How best to share my vintage magazines?

 Posted by on 27 August 2009  Vintage/Retro
Aug 272009
 

scifi1

Remember a few weeks ago? When I said that I was thinking about buying, on eBay, the two magazines above, because they happened to have been published during my birth month and year?

Well, I bought ‘em. And they arrived, and I have had a great time going through them and reading the stories and just looking at the vintage design and illustrations.

So I did a few more eBay searches, and I’m currently awaiting delivery of several more magazines from October, 1976. I’m going to be the proud owner of a vintage Rolling Stone (actually, I’ve already received that one — and it’s awesome), plus an old Popular Science, a Mad magazine, a High Times — even a Playboy.*

I recommend it, if you’re into vintage stuff at all.

However, I’d like to share my vintage magazines with the world, and I’m wondering if anyone has a good idea how to go about it.

I considered scanning each and every page of each and every magazine. I don’t mind the time that this will take — I’m looking at this as a long-term project — but I really am wary of creasing the spines of some of these magazines. They are in fantastic shape, and I don’t want to wreck them; some of the pages are a bit on the brittle side.

I also know that scanning pages sometimes gives you weird moire patterns, and sometimes the other side of the paper bleeds through. As well, the Rolling Stone, at least, is far too big to scan.

So I thought about taking pictures of each page, but I know that then the pages won’t lay flat.

Any insight on the best way to digitize these old magazines? I really don’t want to take out the staples or something like that.

(*update: the PopSci, Mad and Playboy — explicitly NOT just for the articles — arrived in today’s mail)

Grant Hamilton

  • Colin Corneau

    Many scanners and/or related software will allow you to compensate for the moire pattern.

    You could also simply photograph the pages, using a sheet of clear glass to hold them flat — I do that all the time to make contact sheets of negatives in the darkroom.*

    * Don’t be alarmed, children. These are technical terms for pre-digital photography.

    • http://www.absurdintellectual.com/ Grant Hamilton

      Do you have any kind of holder for a camera, so that it can be suspended over the page without me holding it? That would allow a perfectly level angle, too.

      What about reflection off the glass?

  • Colin Corneau

    You’re talking about a little thing called a “copy stand”. It’s a rig set up to mount your camera 90-degrees directly over whatever you’re copying, and to have two lights equally spaced on either side, at a precise 45 degree angle.

    This formula should not only give you smooth even lighting but keep any reflections from occurring, too.

    Something like this:
    http://www.gov.im/lib/images/dha/police/csi/copystand2.jpg