Plieku69 Loc: The Gopher State, south end

I have a large number of photo albums of my father in his early days. Most pics are glued in. Spending hours with a scanner, probably burning it up, was not my thing.

My Manfroto tripod lets me insert the head in from the bottom. Doing this with a 60mm macro lens attached to the camera lets me photograph each pictures in RAW. Sure, there is a lot of post processing but those old B&W's can be cleaned up a bit. Then I can reprint to paper or create a DVD for distribution to interested family members.

Using a macro seems to give a better looking photo.

Works for me,
Ken

Johnpt326

besides the many good suggestions here, check with local historical museums and societies. They face that problem all the time. Good luck

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

When I scan photos, I put as many as will fit onto the scanner glass. After the scan, I crop each one and do any processing. No problem. If you can remove the pages from the album, you can scan the photos and leave the album undamaged.

Jim Plogger Loc: East Tennessee

You are going to get all kinds of answers to your problem. I have been through this with some albums that belonged to my late mother. If you try to remove those photos you will most certainly damage them. What I did was prescan the entire page and then selected them one at a time for the final scan. I had to crop many of them that were overlapping and that worked just fine. The whole process was time consuming but I finished it and I'm happy with the results. Good luck.

Ched49 Loc: Pittsburgh, Pa.

You don't want to take pictures of the originals with your camera to get the job done. This is the best way of doing the job, it is time consuming but you will be more satisfied when you are finished. While you are scanning the originals, you can even make corrections to the originals to make them look better. I've done this 3 years ago to about 400 old family black & whites and glad I did.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

I would not try to remove photos from one of those pages — ever!

One approach is to find a *large bed* scanner. I'm not sure they're around any longer. When I ran the digital imaging services and memory book pre-press prep departments of a lab, we had several UMAX Mirage II scanners that had 11x17 inch beds. Maybe someone is still making something like that. Maybe a local service bureau has one... They are/were expensive!

Another approach is to buy a very good, normal focal length, flat field macro lens capable of at least 1:2 reproduction ratio. Mount your camera on a vertical copy stand with a nice large base. Be sure it is equipped with medium size (24x24 or 24x32) *soft boxes* and photo grade CFL lamps for illumination. Yes, the setup is expensive... about as much as a large bed scanner setup.

Each soft box should be centered at the same angle to the baseboard, 37.5 to 45 degrees above its surface. This provides extremely soft, even lighting that wraps around the stippling or embossing used on some old photo papers. (If you use a point source lamp in a polished bowl reflector, you'll see every speck of dust, every scratch, every ferrotype bubble, and all the surface texture of textured and embossed papers.)

Scanners are nice if you have just a few images to scan. But if you have a lot of work to scan, it takes forever. A good camera and macro lens with the right copy stand and lighting makes short work of big jobs, and if you meter a gray card and set manual exposure and a custom white balance, the digital images can be as good as or better than what the scanner produces.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

The dynamic range of a print is a little less than what a JPEG processed in the camera can record. With consistent, pro-quality soft box lighting, and the right exposure, custom white balance, and JPEG processing menu settings, you can get images right out of the camera that require NO post-processing.

I used to copy thousands of items for use in print and web catalogs, slide shows, and videos. Many were too large to fit on a scanner bed. Many were in precious, OLD family photo albums. I always worked under tight deadlines or unrealistic time frames. Once I perfected a method to do it with a copy stand, it became an easy chore. I wish I still had that setup!

Ladybugjf

One technique for removing photos from those old albums is to gently see-saw a piece of dental floss under the pictures. Of course, I am assuming it depends on how long they have been stuck in the album whether this works.

buckbrush Loc: Texas then Southwest Oregon

I have decided to remove the photos from the albums as the above googled sites show the Smithsonian Museum recommending a method to accomplish that. Any photos that do not release from the album pages will have the page split (thickness wise) to get access to an individual photo. More work but the album page is worthless without the photos. In order to reproduce the photos I'll try both a scanner, I have a CanoScan 1800F, and also will try photographing each picture. I believe, as you suggest, that a scanner will be a major undertaking for copying the 1500 pictures. My thought is to take 10 photos, scan them, then photograph them and see which gives me the best result with the lowest pain on my back.
Thanks for pointing out your experience and your suggestions.

aellman Loc: Boston MA

A hair dryer is often used to melt glue and remove other junk. Just keep it moving back and forth, and don't overdo it. Try a small scale test.
For the people who trashed the scanner solution and insisted you set up a copy stand, I disagree. If you have a good quality scanner, it will be faster and easier, and you'll get great results. The only caveat is the risk of getting left over glue on the scanner glass or lid. You'll need to test what works as a solvent for that glue. Nail polish remover (acetone) works for many modern glues. GooGone is another possibility. >>>Alan

Leitz Loc: Solms

It's always wise to base your decisions on facts, rather than opinions.

blackest Loc: Ireland

Honestly I think burkphoto is right, you do not want to destroy these albums They are irreplaceable and you don't want to be the idiot that destroyed them. My approach would be to reproduce the album full size scans and delivered as a photobook. You may be better to get the book created professionally. It depends on the album as to if it can be unbound look for a company that can do the work find out the price and then see about splitting it 4 ways presumably your wife also wants a copy.

Once you have the book produced and printed and also keeping an electronic copy then maybe you might go ahead and see if the photo's can be removed skillfully and safely. It is quite likely that you will be disappointed there is almost certain to be some fading which will clearly be seen where the photo's were overlapped and probably some residue and possibly tearing when the pages get separated.

With the quote you should be able to split it into printing and binding of your electronic files and a cost for acquiring the image files in the first place. Just getting the quote should concentrate the minds of the three brothers wanting the albums is one thing paying for them could be another, although if they are getting something from the estate then perhaps they will not see it as a real cost to them.

I hope you havent done too much damage so far, if you are stuck for finding pro's to quote and do the job. It might be worth approaching a museum they will probably know people who restore and conserve books and albums. Making new books is not that expensive. There are print on demand companies all over.

Leitz Loc: Solms

The OP had already decided to remove the photographs, and has said why. Offering opinions that removing them is wrong is only assuming that buckbrush is not intelligent enough to know what he wants!!

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Back in the '80s, I spent thousands of hours using a copy stand to make slides. I had a table built at just the right height so the camera was easy to access while standing, and the baseboard was easy to work on while sitting. I had an optical right angle viewfinder on my Nikon FM, but it was too dark to be useful.

The whole process is much easier now, since my GH4 has a fully articulating OLED display that is perfect for copy work.

Exposure is best done manually, referencing a photographic gray card. Custom white balance can be done from the same gray card. Exposure varies slightly as magnification changes, so batch by size when you can.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

The biggest issue I've seen in removing old photos from album pages is that their emulsions are dried, brittle, and crack or flake off when flexed. It doesn't help if the pages contained acid... Few consumer albums used acid-free papers until recently (many still don't!).