Huguenot-L Archives

Archiver > Huguenot > 2006-01 > 1136743294


From: Ray Timmons <>
Subject: Photographing from microfilm readers
Date: Sun, 08 Jan 2006 13:02:35 -0500
References: <000901c5fa8d$e90a3460$d250cb53@toshiba01> <001a01c5fbd3$571396e0$06bc32d2@Raccos> <000901c5fbde$e3003400$8348fa51@toshiba01> <43AAF7FC.5090908@atc.edu> <43BDDB2F.2090501@atc.edu> <000801c612a6$5602c110$5e10cb53@toshiba01>
In-Reply-To: <000801c612a6$5602c110$5e10cb53@toshiba01>


Hi Tony,

In your polemic from a few days ago, you expressed amazement at
people taking photographs from the screens of the microfilm readers,
and not printing them out.

Being a person that does this, and having traded pointers with many
people in France about this practice, I'd like to defend it.

The problem with most microfilm printers is that they produce binary
images (either black or white). They do not do a good job reproducing
gray portions. Many times, you cannot decipher what is printed because
portions of letters were so light, they are missing on the print. You
can sometimes get around this by making many copies with the density
changed on each. (Microfilm that has too high a contrast also has this
problem. I'm glad that the LDS has switched to digital cameras.)

A typical digital camera can capture over 16 Million variations in
density and color in each pixel. Using software such as Adobe Photoshop,
you can adjust brightness, density and many other parameters to bring
out letters that could not be read from what a microfilm printer
produces. Once the image is optimized, it can be printed on a normal
printer (with gray scale reproduced).

Also, once the camera and rechargeable batteries are purchased, you
can make an unlimited number of photographs for no expense. So,
you don't run out of change (you just run out of room on your storage
media).

The images can then be burned to cd's and easily mailed to others that
are much better at reading French than I am.

However, there are tricks to taking good photographs from microfilm
readers. I have learned several from friends in France.

So taking photographs from readers is not totally crazy.

Ray

This thread: