I spent at least half my photographic life shooting film. Color and b/w neg, transparency, even some crazy "instant" roll films from Polaroid (waaay back). I had a VERY small sampling of these, going as far back as the 1980's, scanned to Kodak Photo CD. Remember those? Well I had almost forgotten about that disc, until recently when I was tech-editing a book on iphoneography. The history of digital imaging was part of the book and there was a small segment on Kodak Photo CD's. It got me wondering, "Could I still even OPEN those files?".

Well, I dug out the disc and sure enough, neither Bridge, nor Lightroom nor Photoshop could open the images. Adobe stopped supporting PCD's somewhere around CS2/CS3, well after Kodak stopped supporting the plug-in.
So after searching around the web I did find a command-line tool that would convert PCD images to high-quality jpegs, and after some trial and error, I actually go the script to work. The script is free and it's called pcdtojpeg, easliy downloadable by quickly Googling the script name.

I pulled in about 52 images, imported them into Lightroom and began processing. In some cases, I even left the slide frame borders on the images; it added a nice, retro feel.

It was an eye-opening experience in many ways. I admit, I've gotten very spoiled when it comes to rescuing both shadow and highlight detail so easily and successfully in a RAW image. In the photos below, shadow detail dropped off very quickly (these were all slides to begin with). And trying to draw detail out only resulted in a very grainy, off-color result in most cases.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this look through yesteryear. It was fun to pull the images together and a very clear teaching moment about the fleeting lifespan - and accessibility - of digital media.
It's very weird now, opening files in Lightroom and seeing NO metadata, other than what I add on import.It really makes you realize how much has changed.
This series of black and white images are special to me because they were shot with a unique, instant roll film created by Polaroid back in the early - mid 1980's. A completely dry process, you exposed your film, then used a special processing tool, which sandwiched the filmed and a chemical pack together. You then reversed the gears in the processing box and stripped off the chemical pack. The film was VERY fragile but - IMO - produced wonderful black and white images. The color version of the film was interesting, but not nearly as beautiful as the results from the black and white film. Oh and these were slides, by the way.
Multiple exposure, the old school way.

Yes, in-camera multiple exposure, a trick I learned from my favorite photographer, Freeman Patterson. I admit, I took additional liberties here, by reducing the Clarity setting to further enhance the effect.

Ah, the good days, when you tried these things out and had to wait at least a day to find out if it worked. :-)
Wasaga Beach, early 80's. I may have even shot this on my original Praktica camera.
Kodachrome 200. Oh I miss these films . . . No color filters on the front of my lens for these original images, but I plead guilty to beefing up the Virbrance a bit in LIghtroom.
Another Kodachrome 200 image. The grain structure is so much of the character of this film.
Medium format, shot on a Mamyia 6x7 RB, if I remember correctly.
Sharpening
 
At first I didn't apply any sharpening. But as I studied the images more, I started to notice a general fuzziness. Which makes complete sense; images scanned to digital format, then reconverted as JPEG files. There's bound to be a loss in sharpness. 
 
I applied sharpening to all of these images, sometimes excessively. But I made consistent use of the sharpening mask, setting it between 85 and 100%, depending on the image.
This image was a staple of mine for my 1-st year imaging courses. Lots of retouching and tonal correction to be done.
 
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