![[Home]](/wiki.gif)
Photographing Rare BooksPhotographing Rare Books
| |
| The Bush Survival Guide - 250 Ways to Make It Through The NExt Four Years Without Misunderestimating the Dangers Ahead, and Other Subliminable Stategeries |
|
Links:
| |
Subjects > ... > Photography
Date: 091394 (2225) To: museum-l@unmvma.unm.edu (now: MUSEUM-L@HOME.EASE.LSOFT.COM) From: ROBERT BARON email-web@studiolo.org Subj: Rare book copy-stand
Mark Friedman wants to know how to photograph rare books, and what kind of stand to use so that books are not damaged in the process.
While working on a dissertation on 16th Century Illustrated French books, I developed a variant of the standard copy stand that permitted me to photograph from books as large as folio editions and as small as 16mo. The stand was a small amateur copy stand with a composite board base and a tubular camera support to which was mounted a high quality pan head on a rack-and-pinion slide. The stand came apart for portability. On top of the stand I placed a movable table covered with felt that could be slid front and back and from side to side. The table stood about one inch above the copy stand surface. It was supported by an x-shaped support that ran from the corners to the center, leaving most of the perimeter free to attach fastening tools. The x-shaped support also helped to keep the table flat.
Books were fastened to the movable table with a variety of weights and clamps. These devices were used to hold the book in place, and to keep the pages parallel to the picture plane. Weights were made of iron fastening strips glued and covered with felt and of felt tubes (snakes) filled with shot. Carpenter's spring-loaded clamps (rubber covered) were also used to hold the pages down and/or the book open. Because these clamps (they come in two sizes) can exert potentially dangerous pressure on the spine and boards, they were fitted with long screws running through the handles. A wing nut bearing down on the handle was used to control the amount of pressure exerted by the clamp itself. The clamp pressure was sometimes distributed by inserting a small felt-covered bar between the clamp and the book page.
Lighting was supplied by standard 100 watt (not photo flood) bulbs. It was important to keep the surface of the books cool. A toggle switch connected the bulbs in parallel or series, depending upon how susceptible to heat each item seemed and upon the distance from bulb to subject. (By enforcing a series connection, the device becomes appropriate for European voltages.)
Film was Panatomic X, and long exposures were used whenever necessary. Because a panchromatic black and white film was used, there was no issue of color temperature. A gray-scale and a linear scale was photographed at the start of each roll, and whenever possible, in the margins of each photograph. Usually, however, means were taken to insure that each photograph was taken with the same scale of enlargement. This was achieved by taping the lens focus-ring at a fixed position and focussing by moving the entire camera position up and down. The tape used was Scotch #850, well known to slide librarians as silver binding tape. Small vertical camera movements were achieved by using the rack-and-pinion device cited above; larger movements were executed with the copy stand controls. A plastic bubble level was used on the camera back and on the book page. Small increments in angularity needed to make the subject parallel to the film plane could be achieved with small shims placed under the object table.
Originally I used a 90 degree viewer attached to the camera's pentaprism, but eventually gave it up in favor of a waist-level finder. Light readings were taken from a grey-card and evenness of illumination had to be checked too. Using a grey card is essential when photographing books and graphic materials.
This procedure proved effective in my case because each book normally contained several hundred woodcuts of the same dimension. As each page was turned up to reveal the next page, the lens to subject distance would change slightly, so refocusing with the focusing rack was a necessity. Typically books were not photographed in page order; first all pages facing in the same direction as the title-page were shot (the odd numbered pages), then all the even pages, starting again from the front. If details were required, this procedure would be repeated. Record-keeping had to be precise, of course. This procedure reduced the degree of handling needed per book, and sped up the process considerably.
The camera used was a Nikon F2 with a 55mm Nikkor Macro lens. When the format of a book was too large for this setup, the Nikkor 35mm architectural lens was substituted. This lens introduced some barrel distortion, but permitted, with its architectural controls, the lens to be swung out from the negative center so that quite large books could be photographed with ease.
I carried this setup throughout Europe and the United States photographing in Rare Book libraries from Geneva to New York and California. Naturally, not all repositories would allow me to photograph, but those librarians who did permit it were always confident that my tools would not damage their rare items. There was never any damage, even when 19th century bindings made books so tight they could hardly be opened.
As a result I now have a collection of nearly 7,000 negatives covering much of the printing history of Lyon during the mid sixteenth century. Publishers who have seen prints and who have inspected the negatives believe the quality to be good enough to bring to print.
Robert A. Baron Museum Computer Consultant email-web@studiolo.org
Check out [Facts About Trees]
|
Interested in Sony PC ADI Soundmax Audio Device Driver For TR3A Agreement?