So, I’m in our old family home, and we stumbled on a file of old family photos (1870 to 1930). One of these is a rather small (10x7cm) negative glass plate (WW1 era, since it looks like my grandfather in uniform).
What is the best way to make a copy of it, given a decent SLR, tripod, variable weather, able assistant but no time and nearby store to make up a full-fledged negative copy stand? I assume I have to shoot it against some light? Should I use some diffuser?
Any ideas?
One of my friends put them on his laptop’s screen, displayed a pure white image and took pictures of the illuminated glass plates that way. This is in Hungarian, but you can see the set-up and the results:
What he thought was important: aperture priority, small aperture, multi-second exposure, all other light sources in the room turned off.
If the negative is sitting directly on the laptop screen, the grid of pixels might show up in the scan. To avoid this, hold the negative a couple inches above the laptop screen and use a wide aperture so that only the negative is in focus and the pixels are blurred out. The negative should be centered within the screen so that it’s evenly illuminated.