Tag: digitizing

Beaverbrook Library Digitization Lab

Last fall some members of our Executive were  provided an early tour of the Beaverbrook Library’s new Digitization Lab and were most impressed . The Kanata  Library has the first such capability in the city of Ottawa.

The facility is now open for business  and the library will be scheduling a special group tour for camera club members in the near future.

You may sign up for one of their monthly tours, by registering here.

In the meantime, you are welcome to start using the equipment in the lab by booking on their website.

Beaverbrook Library Digital Lab

Recently, a few camera club members had a sneak peak at the soon-to-be announced Beaverbrook Library Digital Lab. Gillian Johnson showed us the equipment we’ll be able to use to digitize slides and negatives:

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to transcribe VHS tapes to DVD:

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and to to transcribe 8 mm and Super-8 mm movies to mp4. She explained that there will also be a digital camera and light box available for use in the lab.

We’ve invited the library to our meeting on October 5th to give all the members more details on the new lab including how to sign up and costs.

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For more details including availability and sign-up procedure, please contact Gillian Johnson the Beaverbrook Library:

Jim Leask on Slide Copying

At our March  6th meeting, Jim Leask demonstrated how to easily and quickly copy slides using a DSLR, an off camera flash and a slide adapter. You can review his notes here.

The adapter he used to hold the slide in front of his camera is a Nikon ES-1 and is available from Henry’s. Note that it is a 52mm thread so you may need an adapter for your lens. Note also that, if you don’t already own a suitable macro lens, you can use extension tubes to adapt whatever lens you have to close focus.

Jim Leask on Digitizing Slides with a DSLR

 

The feature speaker at our April meeting  will be Jim Leask who will be speaking about

Taking Pictures of Pictures — Digitizing slides with a DLSR.

Jim is a software engineer and an enthusiastic amateur photographer. He started photography in the ’70s with a Nikon FE film camera, and a manual focus lens. He was always “the guy with the big camera” at events, and also liked nature photography. He learned the creative and technical skills for photography with film, then transferred these concepts to digital and digital processing.

He became interested in converting slides to digital format after the world trip He and his wife went on where they took over 10,000 slides. They had countless slides of family and events from earlier years too, but they were all locked away in a format that was difficult to use. They never saw those pictures.

He purchased a slide scanner, but found it was far too slow to process each slide so it was never used. When the full/crop frame digital cameras came along, he  investigated the idea of taking pictures of pictures. He found that worked very well.

Presentation Outline

This presentation will show how he uses his DLSR to digitize slides.

There are two main objectives while digitizing:

1) Image Quality

  • Obtain the best digital copy of the slide as possible

2) Speed

  • – so the project actually happens!

He will cover the following topics:

  • Camera gear (the camera, lens, and slide adapter)
  • Camera settings (F-Stop, shutter speed, and why)
  • Focus (settings to get good focus)
  • Lighting source and white balance (how to illuminate the slide for good colour)
  • Lightroom (capturing directly to Lightroom and cataloguing images)
  • the workflow (show captures in action – approx. 10 seconds / slide)

Digitize Media at the Library

Jennifer Armstrong at the Beaverbrook Branch of the Ottawa Public Library recently passed along this information about new digitizing equipment they’ll be getting soon:

We do not yet have a date that the equipment will be available for public use.

As for the nature of the equipment or its capabilities, I can only pass along what little I know.

The collection of equipment should allow for the following:

  • Scanning, editing, and digitizing photographs
  • Digitizing slides and negatives
  • Converting 8mm film to digital
  • Converting VHS to digital

There will most likely be only one of each piece of equipment, which means that customers will have to sign up to use them.

I will do my best to keep you and the club up to date.

For more information, please contact Jennifer.