Use your digital camera to do research

I have to admit that I am not very good at taking notes. Usually, after I get through I can't make out what I was writing about. When it comes to doing research in family history, I have a tendency to forget what I have seen and done. I do use Research Outlines and keep track of the sources I search, but sometimes I have a hard time remembering what the source looked like until I find myself searching it again. Digital photos have changed all that and cut down the amount of time I spend reading books and records in the libraries and repositories.


This is a downloaded image, saved to a flash drive or to the computer, of a U.S. Census record. I insert this image here to show the quality of downloaded images, so you can see and compare to a digital photo.


This second image is a photograph of a cemetery document. It was taken with a Canon XTi camera at 10.1 Megapixels. I used a camera stand to hold the camera and the image was automatically transferred from the camera to my computer by a USB connection to the camera. The blue lines are the base of the camera stand and used to align the image. I realize this image is a little crooked but I use it to demonstrate the quality of the image, not how straight it is.

The second image is highly readable. If you click on either image, you will get a full size view of the two images. The photograph actually shows more in the image than it does in real life looking at the paper. Since you can magnify the image, details that would be missed on the original paper show up clearly, such as, pencil marks and erasures.

This method of collecting information has a lot of advantages. You can spend more time looking and less time copying. You can copy all of the material and not just make notes. You don't have to pay for copy costs and you can go back and read the original record anytime you want to. You also save space by not having a huge stack of old copies of books and records.

Surprisingly, I have also had good results taking pictures of microfilmed records. I just point the camera at the projected image and click away. I do have to be careful that I am bracing the camera against the projector or using a tripod. I can't say that this type of use pays for the camera, but if you take enough pictures at libraries and repositories, you can certainly save a lot in copy costs.

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What do I do with all my records? Part 2

In the last post, I talked about scanning using desktop flat-bed scanners. There are alternatives. Camera technology has increased to the point where, in some instances, cameras can do the same job or better than a flat-bed scanner. This is particularly true with the higher resolution digital cameras that are now readily available.

The resolution of digital cameras is measured in pixels. Up to a point, the more the better. Over the past few years the resolution of digital cameras has steadily increased, the average low priced (under $300) camera will take very high resolution pictures. Cameras starting at below $100 have 7.0 Megapixel resolution. One Megapixel is a resolution of one million pixels. The higher the number, roughly speaking, the higher the resolution of the camera. However, cameras priced at the low end, have fairly cheap optics or lenses. In today's market (2008) higher end cameras, around $1000, have from 12 to 15 Megapixels. The number of Megapixels is also roughly comparable to the number of sensor units in the camera. The present upper limit is about 144 megapixels.

I have found that 10.1 Megapixel cameras take photos that are as detailed as scans from a flatbed scanner for documents and printed materials. However, for photos, you can still get a better image from a flatbed scanner. If you have a lot of family letters to scan, I might suggest using your camera on a tripod or other stand. Taking photos of the pages is tremendously faster than scanning and the resolution, if over 10 Megapixels, is comparable. If you have a camera already, you might try a few photos of documents to see if the resolution is acceptable or not.

Off the subject a little, you can take your camera to the library or other record repository and if the rules allow, take pictures of the pages of the book you are citing. Don't forget to take a picture of the title page and call number. Since there is no film involved, the pictures saved to your hard drive are certainly cheaper than paying for poor quality photocopies. You can also attach a copy of the document to your file for reference. (More on this technique later).

You can also use your digital camera to take pictures of actual physical objects, i.e. dolls, jewelry, guns, etc. The pictures can then be attached to your file to illustrate a family history.

Slides are a different matter. A lot of scanners sold today advertise that they can also scan slides. This is literally true, but the quality is really poor. I have yet to see a flatbed scanner produce an acceptable scan of a 35mm slide. To do slides, you should use a scanning service or, if you have a whole lot of slides, buy a dedicated slide scanner. Unfortunately, these devices are not cheap. Nikon makes a very good slide scanner called the CoolScan but it costs over $1000. If you read a lot of reviews, you will soon discover that this is about what it costs to get an adequate scan of a slide.

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What do I do with all my records?

One of the most challenging aspects of family history research is what to do with all of the stuff, papers, photographs and artifacts (heirlooms) we seem to accumulate. The companion question is how do I share my documents, photos, recordings, and so forth, with my family and other researchers. Popular genealogical publications run periodic articles on the subject and almost every seminar or conference has a class or two or even more on organization. From time to time, I will suggest some more current solutions to the problem. Technological changes have had the greatest impact on the area of storage and reproduction of all of this stuff. I will discuss the newest tools available to preserve and disseminate all of our collections of information. Please feel free to submit comments or ask questions.

The categories of items we accumulate likely fall into one of the following categories:

• Books and manuscripts
• Letters and journals
• Photographs or slides including paintings and other art work
  
• Original documents i.e. birth certificates, marriage certificates etc.
• Physical objects from furniture to jewelry and everything in between
• Voice recordings in a variety of formats including tape, cassette and digital
• Movies including old film formats and digital

I will start out with some suggestions for photographs and slides.

Most of us have a collection of photographs either in the form of slides or physical prints. The size and format of these objects can vary considerably, from small 1/2 frame slides to huge poster size (or larger) paintings or prints. Fortunately all of these formats can be digitized in high quality and stored in a variety of storage media and then made available to our family and other interested people.

Advances in technology have made it relatively simple to digitize photographic media. Flat photos of less than standard 8.5 x 11 inch format are best scanned by a flat bed scanner. Most of the scanners sold today attach to a computer by means of a USB cable. Almost all newer computers have at least one USB port. Higher priced scanners often offer an additional faster FireWire (IEEE 1394) cable port. Your computer may or may not have a FireWire port, so you may wish to identify the types of ports your computer has before purchasing a scanner. Scanner vary in price from less than $50 to more than $5000 depending on resolution, speed and paper handling capabilities. A good scanner for photographs can be purchased for under $100. The most popular brands of scanners are Epson and Canon.

The software provided with the scanner lets you scan an image and save it to your computer's hard drive. You may wish to invest in one or more external hard drives if you plan on doing a lot of scanning. Scanned images can take up a lot of storage space on your computer's hard drive and you may run out of space. Even more important, once you spend some time scanning your images, you don't want to lose them and you will need an external hard drive to backup your images. It is best to scan all your images into one folder, with subfolders for organization, so that you can backup the folder by dragging a copy onto your external drive.

Once you have the images scanned into your computer, you will need to label and organize them. To do this organization, you can use any number of photo organizing software programs. One of the best is Picasa3. This program is free from Google. See http://picasa.google.com/

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