Holtermann Collection Digitisation Project - Digitisation

Signs of the times

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 17:17:22 +1100

Since we began digitising the Holtermann negatives to our new standard we have been able to view previously unclear details in the negatives. One of the great benefits of this is that we can now read the small text on posters and signs on the shop fronts and fences of Australia's gold rush towns.

This gives us a great insight into how items – such as wagons, horses and even claims – were traded and sold as well as the travelling shows, community meetings and even members of royalty passing through at the time.

In addition to these small posters we can also find new information on the grand hand-painted shop front signage not previously visible - including the signature of the sign writer himself.

We look forward with interest to the doorways these old posters will potentially open up for historical researchers.

The panoramas emerge

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 12:11:22 +1100

Apart from their well documented house front, store front and goldfield photography, Merlin and Bayliss they were also known for their landscape panoramas.
To capture these 180° views a number of glass plate photographs (usually three or four) had to be taken in succession and the prints trimmed and overlapped to form the illusion of one long, uninterrupted landscape view.

Although most of the panoramas were taken using mammoth plates so that they could be printed in a large exhibition size, we can also find some examples of these panoramas in the smaller quarter plate negatives.

We recently digitised the below four quarter plates and - using digital photo-stitching technology - were able to recreate the full panorama of Gulgong NSW taken from Church Hill in the 1870s.

Below we have an example of what the panorama would have looked like using the traditional print layering method of panorama construction - note that the joins are clearly visible and the areas of vignetting around the edges interrupt the flow of the landscape.

And here is our newly constructed panorama created using the digital intelligence of Photoshop CS4's Photomerge facility along with some manual retouching, dodging and burning - the result is far smoother and gives a clear impression of the view from Church Hill over 100 years ago.

Please take the time to view an enlarged version of the above panorama - it is well worth it!

This digitised panorama has the ability to be enlarged as a high quality photographic print - with no loss of image quality - to five metres in length. With such exciting results from negatives measuring only 3.25x4.25 inches [83x108mm] we look forward with great anticipation to seeing results from the mammoth plate panoramas, ranging in size from 10x12 inches [25x30cm] to 1.6x0.9 metres.

Resolving the image

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 12:22:35 +1100

As discussed in last week's post we have recently made important decisions on the Holtermann Collection digitisation standards. Although the library already has an established set of digitisation guidelines new considerations needed to be made for such an important and high quality collection of glass plate negatives along with the introduction of our new glass plate scanner.

We did not take this process lightly and so began by researching the digitisation practices and standards of our fellow cultural institutions, most notably the National Information Standards Organisation of America, National Government Archives of America and the National Library of Australia. We also looked at glass plate digitisation case studies, such as the Wellcome Library's John Thompson collection, to get a feel for the workflows and technical specifications used by other world class institutions.

Based on this gathered information we determined to perform a series of test scans in three different pixel dimensions (approximately 5 000, 7500 and 10000 pixels in length) to see how much detail the Holtermann negatives really hold and how well we could capture it. We performed these tests using the scanner's true optical resolution to ensure that no pixel interpolation occurred. This means the actual pixel dimension is closer to 11000 pixels and can vary slightly because the glass plates are not all exactly the same size. Below is an image we selected for test scanning due to it's high level of detail and sharpness showing the detail sections of the tests.

Once we saw the truly impressive amount of information stored in these negatives we were determined to save archival master files to our highest test scan resolution of approximately 10000 pixels on the longest edge creating a 450MB, uncompressed, 16 bit, Adobe 1998 RGB TIF file from each plate. Including our 8 bit, Gray Gamma 2.2 sub-master file derivatives that's nearly 3 terabytes of total storage space needed in total.

It's all in the detail

Fri, 31 Jul 2009 12:46:04 +1100

It's been a productive last few weeks on the project. In this time we've agreed upon and implemented a digitisation standard to encompass the entire 3,500 strong collection. We will be posting some more technical details on the process we used to make these important decisions during the next few weeks. For now, let's have a look at the implications of our new high quality digitisation standard in layman's terms.

Part of our decision making process was to create a series of test scans using different scanner settings and file sizes. The results were astounding! Because the Holtermann negatives were created using the wet-collodion or wet plate process they are virtually grain free. In short, this means that their resolution is only limited by the quality of the camera lens the negative was exposed with, so we are able to pick out tiny details in the negative and bring them up clearly. In the picture below of the gold rush town of Gulgong, NSW for example;

This image had previously been batch scanned from the corresponding 35mm copy negative, so we had a basic idea of what was in the image. Unfortunately, details such as text in signs and the items in shop windows were not distinguishable. Until, that is, we rescanned the original glass plate negative on our new scanner. Below is an enlarged section from the original 35mm copy negative scan (left) and our new scan (right) - you can see the amazing difference in detail retention the high quality scan is giving us.

Every word on the poster is clearly visible. Not only that, the costume and accessories of the time - such as the pipe and hats in this image - have become much easier to examine. What fantastic implications for historians and future researchers of the gold rush era in Victoria and New South Wales!

Family historians will also be able to gain an insight to their gold rush ancestors never before possible with clear close up views of those amazing faces available. A great example is this gentleman outside Stafford Henry Barnes' Mudgee Drug Store in Gulgong, NSW;

We would love to hear your thoughts on our progress so far.

Digitisation Officer appointed

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 16:35:41 +1100

Digitisation Officer appointed

I am pleased to introduce our new Digitisation Officer, Lauren O'Brien.

Her main function working with the collection will be to use the new Creo iQsmart3 scanner to create high quality archival master files from each plate in the collection. She will be working on this project three days a week with a view to scan the entire collection and get it up on the website and accessible to the public within one year.
Lauren's previous experience working with historical glass plate negatives comes from her work over the last 18 months as a digitiser with the Justice and Police Museum on their Forensic Photography collection of glass plate and cellulose negatives taken by the NSW Police between 1912 and 1964. This collection is the largest of it's kind in the Southern Hemisphere consisting of approximately 130 000 negatives. She has also worked in photographic production for seven years previous to beginning her work with the museum in all facets ranging from film development and photographic printing to scanning, digital retouching and copy work.

We welcome Lauren to the team.

"It's been a pleasure so far to work with the Holtermann collection digitisation project team. After my initial meeting with Alan Davies, Curator of Photographs, Original Materials my interest in the world of the American & Australasian Photographic Company photographers, Beaufoy Merlin and Charles Bayliss was peeked and I will certainly be getting my hands on Keast Burke's 'Gold and Silver' shortly to immerse myself further in the history of this fascinating collection. I can only hope my work will do justice to the portfolio of these groundbreaking photographers and their benefactor of course, Bernhardt Otto Holtermann."

The scanner has arrived

Fri, 08 May 2009 15:50:31 +1100

The glass plate scanner has now arrived. Though officially known as a Kodak IQ3 Smart XY axis transparency scanner, I think it is already best known as the Holtermann scanner. It is one of the few scanners that have been designed to scan glass plates, as well more common film transparencies and negatives. I am very pleased to add this device to the other high quality digitisation equipment we are currently using here in Imaging Services.

We have now set the scanner up and have had some preliminary training on using it . Recruitment of the Digitisation Officer, who will be the main operator of the scanner, is being completed this week. As soon the person is fully on board we will begin some intensive training. We are fortunate to have the best support and training staff in Australia right here in Sydney.

Independent of the arrival of the scanner, the project has already begun with conservation and cleaning by Collection Preservation staff.

The Digitisation of the Holtermann Collection will be a very interesting and important project here at the State Library. Alan Davies, Lang Ngo and I will be keeping you informed about many of the technical, curatorial and historical aspects of the project as it progresses.

About this blog

Wed, 06 May 2009 15:32:22 +1100

Join our discussions about this exciting project to digitise 3,500 glass plate negatives documenting the 1870s gold rush era in New South Wales and Victoria.

The Holtermann Collection is an internationally significant collection of prints, albums and glass plate negatives, including the largest hand coated wet plate negatives ever made. The Holtermann collection depicts New South Wales and Victorian gold towns from 1872 to 1875, and the streets and buildings of Sydney and Melbourne between 1871 and 1876.

The rich detail captured by the wet-plate negatives records every shop, house and mine in the surveyed areas. Images from the collection are currently available on the Library website, but they do not do justice to the original glass plates. They were batched scanned from 2nd generation 35mm film copies several years ago, losing much of the fine detail in the process.

Through the collaborative support of many generous benefactors, the Library has begun the Holtermann Collection Digitisation Project. This project will enable the cleaning, conservation and improved rehousing and protection of the fragile glass plates. Each glass-plate negative will be re-scanned to produce high resolution digital images. As new digital images are created, you will be able to enjoy enhanced and improved access to the images through our website, the catalogues and the Discover Collections.

In this blog we will be discussing the various stages of the project - preservation, digitisation (how do you manage a 1.6 x 0.9 m wet plate negative?), as well as looking at the rich content of the images.

We welcome your feedback, comments and questions.

About the team

Scott Wajon, Coordinator, Imaging Services

Scott Wajon has been working with the photographic collections of the State Library of NSW since 1989. After spending a decade working in science, he started at the Library initially as a darkroom assistant, producing black and white prints from many of the Library's extensive negative collections. Scott is currently the Coordinator of Imaging Services and has been involved with all aspects of the Library's digitisation programs since their inception

Lang Ngo, Senior Conservator, Collection Preservation and Storage

Lang Ngo graduated from the University of Canberra in 1999 with a Bachelor of Applied Science in the Conservation of Cultural Materials specialising in paper conservation. Lang has previously worked at the State Library of Victoria and the Adelaide City Archives before taking up a position in 2001 at the State Library of New South Wales. She is currently a Senior Conservator in the Collection Preservation and Storage branch. Lang's most recent projects include the internal exhibitions Darwin Downunder, Bondi Jitterbug as well as Heritage Collection 2008.

For the Holtermann project Lang will be coordinating the preservation and rehousing of the Holtermann negatives with a team of assistant conservators. Each negative will cleaned and rehoused in archival quality folders and boxes in preparation for the digitisation process.

Alan Davies, Curator of Photographs, Original Materials

Alan is the Library's first Curator of Photographs. He previously worked at the University of Sydney for a decade, where in his spare time he read the Sydney Morning Herald for the 19th century (that took 7 years), wrote a history of 19th century Australian Photography, won a Churchill Fellowship to examine Australian photographs in British institutions and travelled NSW looking at photographs during the Bicentenary. He's been here for 20 years and has written another 5 books and numerous catalogues on aspects of photographic history and photographers.

Lauren O'Brien, Digitisation Officer, Imaging Services

Lauren's experience working with historical glass plate negatives comes from her work over the last 18 months as a digitiser with the Justice and Police Museum on their Forensic Photography Collections. She has also worked in photographic production for seven years previous to beginning her work with the museum in all facets ranging from film development and photographic printing to scanning, digital retouching and copy work. Her main role will be to use the new Creo iQsmart3 scanner to create high quality archival master files from each plate in the collection.