Many years ago, I was fortunate to have been given a number of ancient photographs of family members from the mid 1800’s by my great aunt Lyle Bodenstein when I was 10 years old in 1964.
This began my interest in my family genealogy. I have currently traced it back to 1521.
I don’t want to hoard these treasures so, I am digitizing them and posting the digital versions onto a website that I’ve created for family members to access.
My preferred method for digitizing positives is to create RAW copies using my Nikon D200 camera and 50 mm f/1.8 lens with extension tubes.
Subsequently, I inherited thousands of my grandfather Caldwell’s black and white 35 mm negatives of family taken from the 40’s through the 70’s. And also, many slides from my father’s side of the family from the 30’s through the mid sixties.
My preferred method for digitizing negatives is to create RAW copies using my Nikon D200 camera and 50 mm f/1.8 lens with extension tubes and a slide duplicator.
Once digitized, I create ‘improved’ versions using Nikon’s CaptureNX software. This way the original raw data is also preserved in the same file along with the edited version. These are backed up, cataloged and archived.
Then a compressed jpeg is produced for uploading to my genealogy web site.
Already, I am planning a reorganization of all of this material so that it is easier to search.
One thing I’ve learned from this process is that many of the negatives that may have not been good enough for printing years ago, can now make wonderful prints thanks to CaptureNX!
Some are so ‘thin’ that they don’t even seem to have any image left until they are photographed and enhanced. Then they pop out!
Many of the color slides are rapidly fading away. So, a sense of urgency is required!
In addition, to the still images, our family movies were transferred to video tape which I’ve since digitized and uploaded in h.264 format.
And finally, my modern camcorder recordings and DV tapes are also getting converted to digital and uploaded to my website.
One complaint is that the current genealogy software isn’t designed for preserving all of this rich media.
I may switch to using a relational database system, FileMaker Pro, for it’s flexibility and to consolidate all of this material in one place on the web using FileMaker’s superb search capability.
Hello Marty German,
Excellent post. What a massive undertaking! What is your projected time line for completion?
What are your thoughts on using a camera instead of a film scanner?
What genealogy software has you thinking of going to FileMaker Pro?
I have a zillion more questions, but I’ll refrain on this first acquaintance. LOL
Peace,
“Guided by the Ancestors”
Hi George!
I expect to have everything digitized and uploaded to my web site during 2010. I’d estimate that the work that remains to be done includes about 5,000 negatives (many that need retouching) and about 2,000 slides (also in need of enhancement) plus I have to build a relational database to merge these with all available genealogical data that I’ve already researched.
I like the camera better than scanners because it is much faster to produce similar results. Scanners ‘talk’ a good game but in the end you just get more detailed scans of the grain structures!
My D200 has more than adequate resolution so get all of the image details but still keeps the image size manageable.
I primarily use the RAW file format with Nikon’s CaptureNX software because it keeps both the original data AND any enhanced jpeg versions of the image wrapped into the same file.
This way, in the future, it will be easy for anyone to access the original RAW data and use the rapidly evolving software tools to draw out even more from these digital photographic copies.
I still plan to preserve the negatives and slides but they were not originally produced in archival manor and they are deteriorating and will soon be gone.
I use a Mac and run ‘Reunion 8′ genealogical software.
The problem I see with this approach is the numbers of files I have associated with each ancestor and I don’t like the way they display it on the web.
Filemaker would allow me to build relationships and bring in historical data for context beyond the biographical data for my ancestors.
They lived during some amazing historical events and these must have had strong influence on their lives.
I’ve ferreted out some wonderful family stories, sagas really, and also found some interesting anomalies in the historical records.
My goal is to produce all of this with the plan of passing on more than I can do now, to the future.
A web server based database will let me accumulate things that may not fit into our currently narrow idea of what to collect for a genealogy.
I also have movies, video and audio that I want to weave into this project.
Kind of the modern digital equivalent of painting my hand on the cave wall!
I will also include some of the more interesting of each of these kinds of files into this blog as I have time.
Best regards,
Marty