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The Wingham Advance-Times, 1983-06-15, Page 27Page 10—Cgossroads—June 15, 1983 GOOD OLD DAYS—This is a copy (on Plus -X) of an original photo. The scene shows afternoon Iollygag- gers in Hershey Park, Pa. — the year was 1916 — now 1 gTh LensBy ; HOLT CONFER id* L Preserving the past For a great many months, I have been devot- ing some time to a very in- teresting project. The whole thing began when Charlie Castner de- cided to begin work on an extensive biography of Mil- ton Hershey. Charlie envi- sioned that part of the book would contain a photo- graphic review of the town history of Hershey, Pa. It seemed like an inno- cent enough request. Make a few copy negatives from existing photos, caption them and that would be it — right? Wrong! First of all I had to find the pictures I was sup- posed to copy. While I was asking around trying to lo- cate old photographs, Charlie wanted to know if I'd mind interviewing a few people along the way. So far I've talked to past presidents and officers of the Hershey corporation, those were the good old as well as a great many other people who knew and worked with Milton Her- shey. To date I covered nearly 40, with something like 50 more interviews still on my list. Time is very important in this project — Milton Hershey was 88 when he died in 1945, so the people who still remember him well are getting along in years. And there was a lot of picture taking: Once I got into the project I realized it was similar to trying to walk across a pool of quicksand: The further you go, the deeper you get. At one location I found close to 600 scrapbooks of Hershey memorabilia; an- other location produced nearly 300 scrapbooks. All this in addition to the bits and peices that suddenly began to appear in private collections. Many of the things I found were beginning to suffer the ravages of age — days! (Copy photo by Holt Confer) the newspaper clippings were yellow and many were beginning to show signs of cracking and mil- dew. We decided the first order off business needed to be making copy negatives of the rapidly deteriorating pieces so even if they couldn't be saved, we would at least have some- thing to remember them by. From time to time;tnost everyone has photographs or line copy they would like to duplicate, so let , me tell you quickly about the procedure we used. Our method had two things going for it: simplicity and speed. We picked up a regular cork bulletin board which we mounted vertically about 4 feet off the floor. Copying, of course can be done either vertically or horizontally and the only reason we chose to work vertically was because we could get into operation within a few hours. Two 500 -watt photo- floods mounted in 12 -inch reflectors were positioned about 3 feet away from the copy board. The light from each of these units was aimed., to strike the copy board at a 45 -degree angle. Getting the lights posi- tioned properly was proba- bly the most time-consum- ing part of the exercise, since having them both at the same height as well as the same distance away from the wall is important if you want to eliminate uneven lighting. I'd recom- mend using a tape measure to make certain all your distances are just about the same for each light. For exposure, take a re- flected light reading from an 18 -percent gray card, or use an incident light meter and put it up there in the center of the board facing the camera. It's a good idea to take several read- ings from your meter (no matter which method you use) at different parts of the copy board just to make certain your light distribution is even. For copying continuous tones (regular photo- graphs) with a 35 mm cam- era, use Plus X film. You'll get both fine grain for fu- ture enlargements and ex- cellent contrast. For those pictures that were turning yellow, I used a deep yel- low filter to return the prints to their original black and white appear- ance. For line copy and half tones (magazine or news- paper photographs that were dot etched for print- ing) you should use Kodak's High Contrast Copy Film (5069). This film has a clear rather than a gray base and provides excellent en- largements. Read the in- formation sheet enclosed with the film so you know how to process it, or know what kind,*f processing to specify m a custom lab. One last point. I held the photographs on the copy board with push pins, hold- ing them flat with the flange on the pin head. The pin itself was inserted into the cork board. Stop down your lens to at least f-11 and you're all set to preserve all the memo- ries of the good old days. King's birthdate George III of England was born on June 4, 1738. OTTAWA — CPR coach no. 1720 was recently col- lected by the National Muse- um of Science and Technol- ogy . 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