All posts by Spencer Bevis

Behind the Scenes, Digital Collections, Digitization Expertise, Equipment, Technology

Lighting and the PhaseOne: It’s More Than Point and Shoot

Last week, I went to go see the movie IT: Chapter 2. One thing I really appreciated about the movie was how it used a scene’s lighting to full effect. Some scenes are brightly lit to signify the friendship among the main characters. Conversely, there are dark scenes that signify the evil Pennywise the Clown. For the movie crew, no doubt it took a lot of time and manpower to light an individual scene – especially when the movie is nearly 3 hours long.

We do the same type of light setup and management inside the Digital Production Center (DPC) when we take photos of objects like books, letters, or manuscripts. Today, I will talk specifically about how we light the bound material that comes our way, like books or booklets. Generally, this type of material is always going to be shot on our PhaseOne camera, so I will particularly highlight that lighting setup today.

Before We Begin

It’s not enough to just turn the lights on in our camera room to do the trick. In order to properly light all the things that need to be shot on the PhaseOne, we have specific tools and products we use that you can see in the photo below.

We have 4 high-powered lights (two sets of two Buhl SoftCube SC-150 models) pointed directly in the camera’s field of view. There are two on the right and two on the left. These are stationed approximately 3.5 feet off the ground and approximately 2.5 feet away from the objects themselves. These lights are supported by Avenger A630B light stands. They allow for a wide range of movement, extension, and support if we need them.

But if bright, hot lights were pointed directly at sensitive documents for hours, it would damage them. So light diffusers are necessary. For both sets of lights, we have 3 layers of material to diffuse the light and prevent material from warping or text from fading. The first layer, directly attached to the light box itself, is an inexpensive sheet of diffusion fabric. This type of material is often made from nylon or silk, and are usually inexpensive.

The second diffusion layer is an FJ Westcott Scrim Jim, a similar thin fabric that is attached to a lightweight stand-up frame, the Manfrotto 156BLB. This frame can also be moved or extended if need be. The last layer is another sheet of diffusion fabric, attached to a makeshift “cube” held up by lightweight wooden rods. This cube can be picked up or carried, making it very convenient if we need to eventually move our lights.

So in total, we have 4 lights, 4 layers of diffusion fabric attached to the light boxes, two Scrim Jims, and the cube featuring 2 sides of additional diffusion fabric. After having all these items stationed, surely we can start taking pictures, right? Not yet.

Around the Room

There are still more things to be aware of – this time in the camera room itself. We gently place the materials themselves on a cradle lined with a black felt, similar to velvet. This cradle is visible in the bottom right part of the photo above. It is placed on top of a table, also coated in black felt. This is done so no background colors bounce back or reflect onto the object and change what it looks like in the final image itself. The walls of the camera room are also painted a neutral grey color for the same reason, as you can see in the background of the above photo. Finally, any tiny reflective segments between the ceiling tiles have been blacked out with gaffer tape. Having the room this muted and intentionally dark also helps us when we have to shoot multi-spectral images. No expense has been spared to make sure our colors and photos are correct.

Camera Settings

With all these precautions in place, can we finally take photos of our materials? Almost. Before we can start photographing, we have to run some tests to make sure everything looks correct to our computers. After making sure our objects are sharp and in focus, we use a program called DTDCH (see the photo to the right) to adjust the aperture and exposure of the PhaseOne so that nothing appears either way too dim or too bright. In our camera room, we use a PhaseOne IQ180 with a Schneider Kreuznach Apo-Digitar lens (visible in the top-right corner of the photo above). We also use the program CaptureOne to capture, save, and export our photos.

Once the shot is in focus and appropriately bright, we will check our colors against an X-Rite ColorChecker Classic card (see the photo on the left) to verify that our camera has a correct white balance. When we take a photo of the ColorChecker, CaptureOne displays a series of numbers, known as RGB values, found in the photo’s colors. We will check these numbers against what they should be, so we know that our photo looks accurate. If these numbers match up, we can continue. You could check our work by saving the photo on the left and opening it in a program like Adobe Photoshop.

Finally, we have specific color profiles that the DPC uses to ensure that all our colors appear accurate as well. For more information on how we consistently calibrate the color in our images, please check out this previous blog post.

After all this setup, now we can finally shoot photos! Lighting our materials for the PhaseOne is a lot of hard work and preparation. But it is well worth it to fulfill our mission of digitizing images for preservation.

Digital Collections, Duke Digital Repository, Projects

Celebrating a New Duke Digital Collections Milestone with Section A

Duke Digital Collections recently passed 100,000 items!

 

Last week, it was brought to our attention that Duke Digital Collections recently passed 100,000 individual items found in the Duke Digital Repository! To celebrate, I want to highlight some of the most recent materials digitized and uploaded from our Section A project. In the past, Bitstreams has blogged about what Section A is and what it means, but it’s been a couple of years since that post, and a little refresher couldn’t hurt.

What is Section A?

In 2016, the staff of Rubenstein Research Services proposed a mass digitization project of Section A. This is the umbrella term for 175 boxes of different historic materials that users often request – manuscripts, correspondence, receipts, diaries, drawings, and more. These boxes contain around 3,900 small collections that all had their own workflows. Every box needs consultations from Rubenstein Research Services, review by Library Conservation Department staff, review by Technical Services, metadata updates, and more, all to make sure that the collections could be launched and hosted within the Duke Digital Repository. 

In the 2 years since that blog post, so much has happened! The first 2 Section A collections had gone live as a sort of proof-of-concept, and as a way to define what the digitization project would be and what it would look like. We’ve added over 500 more collections from Section A since then. This somehow barely even scratches the surface of the entire project! We’re digitizing the collections in alphabetical order, and even after all the collections that have gone online, we are currently still only on the letter “C”! 

Nonetheless, there is already plenty of materials to check out and enjoy. I was a student of history in college, so in this blog post, I want to particularly highlight some of the historic materials from the latter half of the 19th century.

Showing off some of Section A

Clara Barton’s description of the Grand Hotel de la Paix in Lyon, France.

In 1869, after her work as a nurse in the Civil War, Clara Barton traveled around Europe to Geneva, Switzerland and Corsica, France. Included in the Duke Digital Collections is her diary and calling cards from her time there. These pages detail where she visited and stayed throughout the year. She also wrote about her views on the different European countries, how Americans and Europeans compare, and more. Despite her storied career and her many travels that year, Miss Barton felt that “I have accomplished very little in a year”, and hoped that in 1870, she “may be accounted worthy once more to take my place among the workers of the world, either in my own country or in some other”.

Back in America, around 1900, the Rev. John Malachi Bowden began dictating and documenting his experiences as a Confederate soldier during the Civil War, one of many that a nurse like Miss Barton may have treated. Although Bowden says he was not necessarily a secessionist at the beginning of the Civil War, he joined the 2nd Georgia Regiment in August 1861 after Georgia had seceded. During his time in the regiment, he fought in the Battles of Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Spotsylvania Court House, and more. In 1864, Union forced captured and held Bowden as a prisoner at Maryland’s Point Lookout Prison, where he describes in great detail what life was like as a POW before his eventual release. He writes that he was “so indignant at being in a Federal prison” that he refused to cut his hair. His hair eventually grew to be shoulder-length, “somewhat like Buffalo Bill’s.”

Speaking of whom, Duke Digital Collections also has some material from Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody), courtesy of the Section A initiative. A showman and entertainer who performed in cowboy shows throughout the latter half of the 19th century, Buffalo Bill was enormously popular wherever he went. In this collection, he writes to a Brother Miner about how he invited seventy-five of his “old Brothers” from Bedford, VA to visit him in Roanoke. There is also a brief itinerary of future shows throughout North Carolina and South Carolina. This includes a stop here in Durham, NC a few weeks after Bill wrote this letter.

Buffalo Bill’s letter to his “Brother Miner”, dated October 17, 1916.

Around this time, Walter Clark, associate justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court, began writing his own histories of North Carolina throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Three of Clark’s articles prepared for the University Magazine of the University of North Carolina have been digitized as part of Section A. This includes an article entitled “North Carolina in War”, where he made note of the Generals from North Carolina engaged in every war up to that point. It’s possible that John Malachi Bowden was once on the battlefield alongside some of these generals mentioned in Clark’s writings. This type of synergy in our collection is what makes Section A so exciting to dive into.

As the new Still Image Digitization Specialist at the Duke Digital Production Center, seeing projects like this take off in such a spectacular way is near and dear to my heart. Even just the four collections I’ve highlighted here have been so informative. We still have so many more Section A boxes to digitize and host online. It’s so exciting to think of what we might find and what we’ll digitize for all the world to see. Our work never stops, so remember to stay updated on Duke Digital Collections to see some of these newly digitized collections as they become available.