AV News 174 - November 2008
Revealing Family Secrets
Maurice Dybeck ARPS
Researching Family History is currently all the rage and here is a way in
which you can interpret your own material. Family albums, especially those
pictures with details too small to decipher, can be a bore. Are your
children/grandchildren interested in them? You have forgotten the faces, and
your kids never knew them anyway.
But these albums are full of hidden treasure, which, thanks to digitisation
and your skill at AV projection, can once again come alive. In this new format
old pictures can reveal past pleasures (and sorrows) for the enlightenment of
all the family. Although this is not of much general interest, your family might
one day thank you for opening up their own history in this way.
Start Point
Before you throw them away take a look through
your old dusty albums. Most of the early sepia
studio portraits were of very good quality.
Professionally taken they were the only picture
source available to most people.
Copy them with a good digital camera on your
rostrum and they will come up surprisingly well on
a big screen. The family snaps of later generations
were often frustratingly small and the naked eye
misses much of the detail. Blow them up and you
will be amazed at the things you see for the first
time. (And if you don't want Aunt Jane, you can
crop her out.)
In my albums I discovered faces never
previously recognised, and long-forgotten
home details.
It's worth taking some care over framing. A
white edge can destroy some of the illusion
when the picture goes on screen. (…and I have
seen this error at AV shows where people
should know better.) Personally, I rough-frame
with the zoom and then fine-frame, using the
rostrum racking. Keep some matt black card
handy for masking, which is usually needed on
each side of portrait format anyway. Talking of
which, if your show is to be mostly portrait, why
not make all of them that shape and project
accordingly on a "portrait format screen".
When converting, watch out for some digital systems, which stretch the
portraits so as to "fit to frame" as they say. (An over-fat Aunt Jane would
NOT be pleased!)
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