Harbor Digitizing

04/24/2024

We publish The Digitizing Report, a free biweekly-ish newsletter which documents the countless processes and techniques of this endlessly complex business. There's a link to subscribe for ongoing news and how-to articles... here is a recent issue that discusses the process of digitizing slides and negatives.

Capturing film with a digital camera

08/05/2023

New capability in the lab... non-destructive book scanning.

06/22/2023

We're back in operation at the new site!

05/12/2023

If you have been trying to reach us during the lab move, I just realized that our Unifi VOIP phone system went belly-up without an active net connection... so there has been no voicemail for 2 months! We're still here, and will update contact info as soon as the doors are open again.

05/09/2023

Our move to the new lab is almost done... two solid months of hard work! We are almost back in operation; in the meantime, here a couple of teaser photos, and I'm working on a little video walkthrough.

06/27/2022

One of the equipment consoles in the lab... I'm working on a video about the whole system.

02/12/2022

Latest equipment addition... the audio department now has an Otari MX-5050 reel-to-reel tape deck, routed through the MOTU audio system. We can now digitize professional tapes, whether straight to CD quality MP3, into a standalone field recorder, or to Logic in the Mac for editing.

12/14/2021

One of our background tasks at Harbor Digitizing is finding personal photographic treasures to turn into pixels while the films and videos are being processed. This is one of my favorites from my 17,000 mile bicycle adventure in the '80s. One sparkling September morning 37 years ago, I pedaled from my host's house in Aspen to a beautiful lakeside spot with a view of the Maroon Bells, where I was joined by Jeffrey Aaronson for a National Geographic photo shoot. His work from that day yielded iconic images of the Computing Across America adventure, including the book cover and a poster that spent decades on the wall at Hewlett-Packard Corvallis. It's fun to think back to a time when transmitting text over phone lines was actually newsworthy... I take the Internet so much for granted that I forget how far-away people used to be REALLY far away.

11/17/2021

August 10, 1940 - my father, Edward H. Roberts, was one of 775 passengers on the brand-new S.S. America... bound for the West Indies on her maiden voyage. With his new Revere model 88 movie camera, he captured 36 minutes of footage over the next 12 days... leaving New York City, open water, life aboard including some crazy games, St. Thomas, San Juan and the surrounding Puerto Rico countryside, close-ups of Haiti, and their last stop in Havana, Cuba. It is a marvel of history, and these two 5-inch reels were responsible for my acquiring digitizing tools and starting a business doing film and video work.

August 10, 1940 - my father, Edward H. Roberts, was one of 775 passengers on the brand-new S.S. America... bound for the West Indies on her maiden voyage. Wi...