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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Ken, great pics! My, you're holding up well- must be the In-N-Out Burgers.
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Berdette Robison
climber
Green Valley, AZ
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Hi Ken ~ and Boys!
What a memory; I'm very impressed! I do remember the white dress and corsage...but penetrating eyes and melodic voice??? Now, I think it's droopy eyes and raspy voice! I don't remember the details about dinner, except I think it was somewhere in Hollywood...Chinese?? I don't know if I have the Prom picture...sorry guys. If I do, it's packed in a box and I'm on my way out of town for a few days, but will check when I return and will be happy to post it! Listen, I want to know if any of you remember your date for the Senior Prom...and what she was wearing???
Berdette
Ken, I do have an email...didn't realize I was going to cause such a commotion among your climbing cronies! We seem to be communicating with an audience!
And, I'm not a climber...only "climbing" I ever did was with Ken at Taquitz Rock???
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Berdette, if you hang around here for a bit, you'll soon realize that despite the nonsense, we do form an idiosyncratic community with a lot of shared experiences and values. You're not the first "non-climber" to join the campfire, and we'd be delighted to have your company, stories, and perspectives.
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BooDawg
Social climber
Paradise Island
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Thanks, Jim, for your kind words. Yes, that healthy living plus decent genes helps keep one young. It would be nice to have some In-N-Out-Burgers here in paradise. Guess I gotta wait till I get to CA…
Berdette, I sent you 2 emails through the ST website; did you get them? You’ve definitely brought some wood to the campfire and given the coals a stir. I guess you’ll stay awhile. Welcome.
Anders: I always appreciate your kind words and thoughtful insights here on ST. Thanks for being here.
Ken
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BooDawg
Social climber
Paradise Island
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I’ve given one account of my climbing origins on the Stoney Pt. thread:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=971616&tn=180#msg1081378
I thought I’d fill in a few details and add some photos here.
I wanted to ask Peter and any other folks out there what are the best ways to prepare slides for scanning? Is there a mild solvent that will not damage the film but will remove some of the mold, etc. Now, I’m just using a camel hair brush. Also, some of the Ektachrome slides that were scanned are WAY discolored now. Can they best be fixed during scanning or with PhotoShop afterwards or both? Does any know good links to information about how best to go about this?
Climbing seeds planted: 1952 to 1960.
My first visits to Yosemite were on each of two road trips that I made with my family from Chicago to California in 1952 & 1953. Seeing the wide-open West and all its lovely features opened my eyes and yearning for adventures that I knew could be found there. One of my favorite pictures from those trips is the one of “The Tree You Can Drive Through,” in the Mariposa Grove which I believe fell over in the same snow storm that removed Psych Flake from the NWF of HD.
In 1957, my father bought a stallion donkey named Dominic, not a gelding, but one with both cojones! Dad built pack boxes from scratch, bought a pack saddle, learned to tie a diamond hitch, and set off for a week in the mountains with me (12 y.o.) and my brother, Philip (10 y.o.), by hiking over Kearsarge Pass, destination the Rae Lakes. Dad always had greater ambitions than we could accomplish, but that was the plan.
First morning out, not one mile up the trail, we meet a pack train, and Dominic, smelling some GOOD FEMALE (jenny) pheromones, charged into the middle of the line of burros, mounting several, creating havoc with everyone! It’s hard to imagine all the packed cookware & food, not to mention the client-riders, all in a state of disarray and confusion!! The wranglers were TOTALLY PISSED OFF!! I don’t remember the exact details of how we got out of that mess, but we only made 3 miles that day, I think.
We basically spent the next week crossing Kearsarge Pass and camping near Bullfrog Lake. Reflecting at the time, I considered it one of the best times of my life, and it primed me for more mountain adventures.
In 1959, my family went camping in Yosemite, and my dad, brother, and I hiked to the top of Half Dome. Great view tho we got back to the Valley well after dark.
The following year, we did a similar camping trip, only that summer we walked up Mt. Dana from Tioga Pass.
From the summit, we could see, not only Mono Lake, but Mt. Lyell as well, and that became the next summer’s goal in my dad’s mind.
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ß Î Ø T Ç H
climber
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"I have pix of Starr King’s west face which I’ll post at some later time with some commentary."
Thanks . This is awesome .
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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Hi Ken,
To get back to your questions on rescuing old slides and prints. I woke up too early and can't get back to sleep.
(1) The first order of business is to simply scan the stuff. The stuff is falling apart right now and soon you won’t have squat. You are archiving it for future work to take place. As photo rework is at times actually very time-consuming, I wouldn’t necessarily try to scan all of your stuff AND adjust all of it in one long terrifying session lasting weeks. Just get the rough work of scanning done and fix the resulting stuff when you feel like it, bunch by bunch.
However, you don’t want to be scanning anything more than once; you will end up doubling your work if you don’t clean the images pretty well. Resist just firing out some scans quick and dirty. That would be crazy and a waste of time. Do the nitty-gritty up front and eat away at your pile. This is where a lot of us are falling down.
So you have to clean the slides the best you can. Yes, mold can be removed, usually, and it is common as you have noticed. There are commercial transparency cleaners. They must not be water based as water would emulsify the dye colors. Alternatives are pure alcohol or naphtha. Again, you must not touch the transparency with any water ever. T-shirt material, lint-free cotton cloth is good. Cotton balls also. You can use compressed gas (available in little aerosol cans at office suppliers or photo shops) and your camel hair brush is good too, for to get rid of dust. Why archive the crap?
It is true in Photoshop and other programs you can do almost anything with a digital image these days. But if the slide is riddled with foreign matter, you will be hunting down all these little bits for hours per each slide, unhappy, eventually bitchy..... so cleaning is faster than a zillion such adjustments. If you don’t do this step well, you will end up quitting the whole effort out of sheer boredom or fury. And mold actually is much more problematic than mere dust specks to deal with digitally as it is also obscuring the image in such a way recovery probably is going to have to be more like painting than healing and is even more sophisticated and time-wasting with uneven results.
(2) The size of 35mm film is approximately 3.6cm X 2.4cm but at a maximum resolution of 4000dpi, that comes out to 3.6cm X 4000dpi = 5668pixels and 2.4cm X 4000dpi = 3778pixels. An image of these pixel dimensions at 8bit per color will come out to about 60Meg as an uncompressed TIFF file, about 120Meg uncompressed TIFF file if scanned in 16bit mode. Basically you want to end up with TIFFs as they are uncompressed files made by the scanner--- essentially unabridged files. Every time you save a JPEG, you get compression (usually) and therefore more abridgment of the data set. Another superb file form is RAW, which is the image in completely unadjusted “raw” data. Since you are merely archiving at this point, you don’t want compression, you don’t want adjustment--- you don’t want anything in the path between the original and the work you will be eventually doing on each image for a final, recovered result. And you don’t want the file to keep changing every time you close it.
(3) Ultimately, I would imagine your goal would be to go to a printing service with an image you have prepared in this way. It is likely they will expect a file to be in TIFF at 8 bits, Adobe RGB 1998 color and 254 dpi with no printer profiles attached to the file. www.Dickermanprints.com is a great service I use. You can upload to them via their online file transfer protocol tool too, so you can move a giant file to them this way, get it printed that day and get it sent to you. Their printing method is actually photographic, not inkjet or laser-jet. Their awesome 30” wide machine creates a projection of your image onto photographic archival paper (it’s all on their site) and then develops it just like a photograph. Your other goal is also to have your images handy, everlasting, and versatile. You get all this from TIFF or RAW. Further, as digital projectors are so cheap now also, I would think you might be also using one of these with your newly recovered photos.
(4) As you have archives, you treat them as such. You “save as” from them and you don’t go saving your changes onto the originals within the archive. So you might have your originals and then one or two lesser but repaired versions of each that you are happy with (in another folder), can email, print etc yourself silly. With the very low cost of computer storage now, this bulk is not a problem. I mean a terabyte HD is about $100.
(5) So yes it is possible to do just about anything in Photoshop now. But each adjustment is usually the result of time and effort on the computer, some trial and error and at first this work is fun but after about 30 or so at a single sitting, you will get jaded and less careful. To try and have the scanner do all your work automatically is likely not going to often be successful and just a fantasy. The images are going to need individual attention, judging by what you have submitted so far. A scanner’s correction functions are nothing like what Photoshop can do, or even Lightroom and others. And anyway, PS has macro-style adjustments in it so you can do some automatic adjustments in about 5 seconds that probably will supersede anything a scanner will do. And you then you go from there more deeply.
(6) The typical problems you find in old transparencies are many. Color shifting, loss of color saturation, physical damage, annoying mistakes by the photographer such as unwanted things in the frame, under- or over- exposure, out-of alignment or level, distracting lens distortion, saturation problems, skies that are totally blown out, grain and various noise effects, to name a few. It usually seems you have lost your image forever and you are so bummed but once you start working on it even with the automatic actions, you will get excited to see much more come out than you thought was there. But Photoshop is expensive and you have to eventually commit yourself to it if you buy it. Don’t buy an earlier used version on the cheap; you want the current one which is 12.01 in Mac because what has happened in this latest version group is just so astounding and powerful and you won’t want to get all into some dowdy old version that lacks what we can do today. I think of PS as a serious-as-hell hobby actually and have taught myself how to use it the last two years while I had no construction projects. Up till now, I was not any good whatsoever with it and felt it was a huge-ass failing of mine. So I used online tutorials at www.lynda.com , a book by Richard Harrison that also had a DVD with it and was cheap, other online tutorials, and of course a lot of practice. It is the ultimate image program in the world and has tens of thousands of PS professionals crazy-assed about it. I also have two monitors: one is 30" and the other 21", so I am not working in some tiny view space.
Here is an example of your rather hard image file to fix. It was once a full color picture, now look at what it is like 50 years later. Most of the colors other than yellow, magenta and red are almost gone. It is grainy, has highlight issues but it is pretty clean, thankfully.
Here it is after about 10 minutes of work in Photoshop. We have recovered more of the full spectrum that should be in the image. The itty-bitty original file on Supertopo was only 37Kb so I had almost no data to work with, but even so we are getting closer to an acceptable color image from 1955 or so. If I had a more full-bodied file of it, the results would be quite a bit richer I am sure.
So my point is PS can be miraculous and very stimulating; stuff can really come back from the grave, and if you get reasonably competent with PS, your skills are useful for so many other activities.
Online you can search for CS5 (Creative Suite 5) videos to get a further idea of what this insane program is capable of and also how to learn to use it. My approach of doing online tutorials and having a book with a DVD plus its companion online help turned out well.
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BooDawg
Social climber
Paradise Island
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Thanks so much, Peter, for your lesson in archiving and working with old slides.
To summarize, you recommend that everyone who has slides that they want to digitize:
• Resist what I’ve been doing, that is “just firing out some scans quick and dirty,” then reducing their file size to make storage and posting pictures easier.
• Clean images with pure alcohol or alternative. (Is drugstore isopropyl OK? How about Q-Tips?)
• Get a better scanner plus an external HD, so one can archive the images in TIFF or RAW format.
• Work on the images with PS, first doing a “save as” to preserve original TIFFs, as time and patience allow, storing the doctored ones as different images.
Anything else?
You gave scanner recommendations above. Do you have recommendations for a HD and for a digital projector?
Thanks again, Peter, for your encouragement and guidance on this stuff. Just don’t let Guido know, OK?
Ken
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
San Francisco, CA
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It has to be pure (99.99%) alcohol, KB. Regular alcohol has a certain amount of water in it. You can get pure at the pharmacy usually.
Q-tips used carefully will be okay. There will be some cotton fibers that you can blow off. The issue is scratching or lifting the emulsion of course so don't be blindly rubbing away there. Here is a blurb on cleaning fluids:
http://www.film-center.com/clean.html
Here is a link for PEC-12:
http://www.amazon.com/Photographic-Solutions-PEC-12-Emulsion-Cleaner/dp/B0002HTIP4
A little light box is helpful but not essential. I have one and actually don't use it very much at all as I use Adobe Bridge to simulate a light table and its organizational space. But Bridge's use presupposes you have already scanned... so dealing with an effing mountain of slides usually goes better if there is some kind of light table or box.
Most of the HD's are fine--- you can searchfor reviews about a particular model of course and perhaps find people having total cows over stuff, saying whatever. I have two internal ones an Hitachi 1TB that is also my "Time Machine" (apple) and additional storage and the other is the startup and is an Intel 500 Mb. As my main unit is a Mac Pro (with 16 GB RAM) it can have two more drives in it also. Kind of tidy! There is no reason to just keep loading up your resident drives with stuff that you are archiving if it starts to be to much data for your get-up. Namely, don't exceed 70% use of any hard drive. Instead if you start to get close to filling up, archive the suckers on DVDs or on an external drive that you use occasionally, bringing out the files you need when you want to work on them.
Scan your slides 4800 dpi or the next stop less than that. Get VueScan to run your scanner also, as I said before. Separate the task of cleaning and scanning from the heavy lifting of correction.
Once you start working in Photoshop you are going to need some real RAM, remember. Working with these big-assed RAW and TIFF files. You might not be happy below 8 GB. 5 or 6 might be the last resort. Depending on your rig, your video card might have a cow working with the adjustments and actions, especially tools like "blur" , "liquify", "puppet warp" et al. The symptoms will be long pauses while it struggles with its new math assignments, crashing, refusal to perform an action (without or without a corresponding message)--- stuff like that. A video card under 512 MB will have problems, at least I have found.
You don't need 3-D. You will be thoroughly happy with standard PS. Never fail to update your software as updates come up. Don't fall behind on it. I use Cnet TEchTracker to keep me hot happy.
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BooDawg
Social climber
Paradise Island
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Jul 15, 2010 - 03:03pm PT
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Thanks, Peter; I'm checkin' it all out.
EDIT: Your link suggests that the best one can hope for reasonably is to move the crap on the slide to its edges. That is a HUGE PLUS, since then one can crop the crap (or cut the crap!) from the picture around its edges once it is scanned, leaving a much cleaner image than it would have been otherwise.
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survival
Big Wall climber
A Token of My Extreme
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Jul 15, 2010 - 03:27pm PT
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However, we went out to dinner first and he didn't have enough money to pay for dinner!
MWA HA HA hahaaa!! FCBOA, Future Climbing Bum Of America for sure!
Welcome to Berdette too!
No prom pic here, I was hanging on the side of some dirty mud aid wall at Smith Rocks that night.....
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BooDawg
Social climber
Paradise Island
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Jul 15, 2010 - 07:36pm PT
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Of course, there's no way to cut the crap and mud-slingin'/teasing from the Taco Stand. But those who hang around on mud walls gotta do SOMETHING with the mud that they bring home, don't they? But hey! I'm smilin' big grins at this, especially since Berdette can't remember the circumstances around the dinner which was not Chinese... So the secret lies with me...
Thanks, Survival, for joining the fun-fest!
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Berdette Robison
climber
Green Valley, AZ
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Jul 16, 2010 - 07:52pm PT
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Mighty Hiker and Survival ~ Thanks so much for the "Welcomes". Other than giving you an insight into Boodawg's Prom night, which has now become the topic of much razzing, I'm not sure what I can bring to the "campfire" in the future. Lots of stories, etc., but probably not of much interest to most of you! Lots of past, lots of risks, but no climbing adventures.
Ken ~ So, there really is a story to the restaurant...sure you don't want to share, since I have no recollection whatsoever??? And, if it wasn't Chinese, what was it??? I'm dragging out the picture box this weekend...see if I can unearth that Prom picture. It's been a delightful trip down memory lane! Glad life has treated you well...
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BooDawg
Social climber
Paradise Island
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Jul 16, 2010 - 08:38pm PT
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Yes, there really IS a story about the restaurant, but I haven’t shared it on this thread because it might make YOU blush a bit and might subject you to the kind of razzing that you see directed at me. However, I think these guys would be kinder to you than to me. (Hint: It was filet mignon steak, not Chinese.)
What you can bring to the campfire is as diverse as all the various threads that a quick survey of topics found here reveals. One example is the question you asked up-thread which not even one person has yet ventured to answer: “I want to know if any of you remember your date for the Senior Prom...and what she was wearing???” By starting your own thread with such a question, you’d certainly get a LOT of answers, and the women on here would chime in to keep it all balanced, humorous, and would support you in revealing the female perspectives. I think that’s what Mighty Hiker was getting at: we are all human and have more in common than just climbing. You could expand on your original question in your opening post by asking about dinner, any embarrassing incidents, underlying significance, if any, etc., etc. I bet there’d be over a hundred responses to such a thread in less than a week, maybe by the end of the weekend. You’d facilitate similar trips to ours down Memory Lanes for many guys and gals here. But it’s your question, Berdette, not mine, so I leave it to you to initiate the thread. C’mom, be brave! Take some risk! As we used to say, “It’s only 5.9” (Hard but not extreme difficulty!)
Afterthought: If Berdette posts a prom thread, I'll respond with the restaurant story.
Meanwhile, tomorrow is my daughter, Briana’s, 16th birthday, and we are going across the island to Volcano for the weekend. So when we get back, I’ll check back here to see if you found that picture and posted it and if you have started your own thread on Senior Proms or any other personally insightful and revealing ideas that might inspire you.
Have a great weekend.
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Berdette Robison
climber
Green Valley, AZ
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Jul 17, 2010 - 12:34am PT
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Never one to pass up a challenge, I posted my question about the Senior Prom...now it's your turn to tell all about the restaurant! Even if I do blush, no one will ever know! I couldn't find the prom picture much to my dismay, but did find a letter from you from Grand Gulch, Utah which must have been about 1982ish. You were teaching a desert field studies program in the canyons of Utah and Arizona on your way to teaching an Hawaiian field studies program
Hope you had a wonderful birthday weekend with your daughter, Briana. I'm a little ahead of you. My grandson, Justin, turned 8 today and my grandaughter, Breonna, will be 6 in August. They are truly my greatest joy in life...I'm a far better gramma than I ever was a Mother...I was too busy chasing what I thought were rainbows.
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Berdette Robison
climber
Green Valley, AZ
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Jul 17, 2010 - 04:02pm PT
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Ken -
I did find another box...no Prom picture, but my Senior picture...not to be outdone by you!
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DrDeeg
Mountain climber
Mammoth Lakes, CA
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Jul 17, 2010 - 07:31pm PT
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I seem to recall Boo had a pair of pants without pockets. So when he went out, he never had his wallet. Must have been quite a search to find them.
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Berdette Robison
climber
Green Valley, AZ
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Jul 19, 2010 - 06:24pm PT
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Since I started my trip down memory lane on Ken's forum, I must finish it here. I'm sure most of you have heard more about our senior prom than you ever wanted to know. But, I must finish...
Ken, I truly don't remember any of the "restaurant" story! Now, I must apologize for accusing you of not paying. It was probably a bit pricey and you had no idea or enough money to pay! So, guys, it really wasn't intentional!
On to my adventure in Yosemite. I was at UCSB and decided I wanted to go to New York to find fame and fortune. After a month, and neither fame or fortune, I returned to LA and got a job at Camp Curry in February 1966. I was totally enamored with you and went there because you were there! I actually drove up there with you and Dennis in either his truck or yours and spent 2 nights in one of the campgrounds. I then moved into the dorms and loved it up there. On Memorial Day, 1966, I was in a very serious car accident returning from a dance at Bass Lake (the place is still there; can't remember the name) in an XKE with 2 other girls and the guy who was driving. It was about 3:00 am and he fell asleep and hit a tree. I was thrown from the car, broke my wrist, leg and had 45 stitches in my head. From my wanderings around your writings, that weekend seems to have been one of your big climbs. Anyway, you did come visit me in the Yosemite hospital...if you could call it that...before I returned to LA and eventually graduated from UCLA. Those 4 months in Yosemite were fabulous...and just the start of my wanderlust. I may have never left there except for my accident.
By the way, we did eventually master the "kissing" part!
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