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December 1996, Week 3

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Subject:
From:
Evan Cameron <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 14 Dec 1996 10:50:23 -0500
Content-Type:
text/plain
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Thought this reposting from another list might interest readers of
Screen-l as well.
 
 
Evan William Cameron                            Telephone: 416-736-5149
York University - CFT 216 (Film)                Fax:       416-736-5710
4700 Keele Street                               E-mail:    [log in to unmask]
North York, Ontario
Canada  M3J 1P3
 
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 08:40:39 MDT
From: Roy Webb <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: History of Photography <[log in to unmask]>
To: Multiple recipients of list PHOTOHST <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: nitrate conversion
 
This is cross-posted to ARCHIVES and PHOTOHST, so my apologies for
any duplication.
 
Just something I wanted to bring up and see if anyone else had run
into this, and if so if they found a similar solution if indeed
solution it is.
 
We have quite a few nitrates, all safely stored away in fireproof
cabinets on the other side of the building.  I know there are those
who would say a few is too many, but oh well, one of those things.
The other day an older gentleman came in, about-to-retire professor,
who wanted to look at some of the negatives.  We had a list of the
ones in a certain collection and when he saw the subjects, he was
anxious to see them, for it turned out his father was in some of them;
furthermore, he said he remembered some of the people and events and
could identify them.  Of this particular collection (Frederick J. Pack,
1920s geology professor at the UofU) we had no prints, and as we all
know money to print nitrates is down there below new kicking tees for
the football team.
 
So I demurred, giving the usual excuses of they were too fragile, too
volatile (even though these are actually in good shape), and so on,
but he was insistent.  If he goes, he said, and the negatives go,
then all those wonderful images are lost forever.  Fair enough, I had
to admit, but I still hesitated to drag them out and expose them to
light and handling.
 
Then a solution: we finally, in the fullness of time, acquired a good
scanner and the expertise to use it, and it dawned on me that we
could scan all those negatives and then simply reverse them in
Photoshop, and we would have positive images.  And so we did, and
they turned out to be really great pictures; Warren G. Harding on a
horse in Zion National Park, the Dinosaur Caravan down Main Street in
Salt Lake City, 1925, and on and on.  So now I'm having them put on a
CD, and when the gentleman shows up we'll set him down at a computer
with a pad and let him get after it.  The negatives go back into
their nice dark cool cabinet, the gentleman is happy, and we have a
virtually new collection.
 
Roy Webb
Multimedia Archivist
Marriott Library, Special Collections
University of Utah
Salt Lake City, Utah   84112
(801) 585-3073  //  [log in to unmask]
 
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