Heer Strap & Board book - finally done
WOW - It took my son Tom (WAF - TJ Suter) and I over two years to get it completed, but we finally finished the book on German Army shoulder straps & boards. It was sent off yesterday to the printer and should be out in a couple months.
This is the first time we did something like that, and what a monster! Tom did most of the captioning and I took on all the photography. I certainly learned a lot.......
I started out using a camera and photoboard with these special (& expensive) blue light bulbs. Hot as hell, too.
Trying to get the correct amount of lighting and color was really a pain. Probably took about 8 shots of each item with different settings. Then went through 'em, comparing them to the actual item and selecting the one that was the closest. Don't know how many hundreds and hundreds of pictures I took - and I'm probably better off not knowing. 
(I did try using a scanner but anything that wasn't flat on the glass was blurred.)
After getting them almost all done I started another little project. I had a lot of old family slides that I wanted to scan & save electronically. That takes a scanner designed to do slides, so I had to buy it. Price wasn't bad - a couple hundred bucks.
After scanning all the slides it popped into my head that, since a regular scanner won't do slides, maybe this one would be able to do straps & boards.
I fnally got it right! The scanner took clearer, sharper photos and in almost all cases the colors were exactly right. YAHOO
Of course, I then had to start over from square one and scan the front & back of every one of the straps & boards.
And each scan, of course, has to be cropped and sized. But, now that that's all behind me, it was worth it. And I know Tom is happy that he's done writing all the captions and having to 'code' everything.
In case any of you are interested in it, below are two photos of the same board that show the difference. The top one was taken with a camera and the bottom one with the scanner.
This is the first time we did something like that, and what a monster! Tom did most of the captioning and I took on all the photography. I certainly learned a lot.......
I started out using a camera and photoboard with these special (& expensive) blue light bulbs. Hot as hell, too.
Trying to get the correct amount of lighting and color was really a pain. Probably took about 8 shots of each item with different settings. Then went through 'em, comparing them to the actual item and selecting the one that was the closest. Don't know how many hundreds and hundreds of pictures I took - and I'm probably better off not knowing. (I did try using a scanner but anything that wasn't flat on the glass was blurred.)After getting them almost all done I started another little project. I had a lot of old family slides that I wanted to scan & save electronically. That takes a scanner designed to do slides, so I had to buy it. Price wasn't bad - a couple hundred bucks.
After scanning all the slides it popped into my head that, since a regular scanner won't do slides, maybe this one would be able to do straps & boards.
I fnally got it right! The scanner took clearer, sharper photos and in almost all cases the colors were exactly right. YAHOO
Of course, I then had to start over from square one and scan the front & back of every one of the straps & boards.
And each scan, of course, has to be cropped and sized. But, now that that's all behind me, it was worth it. And I know Tom is happy that he's done writing all the captions and having to 'code' everything.In case any of you are interested in it, below are two photos of the same board that show the difference. The top one was taken with a camera and the bottom one with the scanner.
Brian
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