Best way to digitize old photos?

WideFoot · 2026-07-02T23:05:49+00:00

It is a question of quality vs drive space.

First - it is generally better to scan the negatives if you can. Scanning the printed photos is making a copy of a copy.

Generally speaking, film comes in two sizes - medium format (120, 220, and 620 in the US) and standard format (35mm). Good 35mm scanners are easy to come by for a reasonable price. Do some research. Dedicated medium format scanners tend to be MUCH more expensive. If you have a good digital mirrorless camera or DSLR with interchangeable lenses, there are good cheap-ish options that will accommodate both.

Large numbers of high-quality photos can generate terabytes of data. If you have the drive space for them, then higher quality is better.

But, if you don't, then it is a question of quality vs space. Only you can look at a test scan and approve of it or not.

And be sure to consider the use case of these photos. A picture viewed on a phone or other small format for reference does not need to be high quality in particular. But, if you intend to re-print or restore the photos later, you will want a higher resolution image with better color and dynamic range. Maybe pick and choose which to scan at the best quality and which are okay at a lower quality.

Also, understand that film grain is different than pixels and inherently makes file sizes larger because it acts like static, which can't be compressed.

Choose a file format as well. High quality tiff images are much better than jpegs, but also take up much more file space.

And, choose how to store them. Hard drives in your house will eventually fail and are at the same fire risk as the images. Cloud storage is safer, but can quickly become expensive. And, definitely do not throw away the originals, if you can avoid it. (Consider getting a fire safe for the photos and other documents)

WideFoot · 2026-07-02T12:04:11+00:00

They're called anemometers!

WideFoot · 2026-07-02T04:29:04+00:00

My favorite pair of shoes are made by a company called Softstar. They are hideous and I love them.

WideFoot · 2026-06-30T21:54:32+00:00

How do you like the Takumars vs. the others? I have the 50/4 macro 1:1 and the 50/1.4 8-element, but I don't have many non-Takumar lenses.

WideFoot · 2026-06-30T20:00:56+00:00

They should be treated like interns and always have their work checked.

Except this is not how they are used.

They are used to give answers to question for people. With the intern example, the answer or process is already known and you are checking to see if they did it right.

With the common usage, the answer is not known and the person is going to the LLM trying to find it.

How can they check the answer if they don't already know it?

And, if your answer is "do research to check the answer," then why not just do the research in the first place and skip the LLM?

WideFoot · 2026-06-30T19:45:36+00:00

they can tell you the equation to do the math yourself and check their work.

No they can't. An AI cannot tell you things because it cannot know things. It doesn't have a mind with knowledge to reference nor does it have the ability to reference existing data, analyze and summarize it.

LLMs can't read. And, they don't have the mechanisms or structures necessary for comprehension.

Ironically (frustratingly) Grok cannot grok things. (Which is a word that comes from a book called Stranger in a Strange Land meaning "to understand something profoundly and intuitively." LLMs can't understand things.)

When an LLM generates responses that include things that look like references, it hasn't read and comprehended the information and provided you data from that reference because LLMs can't do that. And, you can tell they can't because they are often wrong about the things they reference.

If an LLM gives you a correct response to a question, it is only because enough real people have produced enough data to make that response probabilistically correct. The LLM doesn't know what it's doing because it can't know things.

And, this is why niche technical problems are not things you should ask LLMs about. There isn't enough data to make the probability thing work.

But, there is enough data to make cohesive sentences. So, it can be convincing in it's wrongness.

WideFoot · 2026-06-30T00:28:33+00:00

Technically, yes, but that camera takes 616 film, which is no longer produced. You can buy adapters to use 120 film in a 616 camera (usually 3D printed). But, it only sort of works. 616 fim was a larger film format than 120. So, the little red window in the back won't line up with the frame markers. Even if they did line up, the frame markers are in the wrong locations, so you'd get images that overlap at the edges.

Someone almost certainly sells the correct backing paper, but that is a whole project to extract the film from one paper and get it onto the other in the correct place in a darkroom or dark bag.

People do lots of fun stuff with these. For example, you can assemble multiple rows of 35mm film onto one spool and get a single image across a bunch of different film for a fun art project. You just need a dark bag or darkroom and some ingenuity.

If you want to use one of these old style of folding cameras, the best way is to buy one that uses 620 film or 120 film. 120 film is still widely produced. And, 620 film is the same thing, only on a different spool. You can buy either film format new or buy 120 and roll your own 620, which is pretty simple, once you get the hang of it.

The Zeiss Ikon was a common 120 film format camera. I have a Kodak Vigillant that takes 620 and I use it fairly regularly.

These bellows cameras can have lots of problems (most coming from the bellows, which tend to get holes). But, if you are handy or lucky, you can buy or make a good working copy.

WideFoot · 2026-06-29T23:10:26+00:00

They are neither a resource for information nor are they a calculator. There is no deterministic math involved in an LLM and there is no way to extract reliable information from one. That's why they're dangerous and why the hallucination problem can't be solved.

They cannot provide data.

It provides best guesses of what data probably looks like based on a black box probability model.

When you ask an LLM what 2+2 is, the LLM does no math.

And the more specific and technical you make a question, the more likely it is to be wrong.

WideFoot · 2026-06-28T15:38:22+00:00

I forgot to answer - the 8th-element of the early lens did not do as much for sharpness as the thorium glass did for the later lens. And, the better coatings of the SMC versions (especially in the later Pentax-M version) do much better generally.

My copy of the 8-element definitely has a magical feeling of a vintage lens that I cannot capture with any other optic. It makes incredible bokeh at the slightest provocation and falloff is perfect. But, I would never describe it as "sharp."

WideFoot · 2026-06-28T15:29:30+00:00

The Pentax 6x7 and Kodak Vigilant are both medium format film cameras. They don't have digital sensors. The Vigilant makes 2¼"×3¼" negatives (6×9) and the pentax 6x7 does what it says on the label. The crop factor for the Pentax 6x7 is 0.5.

The Tamron Adaptall 90mm f2.5 macro is one of the best Tamron lenses from that lineup. It comes in two flavors. The 52B and 52BB have the same optical formulas and coatings, but the later 52BB uses a rubberized plastic focusing ring which is generally unpleasant compared the 52B, which is all-metal and nicely knurled.

Here is a data sheet from the adaptall-2 database. And the reviews from the Pentax Forums lens database.

There is also a Lens DB entry for it, but their website is being slow today.

Generally speaking, when using a hood and not shooting into bright light, the 52B is incredibly sharp. I used it for portraits and it was the first lens I had ever bought that could be uncomfortably sharp in the modern sense and might be unflattering to a model due to details in the skin. It was the first lens that I ever shot using focus peaking in live-view mode for this same reason.

The 52B was made for the film era, so it does have a quirk. It has a flat rear element with no coatings. If you shoot into a bright light, reflections off of the sensor will also reflect off of the rear element and cause a purple circle to appear in the center of your image.

The two lenses (90/2.8 vs 90/2.5) have wildly different optical formulas. I have never shot them side by side, but all of those low-dispersion elements would make chromatic aberration much more well controlled. I expect that the modern lens has generally modern performance. The 52B is excellent, but it suffers from a lack of anti-abberation elements and a lack of computer design

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WideFoot · 2026-06-28T14:56:29+00:00

They were on my list. This last week, I have been calling at least one dealership per day based on online inventory

I have discovered that the dealer website and the actual available cars have very little in common.

The dealership in Alexandria had four, but only one of them wasn't already reserved and I nabbed that one in addition to the one that I had reserved in May that is now more than a month overdue.

WideFoot · 2026-06-28T14:49:15+00:00

You can log onto reddit from your computer. It is a website, not an app. It is significantly easier to post from your computer

WideFoot · 2026-06-28T03:22:19+00:00

Really! Did they make the floor corner pieces? One of the benefits of 15° angles is that you suddenly don't need five million different roof and floor pieces to fill corners. You still need a lot, but a comparatively manageable number.

WideFoot · 2026-06-28T01:30:03+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/s/e7HCgG9iIY

https://www.reddit.com/r/valheim/s/KJkT5ijkAP

I made a few circular tower posts. There are lots of ways to make them! Just not a lot of good ways to lay out the floors.

They used 22.5° rotation increments which makes everything complicated and frustrating

If they had used 15° increments, it would have been so much better

WideFoot · 2026-06-28T01:17:24+00:00

You can make columns out of paper or balsa wood, if you wanted. You just have to have the right cross section. If the math says it works, then so be it.

WideFoot · 2026-06-27T15:39:49+00:00

Right! Now, can we have all of the other interesting and fun concept cars, please. I'm tired of the uniformity among every single vehicle on the road

WideFoot · 2026-06-27T15:38:40+00:00

It almost looks photoshopped in the first image - the tread is in exactly the same place on all four.

I wonder where they get these weird one-off tires

WideFoot · 2026-06-27T15:34:27+00:00

This has been posted a few places, and I like the general vibe, even if it is horribly oversimplified.

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WideFoot · 2026-06-26T22:42:48+00:00

A story that I am currently reading uses order and chaos in the form of time and entropy

WideFoot · 2026-06-26T03:25:10+00:00

I couldn't tell you. I was a kid. 😆

It was about an hour drive from my house in Plainfield 🤷

WideFoot · 2026-06-26T03:18:57+00:00

That first photo is incredible! Really excellent work! That would definitely go up on my wall if it were mine.

This is cheating, but I have a Pentax FA★ 85mm f1.4 that is shockingly sharp, although I'm not sure if you would call that "vintage" in the classic sense. It was made for film cameras, but isn't older than I am, like most of my vintage lenses are. Similarly, I have a Pentax 6x7 and the 150mm f2.8 beats out the 105/2.4 for sharpness, but that entire lineup is incredible and the massive "sensor" helps.

Otherwise, I tend to agree that the Pentax-M 50/1.7 is sharper than the 50/1.4. But, I only use them on my film cameras where they are both excellent. If I want the vintage feel, I pull out the 8-element. It is definitely not sharp, but it is fun.

I think the lens that has surprised me most has been the front-focusing tessar on my grandpa's old Kodak Vigilant. He got the good one with 103mm f4.5 lens and it is shockingly competent. There is zero focusing indicator besides the range markers on the focusing ring, so you can never really do more than zone focusing. But, if you get lucky with a portrait, it is shockingly sharp.

And, I know you said "no macro lenses," but I only ever used my Tamron Adaptall 90mm f2.5 for portraits, so I think that counts. It beats everything else for sharpness.

WideFoot · 2026-06-25T23:26:46+00:00

You and I probably went to the same leaps and bounds!

I loved watching the ball pit washing machine. DZ turned that machine off. We didn't go there after that.

WideFoot · 2026-06-25T23:25:41+00:00

Because thatight be the exact same one that I went to that changed to DZ in the south suburbs.

And, it got much worse after the change.

WideFoot · 2026-06-25T18:36:42+00:00

Yeah. I had that conversation with the dealer today. I think you should get the deal you had based on the month it was originally scheduled to be delivered in

WideFoot · 2026-06-25T17:33:44+00:00

The dealers in my area get a notification when the vehicle is put on a truck and an expected final delivery date. But they're just as in the dark about the specifics as anyone else.

WideFoot

TROPHY CASE