, depending on the manufacturer.
• DPI applies to the scanner’s surface, not the actual image. Calculate the quality of the print you’d like to make, and set the scanner appropriate for the negative’s size.
• Like hand-enlarged photos of old, some experimentation may be needed to get proper exposure, contrast, and color.
• With a little work, those negatives and slides can be shared without putting the originals at risk.

As my wifey discussed yesterday, there’s a heck of a lot of postcards out there. People, places, pets, and events, somebody’s turned it into a means of communication, and some of the rarest are D’s favorites - real-photo postcards.

Early in the days of general-public photography, ingenious photopaper suppliers started to offer specialized papers, designed within the specifications of postcard size, with a pre-printed postcard back. Using a regular enlarger and developing process, anyone could turn a photograph into a postcard, and customized cameras and processing equipment made them even simpler. Prior to 1907, the process was a bit limited because postal regulations made senders write their message on the ‘photo’ side of the card, which limited the size of the photo that could be used, and the emulsion side was difficult to write on. A change in the postal rules in 1907 created the postcard we know and love today: 5″ x 3-1/2″, full-frame picture on one side, and the other split 50/50, message and address. With this change, regular photopaper could be sent to the printer and pre-postcarded for easy use.

The quick-and-dirty postcard creation bred a cottage industry of amateur photographers producing scads of postcards for their customers. The owner of a general store could run off a dozen photos of Main Street Podunkville, taken from his store’s front porch, to sell to tourists. Professional photographers could not only produce a nice family photo, but also sell their customers something to drop in the mail to Grandma back in the city. In no time at all, a picture of a parade of picnic could be cruising along in a mailpouch on the floor of a boxcar. Photography expanded from something framed and on the wall to something shared, complete with a caption on the left half of the back.

Identifying a Real-Photo Postcard

Just because a postcard started as a photo doesn’t mean it was developed on postcard-backed photopaper. The most accurate way to tell if a postcard is a real photo is to get out your magnifying glass:

Even modern printing processes have trouble with photographic details; enlarging a photo from a negative doesn’t have the same drawbacks. When you look at a picture closely, you’ll see a pattern of dots in an image produced by a printing press; photos will have a smooth gradient at any magnification.

What Can Be Found In Real Photo Poscards?

Pretty much everything. The subject matter was limited only by what can fit in front of a camera’s lens, and that didn’t leave much out. Some of the most common photo postcards are wither views of buildings and towns, or personal photos of friends and family. The latter can be the most interesting, but the former are often the more valuable. As people try to document their towns or collect memories of their hometown, they will be on the lookout for anything unique that they haven’t seen before. Because real-photo postcards could be as rare as a series of one, they are in high demand. While a small Minnesota resort town may not warrant a professional photographer and a print-run of ten thousand postcards, producing a few dozen using a standard enlarger, a negative taken by the nearest person with a steady arm, and a box of postcard photographic paper was the easiest option. The early years of many small towns were documented this way, and their pictures were sent to the farthest-flung corners that a postman could get to. Real-Photo postcards were printed using older negatives, resulting in historical postcards, but a successful photo may have encouraged an entrepeneur to order up some high-quality cards:

The black-and-white overlay is a real-photo postcard from the 1920s; the color is a professionally printed postcard from a few years later. I don’t know if the other 5 cards from the original photo-set were also converted to color postcards, but when I saw this pair it obviously caught my eye as a rarity.

More To Photo Postcards Than The Picture

The back of the photo postcard can both give clues to its origin, and give an idea of timeframe for the photo. Generally, most producers of the photosensitive postcard paper identified themselves in the stamp-box. Playle’s Auctions has an excellent reference of stamp-box photo postcard manufacturers. Many collectors focus specifically on real photo cards, and it has even spawned a coffee table book of the finer examples. Real Photo postcards are also available in such quantities and demand that eBay has given them their own category. The best place to start looking is, of course, your local antique shops. Invariably, some seller has a box of disorganized postcards that should give you an excellent start at identifying and getting a good look at real photo postcards.

The old joke, told by many a grandparent or parent, says that the world was black-and-white until color photography was invented. The advent of recording colored light, storing it for the ages, was the beginning of a world of color, one where greens and blues are distinguishable from shades of gray.

Many a child then took it for granted, before thinking a bit harder about the concept of a colorless history. For most people born since the 1970s, black and white film is only used as an artistic statement; color is the way everything is seen. Even people approaching retirement age remember color film always being around, with black and white a limitation of technology or expense. Few realize just how recent color photography came into being.

While many inventors and photographers experimented with color photos, going back into the 19th century, widespread color film became available in the mid-1930s when Kodachrome, Technicolor, and Agfacolor films were released. While the availability and simplicity of these films were greatly improved over earlier attempts at color photos, they still had a degree of complexity and expense that kept black-and-white as a common film well into the 1960s.

As such, finding color photos made during those twenty years is a rare event. The average photographer did not have the equipment, skill, or access to developing as professionals did. When photographers were sent with the troops during WWII, numerous striking color photos were returned, even today drawing enormous attention from generations raised on grainy black-and-white newsreels. A single arbitrary photo from 1949 garnished significant attention from bloggers and historians when it turned up on Wikipedia (at right, above). Many of these photos originated with professionals, both the negatives and prints being guarded carefully for profitable reasons, but many amateurs dabbled in color as well.

I, for example, own a rare example of a 1939 amateur color film. While most of the other films in the AOUW collection were 16mm black and white, the enterprising documenters decided to load their camera (or cameras; some parts seem to have been filmed with two cameras) with the new Kodachrome “Kodak Safety Positive” film. Large portions of this film, particularly the interstitials, were done on black-and-white film and spliced in where color was unavailable or impratical.

During the 1930s and 1940s, color movies brought images of New York, Hollywood, and other distant lands to moviehouses everywhere, but color photos of off-the-beaten-path areas like North Dakota, Montana, Texas, and Iowa are a rare treat. Even though color photos were rare, many photographers tried their hand at this new form of photography, and their works appeared many places, from postcards to books to magazines. National Geographic was an early deliverer of color images to a world full of black-and-white photos, but magazine prints are a far reach from an actual photograph.

Color printing presses were a bit ahead of modern color film, with National Geographic starting to print full-color magazines in the 1920s from early color photographs. Because it was much easier to reproduce numerous color images on a printing press than through photographic methods, distinguishing between a photograph and a 4-color print or lithograph is necessary.

With printing processes, a color separation process is used which divides up a color image into numerous “dithered” dots. Most people can distinguish these dots with the naked eye, but extremely fine detail can require a magnifying glass. Also, most printers or lithographers, to protect their copyright, included their name and city of origin in the margins of a print, or on the back. In the case of re-framed prints, sometimes these margins have trimmed to fit. Color photos will often be printed on a heavy cardstock, and have a coating on the front which may range from a light gloss to a thick glossy layer. Often a professional photographer would mark or stamp their name on the back of a photo to identify themselves. Cycleback.com has an excellent list of resources for identifying genuine photos, with a special area on color photos.

Negatives, on the other hand, are easily authenticatable, but rarely survive. Color negatives from the 1970s are already turning pink (a common degradation for color negatives), and ones earlier are experiencing the same shift. This color shift, if it has not gone too far, can be corrected using modern computer technology. Color prints, as well, are susceptible to color shift due to age. As such, care should be taken to store original color photos and negatives in dark, climate-controlled areas in order to prolong their life. Displaying colorfast early photographs (primarily ones using the Kodachrome process, like my movie) is not a bad thing as long as direct sunlight is avoided, but a modern reproduction of a fading antique color photo can be just as eye-catching. Because we so rarely see color photos of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, few people will complain about seeing a reproduction on display. Connoisseurs of photography understand the rarity and value of old color images, and would rather see these striking photos cared for.