April 27, 2021 | 5902 Views | By Matthew Jordan Smith
New Webinar – How To Breathe New Life Into Old Photographs
Nothing is more important than family. In March of this year, I took an emergency flight to the United States to see my younger sister, Donna. She was entering hospice care for colorectal cancer and I wanted to be by her side to support her. I live in Tokyo and this was my first time flying back to the States since the pandemic began.
Seeing my family after such a long absence was wonderful, but my focus was documenting every moment of Donna’s life while I was there. As a kid, I remember my father taking pictures of family gatherings, dinners, birthdays and more. Back then, he used Kodachrome color slide film and after having the film processed, my family would sit together and look at the images on my father’s slide projector.
Those were great days and I wondered if my parents still had their old transparencies. When I asked my mother, she remembered exactly where they were. As I began to look through the old slides, I discovered images of both my sisters and I when we were kids growing up in Brooklyn, NY. I knew right way that I had to breathe new life into these old photographs and digitize them. Learn my techniques and process in the upcoming webinar.
I traveled to the States with a Nikon Z6II, a Nikon Z7II, and a Profoto A1x strobe light. For lenses, I packed my Nikkor 35mm f/1.4, a Nikkor 24-70mm f/4.0, the Nikkor 105mm f/ 1.4, and a Nikkor 60mm f/2,8 micro. I love doing closeup portraits with the Nikkor 60mm lens, but this lens is also great for doing closeups of objects, like color slides. If I was back in Tokyo, I would use my Nikon ES-2 film digitizing adapter set. However, I was 7 thousand miles away in South Carolina and I had to think about the best way to photograph my father’s old slides. I ran to Best Buy, purchased a small, inexpensive Digipower light and made a make-shift light box using a glass cup, and Kleenex tissue.
During the day, I would spend every moment photographing Donna. In the evenings, I began the process of digitizing all my father’s slides using my makeshift lighting kit. Each night my father watched in amazement as I showed him how to breathe new life into old pictures. After I photographed the images, I enhance them with ON1 Photo Raw and showed them to my sister the next day. She loved seeing our old family photographs, and my entire family loved seeing Donna smile.
If your curious to learn the process for digitizing your old slides, come and join me on May 4th for a LIVE webinar in which I will show you my step-by-step process, including my post processing steps using ON1 Photo Raw 2021.5.
14 comments on “New Webinar – How To Breathe New Life Into Old Photographs”
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On April 27, 2021 at 11:53 pm David Price wrote:
As this will be broadcast at midnight, on my local time.
I will look forward to viewing the recording 🙂
I hope that the webinar goes well.
On April 28, 2021 at 8:01 am Patrick Smith replied:
Yes, we will make sure to post the recording soon after the webinar is over.
On May 2, 2021 at 1:42 am Cris Davis replied:
Good because I’ll also, hopefully, be asleep!
On April 30, 2021 at 3:33 pm James Lassoie wrote:
darn…doc appointment conflict…look forward to seeing the recording
BTW…my parents were married in 1943 and I have 1/2 doz 35mm Kodachromes of them that still look fantastic!
On April 30, 2021 at 4:31 pm Karen Harris wrote:
Can’t wait to watch it but it will be after the webinar has taken place.
This is totally exciting to me because I’ve got old slides and would love to be able to do the same
Thanks so much for sharing this with us.
On April 30, 2021 at 5:31 pm Stuart Taylor wrote:
I tried digitizing some slides of my parents wedding in 1960 several years ago and the results were not impressive, I’d love to have another attempt with hopefully improved results especially now as my dad is no longer with us. Looking forward to seeing the webinar.
On April 30, 2021 at 6:09 pm Aaron Perkinson wrote:
Sounds good. Looking forward to it.
On April 30, 2021 at 9:27 pm Patricia Dome wrote:
Very happy to hear how to rescue all of my Kodachrome slides. I did a ton of landscape and wildlife photos for my ink work. But, I still have lots of 400 film strips (fast shooting moving targets). Do you have a work process for them? Lots of people just clicked and developed without getting it in slides. Thanks. Looking forward to the workshop.
On May 1, 2021 at 3:15 am Leif Romell wrote:
I scan negatives using a Nikon Coolscan V. The resulting files require post-processing to get rid of noise etc. – I’ll be very interested to see how you approach this in ON1. Looking forward to it!
On May 1, 2021 at 5:58 am Roger Gorissen wrote:
I’m looking forward to the webinar. I will be viewing it later on because of the time difference with the Netherlands.
In your text above, you show some pretty old photographs. Can you please show the same photographs after you brought new life into them, the result after the post-processing.
Thanks!!
On May 1, 2021 at 6:12 am Rino Clarizio wrote:
Great Looking forward to the webinar. I have also accumulated hundreds of slides that some would be nice to have as prints or digital files. Great initiative by Mathew and ON1.
On May 3, 2021 at 1:02 pm Steve Austin wrote:
Will be there, always interested in how other people scan there images, I have thousands 35mm slides and just as may 35mm film strips, and from my studio days 2 1/4 negs. Also many of my parents B/W prints which do need some work after scanning. I use an Epson Perfection V800 flat bed scanner with all the required film holders. We need more presentations on this subject, along with post-process using On1.
Thanks. Toronto Canada.
On May 4, 2021 at 4:09 pm Jerry Benterou wrote:
I just saw the webinar. I loved it! Thanks so much for showing your methods to digitize slides and negatives. I, too have hundreds of slides and color negatives that I want to digitize. I think can do it now!
I have a quick question: Is there a way to digitize color negatives using ON1 Raw 2021 and convert to positive images or is some other software required?
Thanks. Jerry Livermore, California.
On October 28, 2021 at 1:19 am salsaguy wrote:
I was unable to watch the webinar. where is the recording posted? Link Please? Thanks much