Help: get a copy of an old photo

Postby **Pavel Bure** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:14 pm

Hi guys. There's a photo from the 40's of my wife's Nana and Pap. But her brother has it and she expressed how much she would love to have one as well. Now with it being from the 40's there isn't a negative or anything like that. Where in the burgh could I get a high quality copy/scan of an old photo made?

Postby **shafnutz05** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:21 pm

Hi guys. There's a photo from the 40's of my wife's Nana and Pap. But her brother has it and she expressed how much she would love to have one as well. Now with it being from the 40's there isn't a negative or anything like that. Where in the burgh could I get a high quality copy/scan of an old photo made?

You really might want to try Reddit, maybe r/picturerequests? They'd do it for free probably

Postby **tifosi77** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 2:35 pm

Could be wrong, but striking a new negative might actually damage the original photo. Since it's the only print of the photo you know of, your best bet - and this sounds silly - might actually be to take an uncompressed photo of the photo. You'd want to set up a camera on a tripod and have neutral lighting and background, and all that jazz. But that might be the way to go.

Postby **AuthorTony** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 3:22 pm

Since it's the only print of the photo you know of, your best bet - and this sounds silly - might actually be to take an uncompressed photo of the photo. You'd want to set up a camera on a tripod and have neutral lighting and background, and all that jazz. But that might be the way to go.

This. Find someone with a good macro lens and one of the new dSLRs with high MP and snap away. The quality will beat the pants off of most scans unless you go to one of the super high end companies with true pro quality scanners.

Postby **Pavel Bure** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 5:00 pm

Found a photo restoration/copy place in town. Gonna talk with them.

Postby **Tico Rick** » Tue Apr 14, 2015 6:57 pm

I can understand the worry about the scanner light damaging the photo - I myself have scanned a number of family photos from the 1940s at 600dpi with good results, but have been reluctant to scan one from the turn of the century for this same reason. But in reading about this on the interwebz I have not come across any evidence that single-use scanner light can damage a photo.
While setting up a camera with a tripod and a macro lens is certainly an option, it would be more time consuming than scanning, and you would need to worry about even lighting, vignetting of the lens, and curvature of field, none of which would be an issue with scanning.

Here are some interesting reads:

https://www.historians.org/publications ... cal-advice

http://archivehistory.jeksite.org/chapters/chapter2.htm