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] ---- To signoff SCREEN-L, e-mail [log in to unmask] and put SIGNOFF SCREEN-L in the message. Problems? Contact [log in to unmask]