Historic Aircraft Negatives Scanned.

Nice Photos, do you still have the negatives, particularly the fulmar?

The Comet 2E pic is a treat!

,[dunno what I’m doing, really ]…need professional help here 🙂

Not so sure about that me thinks you are being modest. Beautiful results, very time consuming. Thanks

With b&w negatives usually give best scanned results but colour negs can degrade more than carefully stored prints
20 minutes of photoshop with partial desaturation in areas,clone tool,dodge& curves,[dunno what I’m doing, really ]…need professional help here 🙂

What scanning equipment you use?

I use a HP flatbed scanner/printer and a Toshiba Journe for scanning prints. Many of the slide and negative scanners seem just to use a CMOS camera so at times just prographing the original photograph with a high resolution digital camera gives better results.

What scanning equipment you use?

TY btw

These are the 2 photographs taken at Arbroath 6th July 1963. For those interested the Whirlwinds came from Culdrose and were XL880 “W” XN359 “U” XL898 “T” XN308 “X” XM669 “J” and XL363 “Y”. By scanning the print at a high resolution some improvments can be seen over the scan of the negative.

All great shots, Robert, especially the Comet and the Fulmar – so nice to see a colour photo of it outdoors.

However, photos like the line of Whirlwinds are still valuable and well worth digitising for posterity, if you ask me.

Totally agree with Tin Triangle – these photos are rare and worth saving.

If you look closely at the Globemaster you can just make out the crew member “lookout” in the top hatch who I understand aided the pilots when taxying. I have a similar photo taken at Hong Kong.
John

The taxiway was quite narrow (built originally for B-17’s I was told)

Here are a few more from Lossiemouth 1969. By then I had a better quality camera. The black and white negatives are of a far better quality than the colour negatives.
Shows that the CSI enhancement of photos and video is a bit suspect. Poor intial quality can be enhanced slightly with a low quality picture and scan there is not much you can do. Need to spend hours with photoshop.

I have added a couple more poor quality scanned photographs from benbecula. Not much of note except one the left hand C-130 is the earlier model with a small radome. Only one I ever saw.

These are great, can we see more please? Particularly like the overhead landing shots of T7 and Bucc…
I agree about enhancement software being unable to rescue fundamentally bad quality shots. I find this problematic with many of my airshow photos taken in 2015! However, photos like the line of Whirlwinds are still valuable and well worth digitising for posterity, if you ask me.

If you look closely at the Globemaster you can just make out the crew member “lookout” in the top hatch who I understand aided the pilots when taxying. I have a similar photo taken at Hong Kong.

John

Yes indeed +10

Great photos regardless.
Thanks for taking the time to scan and post them. He underside colour shots are fabulous.

Hadn’t realised that Benbecula was used by the USAF
🙂

They were transporting equipment to the Rocket Testing Range on South Uist and the Mohawk was a visitor. It was just parked out on a taxiway and after asking permission I was allowed to walk out to have a look.

Here is a scanned copy of a very poor quality photograph. The camera was I think a Halina and due to the lens it produced dark areas in each corner. Scanning seems to make this effect worse.
I had a sucession of bad cameras including the ones that produced round disc film.

Many of my older photos were taken with a low quality camera

Same here then compounded the problem by opting for matt-finish photo paper which really doesn’t scan well! Or at least not for me!!

Love the shot from directly underneath the Buccaneer. Hadn’t realised that Benbecula was used by the USAF – very nice close-up on the Mohawk.
Thanks for posting them 🙂

The two photos above were taken at Lossiemouth in 1969. It was the Moon Landing week. I couldn’t afford colour but managed to buy a roll for that weeks holiday.
The black and white ones were taken at Benbecula 1965 and the others at Lossiemouth. As you say photoshop is the answer to many of the scratches and dust dots. Many of my older photos were taken with a low quality camera and none of the “enhancement” techniques can, in my view, recover what was originally a poor contrast print with dark corners.
I managed to rescue a non aviation film taken in the early 50’s that had been in someones garage. It was in a rusty old tin but the film hadn’t broken up so could be fed into a machine by a firm in Edinburgh, it rurned out not too bad. Only problem was the frame proportions didn’t fit in well so lost a bit at the edges. Cost a bit but we shared that between 4 of us.

Always nice to see old photos whatever the condition anyway and the ones you’ve posted have certainly ‘kept’ well – any more? 🙂

Yes indeed any more please.

Having same trouble with slides, mounted and kept in dark but presumably contaminated with human sweat etc when handles as growing mould.

Not a cheap solution but some years ago a bought a second hand Nikon scanner, cannot remember the exact technical details but I think it scans it with infra red to look at the surface and then deletes anything that shouldn’t be on the surface, this is much easier than trying to clean. I haven’t tried it with mould yet but the results are staggering for dust etc. Away from home at moment otherwise would post an example.

Your examples are eminently suitable for Photoshopping but very time consuming.

Either way the best thing is to get them scanned ASAP before they get worse.

And yes please any more.