A Fist Full of Permits or I've Now Got A Scanner

[The Stationmaster]

Very nice results so far Mike and what lovely subject matter too.... I wonder where that Henley WR enamel sign is now? A few weeks back I found a slide on ebay showing the two running in boards at the London end of the platforms, I'll dig it out later and PM you.

 

Just out of interest, how many slides / photos have you got to get through..?

 

Well here's the sign (or the one which was at the other end of the canopy) lurking on Bill McAlpine's museum building a few miles from Henley

 

 

Yesterday I scanned just under 300 originals - mostly slides, some b&w negs and some b&w prints. That was a small chunk of the 'early' (mid 1960s or earlier) b&w negs, about 30-40% of the 'early' scannable b&w prints, and probably about half of the railway subject slides where I'm up to 1972 part done (most of the remainder are signals), 1973 part done, 1974-77 barely touched, some of those should be very much to your liking I think. I'm not sure what I've got from the early 1980s but it isn't much at all but there is a bit from the mid 1980s. There are then several hundred from the early 1990s - almost all signalling related and mainly b&w on what are probably scannable prints but at least are on FP4 negs. There are several hundred in a mix of b&w and slides from a trip to Poland in 1975 although a lot of them are the 'same pic' but from a different angle. There a lot of pics from the '90s which are colour neg but might be on disc so I'll have to check them at some time but anything railway is almost entirely signalling - I can wind back the clock on the 'Cornwall Signalling' thread in quite a few places.

 

The above list excludes traction engines which are probably no more than 100 slides; warships (including Falklands battle damage under repair at Pompey and some elements of the task force sailing - I have 'Atlantic Conveyor' leaving Devonport for example); some merchant shipping (nice sequence of a Geest banana boat locking out of Barry which is firmly on my hit list for earlyish scanning); all the Australian railway stuff from 2004/05 is already digital, mostly preserved steam.

A lot of the railway stuff incidentally is signals - dating broadly from 1961 onwards and covering a fair sample of what was once between Slough and Didcot in particular. Of that Bourne End immediately before the signalbox was closed in August 1971 was scanned yesterday and I've got Twyford/Henley before Redaing took over in 1972 to do. Also to do in much greater numbers is a series taken on 1B06 between Temple Meads and Paignton via Westbury, Yeovil Jcn, and Exeter behind D1023 in - I think(!!) 1973, I've so far done about a dozen of 30+ 'leaning out' type pics which cover various parts of the route bewteen Bristol and Newton. I somehow think you'll like that set so here's a sample showing the train running into St Davids which you might like, maybe, perhaps -

 

[The Stationmaster]

Easily fixed for personal preference.

The information is all in the picture.

 

 

Now that is much better - you definitely seem to have the right sort of tool programme for picture fixing.

 

BTW I'm still thinking about the best way to show this lot. My reason for saying that is that a large chunk of what I have recorded was done for record purposes or in some cases - even 40 years ago - with teh eventual idea of telling a story or explaining how something works/ed or happened. Thus it's not exact;y a case of bunging it all on Flickr but would - I think - work far better in a sort of thread or blog format where folk can come back and ask questions, develop conversations or usefully alter the pics to restore lost colour or shadows.

 

Some it is very obviously not normal RMweb fare so won't appear here unless it suits a running thread (eg ships) or answers questions but the 'railway operational stuff all fills some fairy common themes and a lot of it lies fairly closely together - and might well get lost in some of the big subject threads on here. Any views or ideas would be welcome.

[DDolfelin]

I'm sure you will be able to alter stuff to your liking with PS Elements.

It's pretty basic.

Too blue?

Reduce blue.

It should have an option for Auto Colour Correction which you can then fine tune.

 

As for picture storage, I've tried most but nothing will beat a stand alone back-up.

I think a totally different hard disc is best.

[Rugd1022]

I can understand why you're still undecided about the best way to show the images Mike - but I think a single point of reference, possibly 'pinned' by Andy and the Mods if deemed appropriate, somewhere in one of the prototype sections of the forum would be the right place to put it, or at leats that which you definitely want to show people. As well as the locos and 'train' views, I'm very much looking forward to seeing your signalling and other infrastructure shots, especially where the real thing ni longer exists.

 

Flickr is a good place to put them, but you'd need to keep on top of things, I know from experience that not putting things in seperate 'sets' can be a pain when you're trying to look for something, especially if the number of photos runs into four figures.

 

Edit : thanks for the Henley sign tip! And that lovely shot of 'Fusilier' droppping down into St Davids, was that one of the railtours of '76 by chance...?

[Peter Kazmierczak]

Regarding numbering images, I use the following sequence:

 

The first photo taken today would be 12F17-001.jpg

Year first, then a letter for the month (A = January etc), then the day and individual image number.

 

I find this necessary as I can include prints/slides in the same sequence.

 

I'm sure there are lots of other ways/ideas on this.

[The Stationmaster]

I'm sure you will be able to alter stuff to your liking with PS Elements.

It's pretty basic.

Too blue?

Reduce blue.

It should have an option for Auto Colour Correction which you can then fine tune.

 

As for picture storage, I've tried most but nothing will beat a stand alone back-up.

I think a totally different hard disc is best.

 

Thanks

 

Storage is no problem as - hopefully - is organisation of storage (although I really ought to set up a list for cross-referencing there). Subject folders with consecutive numbers are my preferred method so they are easy to find by date (date the folder was created/pics downloaded) with live pics and scans in separate folders) and duplicated from the Mac hard drive onto a separate hard drive (which will run off either the Mac or a PC and I considering buying a second separate drive to provide triplicated storage).

 

And yes Nidge - that's the sort of 'presentational' approach I've been wondering about - subject to Andy's agreement of course. See PM

[jonny777]

I have a Macbook laptop and a Minolta transparency scanner, and was quite happy with the results from the software bundle that came with the scanner.

 

That was until someone suggested that I might like to try the VueScan software, which can be downloaded from www.hamrick.com/

 

It took a while to master the six sliding scale colour balance controls (trial and error really) but once I got the hang of it I realised that my earlier scans were not a patch on the VueScan versions, and the boundaries of the scan can be adjusted to cut out black borders or any other parts of the image you do not want/need.

 

I have now decided to re-scan all my slides with the new software because the resulting files are much better quality.

 

There are controls which allow small scratches to be eliminated at the time of the scan, and this almost cuts out the need for any Photoshopping at all.

[melmerby]

 

and the boundaries of the scan can be adjusted to cut out black borders or any other parts of the image you do not want/need.

 

I would have thought even the most basic of scanner apps would have done that, all the one I have seen do.

 

Keith

[Danemouth]

Mike,

 

I have a Nikon Film scanner and use Vuescan from http://www.hamrick.com/ and is vastly superior to the stuff Nikon supplies. Works with almost all scanners, flatbed and film and does allow cropping, dust cleanup etc.

 

Regards,

 

Dave

[The Stationmaster]

Mike,

I have a Nikon Film scanner and use Vuescan from http://www.hamrick.com/ and is vastly superior to the stuff Nikon supplies. Works with almost all scanners, flatbed and film and does allow cropping, dust cleanup etc.

Regards,

Dave

Thanks Dave - the Epson comes with various facilities and in any case I can, if needed , crop images after scanning but my concern about the 'cutting off' was/is when it's working in auto where for some reason it decides on some slides that the edge of the image is in a different place from the actual edge. In some circumstances - such as the example below where the pic was taken from a dark loco cab looking out onto a sunlit railway - this is clearly understandable bur where there is no difference in contrast or image relationship with the frame of the transparency it is a bit more puzzling.

 

So two views - originally successive frames - taken on the descent from Cwmbargoed to Nelson & Llancaiach in 1973. The first one is slightly trimmed from the original scanner output, the second (lower) one is exactly as it came from the scanner apart from a reduction to recommended size for posting here and if you enlarge them you will see the difference in size.

 

 

[Unicorn1]

Mike,

 

I have a Nikon Film scanner and use Vuescan from http://www.hamrick.com/ and is vastly superior to the stuff Nikon supplies. Works with almost all scanners, flatbed and film and does allow cropping, dust cleanup etc.

 

Regards,

 

Dave

 

Dave, may I ask does this software run on Windows 7 - I've got an old Nikon Coolscan IV4 ED, which Nikon no longer support.

I miss being able to properly scan negatives an d slides!

 

Thanks, Les

[Danemouth]

Dave, may I ask does this software run on Windows 7 - I've got an old Nikon Coolscan IV4 ED, which Nikon no longer support.

I miss being able to properly scan negatives an d slides!

 

Thanks, Les

 

Les,

 

Have it running on Windows 7 at the moment, have used it on both Vista and XP in the past. Run both the Coolscan V and an old Epson flatbed - there is a list of compatible scanners on the website.

 

IIRC they have a trial version. Belieive me you will uninstall the Nikon stuff once you've tried this one as there is a world of difference is the quality of the scans, especially colour slides :-)

 

Regards,

 

Dave

[beast66606]

When scanning remember to scan at the highest resolution possible / you can for your system - you can always shrink them, but (without interpolation) you cannot add details.

 

Mike, you made me think I should get on with scanning my blue (1976 onwards) stuff... but only thinking !

[The Stationmaster]

When scanning remember to scan at the highest resolution possible / you can for your system - you can always shrink them, but (without interpolation) you cannot add details.

Yes indeed - on the first manual scan (it will only scan negs on manual) I missed one of the boxes and scanned at default - which is 300dpi - but couldn't understand why on enlargement I'd got some very pixellated pics (of signals felled 50 years ago) until I tried a bit more film and found an extra button. Thus the Reading views in Post No.3 went through at 6400dpi and produced a somewhat better result.

 

Fortunately I was never a fan of blue diesels so have very few pics of them (unless the number started D10.. etc )

[beast66606]

Fortunately I was never a fan of blue diesels so have very few pics of them (unless the number started D10.. etc )

 

I also photographed "proper" ( ) signals to go with my blue stuff, sadly starting 40.., 47..., 24.., 25... etc. I think I accidentally photographed some GWR signals too, Newton Abbot was a halt I stopped at once

[Adrian]

Mike, I have a Nikon Film scanner and use Vuescan from http://www.hamrick.com/ and is vastly superior to the stuff Nikon supplies.

 

Another vote for Vuescan here - an excellent piece of software.

 

Yes indeed - on the first manual scan (it will only scan negs on manual) I missed one of the boxes and scanned at default - which is 300dpi - but couldn't understand why on enlargement I'd got some very pixellated pics (of signals felled 50 years ago) until I tried a bit more film and found an extra button. Thus the Reading views in Post No.3 went through at 6400dpi and produced a somewhat better result.

 

Your software might have the option as well, but Vuescan has a multipass option to improve the quality of scans, basically it will scan the image several times and average the CCD data, which helps to reduce the noise in the scanned image.

[coachmann]

I've got blue era stuff coming out of my ears but have no incentive to scan the trannies, as the Epson Perfection 1250 aint too good at it. Sorts out the black & white prints though. As Beast says, scan at a high resolution. If the shots are for use on the Web, set the little box to pixels. This way you can then scan quickly at 800 pixels horizontal at a very high res. It might help if you turn 'Sharpenning' off and sharpen them in Photoshop, but it is all part of experimentation.

[melmerby]

When scanning remember to scan at the highest resolution possible / you can for your system - you can always shrink them, but (without interpolation) you cannot add details.

 

That rather depends on the scanner and size of image being scanned.

My scanner on maximum resolution with a 36mmx24mm positive image at 24bit colour depth produces a 565Mb (uncompressed) file - hardly practical!

 

Keith

[beast66606]

That rather depends on the scanner and size of image being scanned.

My scanner on maximum resolution with a 36mmx24mm positive image at 24bit colour depth produces a 565Mb (uncompressed) file - hardly practical!

 

Keith

 

 

When scanning remember to scan at the highest resolution possible / you can for your system

 

I would still scan at that level if my system could take it.

[DerekEm8]

My method of identifying loco scans is fairly simple:-

Loco number(space) location(space) date(space) filmnumberneg/slidenumber.(suffix)

eg 47401 MV 260385 C50113

The locations are (my) recognisable abreviations

Windows 'Search' will find any scan using the wildcard (*) with any other part of the description.

eg searching 47401*.jpg will find ALL scans of 47401 in seconds

*MV*.jpg will find ALL scans with MV as the location again in seconds.(and is not case sensitive)

System works well for me on Windows - but on a MAC - I don't know

[Guest Belgian]

What software was included?

I bought an Epson 4990 a few years ago and the software included a version of Silverfast which is great for adjusting contrast/colour balance etc. during the scan, leaving less to be Photoshopped!

It allows negatives to be scanned to a positive file and filmstrips/slides to be scanned in groups

 

Keith

Whilst researching scanners which resulted in my purchase of an Epson V500 like Mike did I came across a number of discussion groups where Silverfast was mentioned, the gist being that it is vastly better than Epson's own software. Has anyone, especially you Keith, got any comments on its viability and the benefits of using it?

 

Also, has anyone sourced a better slide scanning holder than the one Epson provide with the V500 - I find it annoying that the holder merely positions slides but doesn't actually hold them. As a result my sticky fingers seem liable to leave nasty marks on the platten if I'm not careful. The 4990 is far better in that respect.

 

JE

[melmerby]

Hi JE

The 4990 slide adaptor also does not "hold" them, it just aligns them for the software to recognise them, although you can leave it in position and place the slides in and remove them from it without contact with the glass screen. The filmstrip adaptors do however clip the film in place.

 

The Epson software with the 4990 is also pretty good with many variables for colour density, gradation, dust removal, grain reduction, histogram adjustment etc. Also there is something called "Digital Ice"

Silverfast adds to these with more customisation available. You only got the SE6 version - so I don't know what a full version would be like!

 

I have used both SE6 and the Epson package and find that less post-scan correction is required. It rather depends on the condition of the original, which and what to use.

The 4990 was available in two guises "Photo" and "Professional" AFAIK the Professional had a better software package With an ArcSoft package and full version of Silverfast (I have the Photo)

Photoshop Elements was included in both versions plus ABBYY OCR package.

 

It's still pretty good and with a native resolution of 9600x4800dpi I find it is more than adequate for 35mm use.

 

Keith

 

Edit for grammar, spelling etc!

[Guest Belgian]

Hi JE

The 4990 slide adaptor also does not "hold" them, it just aligns them for the software to recognise them, although you can leave it in position and place the slides in and remove them from it without contact with the glass screen. The filmstrip adaptors do however clip the film in place.

 

The Epson software with the 4990 is also pretty good with many variables for colour density, gradation, dust removal, grain reduction, histogram adjustment etc. Also there is something called "Digital Ice"

Silverfast adds to these with more customisation available. You only got the SE6 version - so I don't know what a full version would be like!

 

I have used both SE6 and the Epson package and find that less post-scan correction is required. It rather depends on the condition of the original, which and what to use.

The 4990 was available in two guises "Photo" and "Professional" AFAIK the Professional had a better software package With an ArcSoft package and full version of Silverfast (I have the Photo)

Photoshop Elements was included in both versions plus ABBYY OCR package.

 

It's still pretty good and with a native resolution of 9600x4800dpi I find it is more than adequate for 35mm use.

 

Keith

 

Edit for grammar, spelling etc!

 

Thank you Keith.

 

I used a 4990 of a friend a little while back and the slides, in their mounts, clipped into the slide holder. Perhaps he had an add-on holder so I shall ask him next time I see him.

 

JE

[melmerby]

Thank you Keith.

 

I used a 4990 of a friend a little while back and the slides, in their mounts, clipped into the slide holder. Perhaps he had an add-on holder so I shall ask him next time I see him.

 

JE

That's interesting, all the reviews and comments about the 4990 suggest, like mine, the slides are loosely held in place by the frame.

The biggest criticism of it is that it only allows 8 at a time although the area is big enough for 12. If you lay on 12 slides you can't get it to do an auto scan and produce thumbnails.

 

Keith

[Guest Belgian]

That's interesting, all the reviews and comments about the 4990 suggest, like mine, the slides are loosely held in place by the frame.

The biggest criticism of it is that it only allows 8 at a time although the area is big enough for 12. If you lay on 12 slides you can't get it to do an auto scan and produce thumbnails.

 

Keith

That's equally interesting, as the holder I used (if I remember correctly) held 12 slides . . . I'll ask the owner.

 

JE