harminar without its thronging crowd and cluttered environs is a sight hard to imagine today, but a reality that denizens beheld nearly a century ago. Such sights and more come alive in the images the State Department of Archaeology and Museums (DAM) produced from photographic technology of a bygone era.
The department embarked on a Rs. 40-lakh project to utilise its cache of photographic glass negatives that were in vogue before the advent of film in the 1960s. A task was formalised in 2010 which began in 2012 to digitise 4,500 glass negatives. Vision IT-India set out on the arduous task of opening the wooden boxes that contained the negatives which lay undisturbed for decades.
“Not many people would want to do this kind of work when they learn it deals with such old objects,” said N.K. Mani, a 28-year-old part of the 10-man team that laboured three years to complete the project a month ago.
Before film became commonly used, cameras used glass to capture images.
Nine-step process
The nine-step digitisation process that the team employed begins with selection of negatives that are fit enough for use. Data attributes of the image, called the metadata, are transcribed before the negatives are cleaned for digitisation with a high resolution scanner-camera.
However, the digital black and white images in their raw form are often a far cry from what photographers had captured on glass. Paulus Raveendra Eduri, who oversaw the project, said effects of moisture and dust has made some carefully made digital corrections to the images, necessary.
“Dust and moisture on the negatives can affect the photographic information, requiring some of correction. We also had to design a suitable workplace in the office of DAM to prevent further damage to the negatives,” he said. His team set up a modern workshop with air-conditioning in the crumbling photographic section of the building.
The digital data from negatives amounts to 1.5 terabytes. Four copies of the data have been made to ensure its survival. Additionally, Mr. Eduri and his team also printed digitised images on microfiche, a postcard-sized photographic film containing high resolution thumbnails of the images with metadata and which come with a 500-year warranty. Its director Sunita M. Bhagwat is now keen to have the film negatives digitised.
The Archaeology Department would soon plan an exhibition to showcase the photos, Ms. Sunita said.
The State Department of Archaeology and Museums embarks on a Rs. 40-lakh project to utilise its cache of photographic glass negatives that were in vogue before the advent of film in the 1960s
