Day 3: Digital Davenport

Today began with a tutorial on how to digitize photos for inclusion in CSHL's digital collection.

 

The set up was pretty impressive. I was expecting a scanner and photo processing software. Boy was I surprised; as you can see below, there is quite a bit more to digitizing documents and images.

Canon EOS-5D Mark III | Sydercheckr Color calibrator and Spydercube |
Color corrective lamps | Low light monitor



First thing, no scanner. Instead of a scanner, there was a professional camera mounted on a track (looks like a big black yard stick in the photo below). The trick with the track is that the distance of the camera from the object determines the resolution (again, I was surprised that this was the method used as I am used to resolution being saved in the processing program).

 

 

The monitor you see in the back is synced with the camera to display the image according the camera settings.

IOW: hit zoom on the camera and the monitor view will zoom.

This becomes insanely useful in checking the focus. You can zoom and focus the camera to the point where you can actually see the grain of the medium being digitized.

 

The best part? the monitor does not emit a significant amount of light and does not interfere with the two lamps.

 

My favorite tool is the Spydercheckr (that thing resting on the black matting and displayed on the monitor in the back). No it is not a watercolor painting pallet; nor is it a makeup pallet.

 

The Spydercheckr is a color calibrator used to check the camera and monitor's color settings against the actual document. Attached to the top of the Spydercheckr is the Spydercube. This nifty little gadget's purpose is to calibrate white, silver, black, ultimate black and chrome/reflective surfaces.

 

You always take a photo of this tool before digitizing actual images. This image can be used to send to a printer (should one of the images need to be sent to a printer for printing). What the printer does is use the image combined with the camera model's information settings to ensure that their printer and computer have the same color calibration. This is follows the old adage of measure twice, cut once.

 



Let the Digitization begin!!!



The digitization station in action!
P.S.: Those sandbag-esque sacks are to keep the black mating in place
while moving images, documents and objects.

Day 3 Take-away:

• Digitization is very detail oriented and a good work station flow is essential to achieving maximum productivity.
• I have a bad habit of forgetting to take the lens cover off the camera lens...
• I have a new obsession and want to start learning how to attach the metadata for these photos. 

Next post will focus on Lightroom. I keep calling it Lighthouse... and LightBox... yes issues... I know. :)