Tech Tuesday - Digitizing With Cameras, Part I

Digital cameras now come in several forms.  There are a plethora of what are called point & shoot models, cameras that are good basic units that don't require much knowledge of photography or gadgetry.  Simply point them at what you wish to photograph, and press the button to take the picture.  The camera does the heavy lifting of figuring out how to make the picture good.  The other major type is Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR).  These are a digital version of the 35mm film cameras, and require more knowledge of photography, both theory and camera operation.  Most of these also have automatic modes like the point & shoots, but they do best when you understand how to get the most out of them for the images you want.  The single biggest benefit brought by digital photography is cost; you can shoot a nearly endless stream of digital images for virtually no money, where old film-based photography cost for every frame.

A week or so ago I wrote about scanners, how they work and some ideas about how to use them best for genealogy.  During the last Scanfest there was some Q&A about how to scan things that don't fit in your scanner  This includes oversized materials as well as three dimensional objects.  The simple answer is to use a digital camera!  The quality of digital camera images has increased very rapidly over the last decade, and current and recent models are more than capable of capturing very useful images.

Some of the items I need to scan are unfortunately glued into old scrapbooks and photo albums.  This means I will need to use my camera to digitize those items, while not damaging them by attempting to remove them from their mountings.  You'll want to get some distance and use a slight telephoto setting (or lens) as using a wide angle lens up close causes visual distortion, making straight lines appear curvy.  You'll also want plenty of light!  Your camera's flash may work well enough, try a number of setting variations to see if you can get usable results.  If not, you will need some kind of auxiliary lighting.  This can be done on the cheap.  Look at your local DIY superstore for clamp on reflector light fixtures and some 75-100 watt incandescent or 13-20 watt CFL bulbs.  A couple of these should be sufficient.  You need to place them at about a 45 degree angle above and to the left and right of what you're shooting to avoid glare and reflections, especially on glossy photos or plastic-covered album pages.  Be aware that if you're using this method, you will need to set your camera's White Balance to Tungsten so it can compensate for the yellowish color of the light.  Another option if you're shooting printed material like newspaper clippings is to set your camera to monochrome mode, which makes the resulting images black & white.

Here's an example I took:
 

Normal color shot with flash

Camera set to Monochrome

I should note at this point that the same issues with image type that we discussed in the Scanner Technology article hold true here!  If your camera only exports JPG images, you should immediately convert those to TIFF before doing anything else.  This will keep them from getting degraded when you edit, and you will be editing these.  Looking at my samples, you can see there are several obituaries on this page.  I will use the smallest one on the right as an example.  Using my favorite image editor (I use Adobe Photoshop Elements, you can use whatever you are comfortable with) I straightened and cropped the image down to just the little obit I want to work on.  Here's the result:

Betty Steuart obituary, monochrome

Not bad.  However, I've already saved it once when I shot it, and now a second time when I cropped it.  You can already see some issues with image quality.  I did this one as a JPG as an example.  (When I shoot for archival purposes, I will shoot in my camera's native RAW format.  You should use RAW if you can, or convert to TIFF immediately if not, then convert and save as other formats as needed for other uses.)   I would like to use some Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to transcribe this article to text so I can insert the text into my genealogy software.  OCR software works best with very clean type of high contrast.  This example is pretty low contrast, so I can use my image editing software to adjust that and boost the contrast.  Here's the result:

Betty Steuart obituary, contrast enhanced

This is much better!  Any stray markings can be interpreted by OCR software as additional letters or punctuation, so we want to eliminate as much as we can up front.  Here's the output from my OCR software from this cleaned up example:

MRS. BETTY STEAURT
WALNUT CREEK, Calif.
Mrs. Betty Lommel Steaurt of
here died. She is survived by a
daughter, Mrs. James (Rita)
Stoll; three grandchildren and
brothers and sisters, Mrs.
Hirsch (Ann) Kiebert,
dian, Idaho; Jerome, Modesto,
Calif.; Mrs. August (Gertrude)
Meyer, St. Paul; Mrs. Ray
(Johanna) Weismann, Min-
neapolis; Gilbert, Pearl Lake;
Mrs. Ray (Rose) Ubereeken,
Denver, Colo. Edmund and
Sally, St. Cloud.

There's just one error in this transcription, a common one where a 'c' has been rendered as an 'e' in Uberecken near the end.  That's a very good result for OCR software! 

I've covered a lot of material, and this should be enough to let you try it yourself.  If you have some album-bound material you need to digitize that won't fit in the scanner, try using your camera and see what kind of results you get.  Try a bunch of different settings to see what works best.  Next time I'll cover digitizing photographs and 3-D objects using a camera instead of a scanner.

Tech Tuesday – Have you stumbled upon a piece of technology or new Web-based application that would be of interest to your fellow genealogy colleagues? Post at your blog on Tech Tuesday and show us the ins and outs of this technology and how it can benefit the genealogy community.  This is a new series suggested by Donna Peterson of Hanging with Donna and in the past there have been many iterations of this series: the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) blog Narations as well as The Family Curator by Denise Levenick.  (Blurb shamelessly stolen from Thomas McEntee at Geneabloggers!)

Sunday's Obituary - LaVonne A. (Hengel) Hirdler

Deaths

MRS. RALPH HIRDLER

FARIBAULT, Minn. — Mrs. Ralph Hirdler, 31, of here and formerly of St. Cloud, died at the Rochester, Minn., Hospital Monday.

She was born LaVonne Hengel In St. Cloud, was graduated from Cathedral High School and married Ralph Hirdler on Dec. 29, 1959, at St. Mary's Cathedral, St. Cloud. The couple lived in St. Cloud for one year and then moved here where they have lived since.

Mrs. Hirdler is survived by her husband; her mother, Mrs. Victor Hengel Sr., St. Cloud; brothers and sister, Virgil land Victor Hengel, St. Cloud; Eugene Hengel, Red Wing, Minn.; and Mrs. Marvin (La- Donna) Theisen, St. Cloud.

Funeral services are at 9:30 a.m. Saturday at St. Mary's Cathedral, St. Cloud.

Friends may call at the Daniel Funeral Home after 1 p.m. Friday.

St. Mary's Cathedral parish will say the parish prayers at the funeral home at 9 p.m. Friday.

LaVonne A. Hengel was the sister of my mother-in-law.  I never met her, as she died long before I met my wife.  This obituary was in a large box of old photographs, albums and scrapbooks I recently borrowed from my in-laws for the purpose of scanning and preserving the images.  I was told for years that they really didn't have much in the way of old pictures or family information, and for years, I let it slide.  But I've recently become more active in researching the family lines, and pressed for anything they might have.  They told me about this box of stuff, but it was "buried in a closet upstairs", and inaccessible.  Finally I just said, "I have time, I'm going up to get that box from the closet."

That box turned out to be loaded with treasure!  This obit is just one small example.  There's a scrapbook almost entirely dedicated to newspaper clippings, many of them obits with data I never had, and some as interesting as a number of letters to the editor of the local paper by a family member!  I've got the pictures all scanned after my own private Scanfest, and ready to return to their owners,  but the scrapbook and an album will take me a long time to get through.  You will doubtless be seeing material from these books in the near future on this blog!

Sunday’s Obituary – if you have obituaries of family members and ancestors, consider posting them along with other information about that person as part of Sunday’s Obituary. This is an ongoing series developed by Leslie Ann at Ancestors Live Here.

Matrilineal Monday - Hengel

This weekend I was presented with a treasure trove of photos and documents that will undoubtedly be the focus of many a post to come.  This time I'll start with my wife's mother's family, in keeping with the Matrilineal Monday theme. 

My wife's mother's maiden name is Hengel.  I've been relatively unsuccessful in tracking them very many generations back, nor very much detail on the individuals I did know about.  Thus I was tickled pink to get my hands on my mother-in-law's old photos and documents!  Part of the aggregation (I can't call it a collection, it's almost totally unorganized, a problem I shall have to attempt to correct) is an old photo album from my mother-in-law's mother, with many photos dated 1920!  Regrettably few have names or places associated with them.  I'm hoping my mother-in-law can assist with some names.  Another major item is a scrapbook from my wife's great aunt, with literally dozens of obituaries, anniversaries, engagements and weddings from the local newspaper.  Much of this is documentation I've never seen before.  This is the one part of this treasure that contains a lot of useful dates and names along with the faces!  I find myself wishing I had one of those new portable scanners the bloggers are all raving about.  Most of the scrapbook is articles glued in place, difficult to scan on  flatbed.

Another treasure in the group is a set of World War II Ration Books.  They look like this:

World War II Ration Book circa 1943

As you can see, I get a lot of useful data from just this one piece.  A name and address, and even physical description and occupation!  The folder of ration books included one for each member of the family at that point.  Even as historical artifacts, these ration books are of interest, but throw in the personal data and they become very valuable in telling the family story.








Another item found in the box is a heavily laminated copy of the obituary of Wilhelmine C. (Lommel) Hengel, the owner of the ration book above.  It gives the names of many family members, birth and death dates as expected, and a marriage date.  Funeral location and time and burial place are included as well.  Unfortunately, it doesn't include first names of female family members, instead opting for Mrs. Husband Name. 

A Tribute

published in the pages of

The St. Cloud Daily Times

ST. CLOUD, MINNESOTA

APR 20 1972

Memorial Obituary

Entered Into Eternal Rest

Thursday, April 20, 1972

MRS. VICTOR HENGEL

  Mrs. Victor (Wilhelmine)hengel Sr. 71, 707 14th Ave. S., died today.  She was born here Wilhelmine Lommel Sept. 29, 1900, and married Victor Hengel Nov. 24, 1927.  He died Nov. 24, 1965.  She lived here all her life.

  She was a member of St. Ann's Christian mothers and St. Margaret's Society.

  Mrs. Hengel is survived by sons and daughters, Victor Jr., Virgil and Mrs.Marvin Theisen, St. Cloud; Eugene, Red Wing, Minn.; 18 grandchildren; and brothers and sisters, Mrs. August Meyer, St. Paul; Mrs. Raymond Weismann, Minneapolis; Mrs. Raymond Uberecken, Denver, Color.; Mrs. Betty Stewart, Walnut Creek, Calif.; Mrs. Herschel Hieberg, Wallace, Idaho; Gilbert Lommel, Kimball, Minn.; Ed and Sally Lommel, St. Cloud; and Jerome Lommel, Modesta, Calif.  She was preceded in death by a daughter and a brother.

  Funeral Services are at 10a.m. Saturday at St. Mary's Cathedral with burial in Assumption Cemetery.

  Pallbearers will be Donald, Robert and Karl Lommel, Robert and Michael Hengel and James Meyer.

  Friends may call at the Daniel Funeral Home after 2 p. m. Friday.

  St. Ann's Christian Mothers will say the rosary at the funeral home at 3 p. m. Friday and St. Mary's Cathedral parish will say the parish prayers at 8 p.m. Friday.

Watch this space for further treasures to be revealed!