Old photos

[Ed Pawlowski]

Yesterday I opened a box that had not been gone through for ages. Old photos going back to the 1940's of family and extended family. My 8th grade class picture in in there too.

The reason I bring it up, just a quick tip if you have a box like that. dig it out, enjoy the memories, but please write names and dates on the back if you know them. Your grandkids will appreciate it when they go through the box 50 years from now.

I also found a few photos that had no particular meaning to me but I'm sending them to the spouses of the now deceased that are in them.

[micky]

My mother and I went through one of two big boxes of photos. IIRC we both got tired after the first box and never got back to it. Most of the people I could recognize or I never knew.

Good for you. My mother was pretty the last of her friends to die. She was 88, and in pretty good health up until then. She drove until she was 84 or 85. I think she had a small accident when she was 60, but hey, we're all 60, right. No accidents the last 20 years.

And she was mentally sharp too.

[Dean Hoffman]

That's one nice thing about the smart phones. Time and place are recorded automatically. I should go through and label them. My other computer died before some of the pictures on it were loaded to the cloud. I was lucky enough to get it going long enough to load them. Another nice thing is taking pictures is free. I can take pictures of something before I take it apart. It's makes reassembly easier. Another use is taking pictures of my home project before I go to the lumber yard. I remember my mom using the old Polaroid box camera. Taking pictures was a big deal. She wasn't about to send the film in to be developed until it was full. Watch your pennies and the dollars watch themselves.

[hubops]

If there are old negatives also - the ones that are about 4 x or 6 x the size of a 35mm neg. - they can produce lovely prints ! I had a bunch of prints made back in the '80s < pre-digital > when there was a good sale on re-prints - and have since scanned them. < re-prints from negs. would be costly today methinks >

My attempts to scan negatives and slides were not good - even though my scanner has the capeability. The subject of online photo-sharing came up just this week as my Aunt passed away at 94 and was the last of my late mother's siblings - I was considering creating an online album for my cousins' families - but haven't found a suitable web site yet ... any suggestions are welcome. Good advice about identifying names / dates - when the "family historian" passes away - so very much is lost. John T.

[invalid unparseable]

I have a picture on my wall that I took and developed myself as a kid over 50 years ago. Stuff on electronic media would not be around that long.

[philo]

I still remember when our 6th grade teacher made us write the names of our classmates on a piece of paper and tape it to the back of our class photo.

So glad he did that!

[Ed Pawlowski]

Another thing my phone does well is take a picture of a photo. I was able to snap a few and send them to my kids while going through the box.

The photos I'm mailing out are now in my digital file.

[micky]

Who would? Polaroid made a camera that was not self-developing?

That's true.

[Heywood]

Probably confused with the Kodak Brownie box camera

[micky]

I was in the same class for six years**

Don't remember what year it is but I have a class photo or maybe just a list with everyone's name. But I can remember what they all looked like.

**That's why I was 23 when I graduated high school.

[Dean Hoffman]

Oh yeah, you're right. It was the Kodak.

[Peter]

Did you try when using a scanner that was specifically designed to scan negatives and slides by transmitted light as well as positive images using reflected light? When I retired in 2001, I decided to digitize a huge library of slides, prints, and negatives I had accumulated since age 9. I purchased an "Epson Perfection 3170 Photo" flatbed scanner. It has both a light from below the glass and a light on the inside surface of the lid, and came with plastic frames to hold 35mm, 2 1/4" square, and 4x5" negatives. The software that came with it made it easy to scan negatives in high resolution and even allows producing positive images from both black and white and color negatives. It took me a few years to get it all done but after all, being retired, I had the time. I've yet to need to repair or replace that scanner and use it at least once/month for general purpose scanning. Fortunately, the software still runs perfectly on Windows 10 64 bit. A lot of the old flawed prints and color-shifted negatives can be used to make very acceptable positive image files using decent photo editing software.

[hubops]

Epson 3170 :

Mine is a Canon 8800F -

When I bought mine there were very few in it's class <~none > .. .. there were cheapo slide scanners and then a big jump from mine < $ 250 ish > to professional units ~ $ 2000. + My issues with slides & negatives may very well be a user issue - lack of patience / time to learn it. John T.