Author Archives: pdburns

Cultural Heritage Imaging and Archiving 2015 Call

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Mince pie with required splodge of Bird’s custard

OK, a snapshot of my first mince pie of the season may not qualify as cultural heritage imaging, but you probably have an equivalent at your house. While we are on the subject …

Please consider participating in IS&T’s Archiving 2015 Conference, to be held next May at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. Here is the Call for Papers

As you will see, a range of topics are covered in the meeting,

  • digital preservation
  • partnerships, managing content and curation
  • preserving dynamic media
  • using tools and services

and, yes imaging technology for libraries and museums.

                     Abstract submission deadline: 8 Dec. 2014 imaging_org_conf_archiving3

p.s. ‘overeats’ is an anagram for ‘ta everso’. Photo: C. Ellis for Burns Digital Imaging LLC

EI 2015 Presentation: Intrinsic Camera Resolution

You say you want resolution, well you know you'd better measure it first ....Judit Martinez Bauza, Qualcomm Inc, and I will be presenting the results of a study to develop a method for intrinsic camera resolution evaluation. This will be part of the Image Quality and System Performance Conference, http://spie.org/EI/conferencedetails/image-quality-system-performance

The measure is intended to ‘see through’ operations for which image detail is retrievable but measure the loss of image resolution otherwise. We adopt a two-stage image capture model. The first stage comprises a locally-stable point-spread function (lens), the integration and sampling by the detector (imager), and the introduction of detector noise. The second stage comprises the spatial image processing. We describe the validation of the method, which was done using both simulation and actual camera evaluations.

Photogrammar, FSA Collection and Film Scanning Image Quality Assurance

National Public Radio today broadcast a story about a web-based tool for organizing and searching the US Library of Congress’s large collection of depression-era (1935-46) Photographs. The collection was created by US Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information.fig1

Photogrammar, organized by Professor Laura Wexler and a team at Yale University, provides several ways to explore the collection.  Links are provided to the posted digital records, including the high-resolution digital images.

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Medical unit training, Greenville SC. Jack Delano 1943.

Film (Re-) Scanning: The original film scanning was performed in the 1990s, but in 2010 the Library of Congress (LC) started a project to rescan the film originals, following improvements in image capture technology. This effort is initially focusing on the most at-risk film negatives, according to Don Williams who contributes to imaging performance monitoring and standards for LC. Don (Image Science Associates) and I provide both consulting and tools to support this and other image quality assurance programs. The project is ongoing.

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Scanner test target

FADGI: The guidelines used to maintain consistent imaging performance were developed under the Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative (FADGI), and include techniques that Don and I present in our series of courses and workshops, e.g. IS&T’s Archiving Conference. In 2015 the conference will be held at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

Peter D. Burns, Burns Digital Imaging LLC

Literature Word Cloud Puzzle

The text of a famous literary work (minus the main character) was used to generate this word cloud?  Q1. Name the author.  Q2. Name the work.

Hint 1: The word ‘reshapes’ can be name from the letters of the author’s last name.

Hint 2: The phrase ‘Hear me as I will speak,’ is an anagram of the author’s first and last name.

Hint 3: I think his mum would have called the author Bill.

Answer: Hamlet, Williams Shakespeare

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