My 1980 Colour (Part 2)

The pictures I’ve selected from my colour work in 1980 are probably a fairly random cross-section of those I took, simply the pictures that I’ve scanned for some reason or other in the dozen or so years that I’ve owned a colour scanner.

It’s easy to forget that being able to easily put colour images on the web is something fairly recent. The main reason I bought my first digital camera in 1999 was to enable me to do so. I probably still have it in a drawer somewhere, a Fujifilm MX2700 which was a 2.2Mp camera, one of the leading non-professional models of the time, which gave reasonable results for web use (and with great difficulty and lengthy retouching a 6″x9″ print which was the only digital print in a large group photography show a few months later.)

Before then, I could get colour files by taking a print or slide into work and using the large flatbed scanner I had specified for the art department. It was a tricky beast to work, and while it did a reasonable job with prints, it pretty well failed with slides. I seldom bothered, and mostly used my home scanner – black and white only – to scan colour prints. Later I bought film scanners. The first, an early Canon, was pretty hopeless, but later I had a Microtek and a Minolta Multipro that gave high quality scans – but took a long time over each one.

You could of course also get high quality scans made commercially, but this was and is an expensive business. The Minolta could be coaxed to produce ‘drum scan’ quality at a file size one of London’s leading pro labs now charges £55 or more a time. Though cheaper and possibly better services are available elsewhere.

The My London Diary web site largely came about because of my switch to digital, although the early years have mainly scanned black and white images. But from the end of 2002 I had begun to work with a Nikon D100 alongside film, although it took another couple of years before I stopped using film and everything could easily be posted on my diary.

Here then is a small gallery from those colour transparencies that I have scanned from 1980 (or at least I think they are from 1980.) I think most or all of these were taken on Group 6 outings, though what was probably the only one I arranged that year was unusual in that I was the only person to turn up! My lone walk took me around Battersea and Wandsworth, including a number of views of the Thames and to the ‘Royal Laundry’. I’ve done just a little correction and removing dust etc on the scans, but most could be improved by more work – or by making new scans, but some of the originals may have deteriorated beyond redemption.

 

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London, 1980

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Wandsworth, 1980

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Wandsworth, 1980

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Battersea, London, 1980

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Margate, 1980

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Margate 1980

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Margate, 1980

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Wandsworth Rail Bridge and Fulham B Power Station, London, 1980

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From Chelsea Bridge, London, 1980

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Royal Laundry, Battersea, London, 1980

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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.

To order prints or reproduce images

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