Has anyone had any experience of using digital cameras with ultra violet or infra red techniques? Would either of these wavelengths damage the camera chip or not be recognised?
If the former, were the results any good and were there any special techniques used to enhance the final image? A client has a collection of about 100 very ancient documents in old French (pre French Revolution), which need copying for archive and translation purposes before they are returned to France. The client has already tried scanning some of the more robust pages on a flat bed scanner but this was not a good idea! The results are poor and some of the pages are too fragile and faded to do the whole job. Most of the pages (say around 300 pages in total) are up to A4 in size with about 10 to 20 up to A3 size. 85% are in good enough condition to read, once copied. The originals are on a variety of yellowing and faded substrates such as fine paper, parchment and velum. The ink is now faded and mostly brown but some is still black. There are several seals which are in a variety of colours which should be recorded as such. For accuracy,logistical and translation purposes we propose to do this by digital capture, keeping an RGB master for archival and maybe exhibition purposes. For the translation purpose only, it is necessary to have only a grey scale reproduction. The final image size would be A4. The remaining 15% of the documents are very faded and almost unreadable - mostly brown ink on brown parchment. We would like to keep to the same digital camera format. It is a long time since we used Infrared and Ultra Violet radiation techniques (as used in forensic and fine art photography) and wondered whether one of these would be suitable to enhance the illegible writing? All suggestions welcome. Thank you in anticipation! Norman Childs Mobile: +44(0)7831 519217 Telephone: +44(0)1256 767611 Fax: +44(0)1256 767612 Web site: www.greenshoots.co.uk =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
