Study Group 7
Barbara Mallon

Title - Fred and Dick Reading the Sears Catalogue, 1971

How I did it -

My latest project is to make books of my children's photos. These were taken with black and white or color negatives over 40 years ago. What I did is put the negative in the enlarger carrier and attach it to the window slide with a clamp. Then I took a photo with my T2i on a tripod in raw at several exposure levels and transferred the image to Photoshop. (I wish there was an invert in adobe camera raw but I did not find it.) I inverted the image and worked from the flat positive with made adjustments to black and white and curves. Of course there was some burning and dodging. The color photos were more challenging. I am making Blurb books of them. (Does anyone have an easier or improved process?)

I was pleased to meet Tony Tam at the Northern California Conference of Camera Clubs banquet today. He is joining a local club so I hope to see more of his fine photos. Next year he should win all of the end of the year competitions! I am so lucky!

COMMENTS:

Kenneth Deitcher, MD, FPSA	This is a beautiful family portrait of a wonderful moment. Your converting of old analog images to digital seems to work very well. This is time consuming but worth the effort. It is much faster than scanning the original film.
Elaine Icklan	Wonderful family shot that should be passed from generation to generation. Contrast is very hard to control but considering the age and technique you did an excellent job.
Tony Tam	You did a good job to made this photo from negative and inverted to positive image. I like the B/W and Fred and Dick both looking the same location of Sears catalogue. Also the light is perfect (I think it's a single light source from windows). You use this image for Blurb book will tell a story.
Carolyn Schlueter	What a heartwarming PJ story!! Composition and lighting are great and the natural light you have coming in on the left just makes this a terrific shot and the partial reflections on the table help too. Love the old black and white photos! Great job!
Adrienne Bergen	I love this image and I am sure your family loves it as well. The lighting is beautiful and the intimacy just jumps right off the monitor. I wish I understood your explanation of how you did this. I seem to recall that there is a way to scan these negatives and get them right into the computer without having to use your enlarger, camera and tripod.
Tom McCreary	Barb Very nice job of copying the old photo. That sounds like a great project. Carol keeps saying that we are going to make a book of our old family photos, but it seems to keep getting put off. We copied several of the newer (1970's and later) images using a flat bed scanner. We could not locate a lot of the negatives, and the copies of the prints out of the photo books seems to work pretty well. As long as we don't make the digital pictures larger than the originals they look good.

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Member Bio

Barbara Mallon - Biography My parents met in a camera club and had me in the darkroom as a small child. I got serious about photography when I had small children and made a nice record of their early years. Today I shoot flowers and landscapes, grand children plus occasional portraits and events for friends. I like sharing my hobby and am in charge of the Livermore Valley Camera Club's classes that we teach through LARPD as fundraisers. Also I have had a 4-H Photography project since 1980. I have done photography projects with Livermore Schools. I have judged camera clubs, a conference of camera. I am a member of PSA (Photographic Society of America) and also belong to their creative Flowers Slide Study Group. I started with black and white prints in medium format; then I took 35mm slides and began printing Cibachrome (Ilfochrome) in1995. Later, I bought a computer and PhotoShop and am now printing most of my photos on an Epson 1270 printer from scanned slides.