Kodak Photo Cd Circa 1995

I found some success! Downloaded a trial of PCDMAGIC and it worked.

=== opps - free version only creates tiny images ===



See UPDATE below!

'

Unfortunately the scans were very small. Probably considered "high rez" in those days.

The conversion software tends to blow out the highlights. I had to work a bit in Lightroom on these. Hard to think about those days of traveling with maybe three rolls of film and using every shot so sparingly.

How cool! I do remember having a few of these old Kodak cd's. Nice job recovering.

Thanks Joann. I recall them being very expensive too. Asking for one for my birthday. You could add to them by sending them back in with a new roll of film. I was so poor back then I think I never used one of them because I was waiting for an "important" roll of film to send off.

I probably should dig out my old CDs. I actually think I have some actual disks, too.

I recall this is the type of shot I was after back then. More street photography, hoping to catch some ironic circumstances. Here a young kid mows down the seniors with his rifle. What's more Disney than this scene?

Interesting that I'm getting a Fujifilm x100t this week so I can do more of this type work in the future.

I don't even remember what camera I was using. Must have been a small one. I lost my trusty OM-10 a few years prior when I fell through the ice trying to rescue a bird (which didn't need it) and didn't have the cash to replace it.


The film was KODAK T-MAX 100 Professional. I was really into national parks and the outdoors at the time. My wife's co-worker offered us his condo in Orlando so we headed down with my old college roommate. I really had the idea of showing the falseness of Disney on this trip.

I found small photo discs (not CDs) from an old disc camera when we cleaned out my parents home last spring after my mother passed away. I stuck them in with some old photos I brought home. Would anyone happen to know how to get them processed?

Kathy K. McClellan
http://keppenart.com

Edward: Can you imagine a child brandishing a play rifle nowadays anywhere in public? !

I remember those cameras. The film was on a disk like a View Master. Maybe one of those big processing places in NYC would do them.

....

A kid to got shot holding up a toy gun just a while ago. But true, I wonder if Disney World still sells them.

Just noticed that the demo version is the reason for the small file size. I'll have to figure something out. I'm not going to buy a program to convert a few images...

I also had purchased the then optional digital disk in the late 1990s and what I found out was-
that Kodak had placed their proprietary software embedded on each file which in turn affected ALL of my image files on my desktop.
I then could not open my other editing software until I removed Kodak's. It was a nightmare for awhile. I was new then to digital darkroom.

I like your shots Edward. I began using the T-Max when it first came out in the late '80s with both 35mm and 2 1/4 and found that the common
methods used for processing B&W by the labs was not correct for the T-max films and those untrained lab techs ruined many rolls.
T-MAX needed more agitation than Tri-x or Plus-x or you would see spots on the film.

Ken.

Edward,
when I remember right, the files were stored in six different sizes on the disk. May be the trial version only opens the smallest one (for index print) . How many pixels did You get?

+++++++ UPDATE:

After messing around with lots of outdated info and a few trial software packages....I found this info and it worked in unlocking the larger images for free:

"I just downloaded irfanview AND its plugins from tucows.com. The plugin "photo-cd" include higher resolution views. This software is a god-send for me who converted ALL the family memories on film to pcd format in the mid nineties. I have been at a loss how to unlock them using CS3 photoshop. The adobe plugin on the goodies file mentioned above works fine and I am grateful for the hint in this thread, but the batch convert and rename feature of irfanview is just terrific for me."


So you need "irfanview" and the plugin package. Then under settings make sure you are opening the largest version. The Kodak PCD format embedded a variety of sizes in one file so the trick is to unlock the largest one.

I ended up with a 13M or 3072 x 2048 pixel file.

http://www.dwaynesphoto.com/newsite2006/disc-126-film.html these guys say they can process the disc films that you're talking about Kathy.

OK now I'm able to offer some honkin' big prints.

Fine solution! So You did not choose the greatest size which was optional in this days and had 4096 * 6144 pixels.

Thanks, Joshua. I'll have to check them out. It will be interesting to see what's on those discs.

Kathy

Kathy K. McClellan
http://keppenart.com

There is an open source freeware software that can open the PCD files, http://pcdtojpeg.sourceforge.net/Home.html

just tested it on one of my old scans... Went to the Atlantis in the Bahamas as part of a ship party back in the tech boom days (one heck of a ship party) and shot slide film... had those scanned... looks like the native resolution was 3072 x 2048...

the software is command line... but you can adjust the brightness of the export... might have to go through them... I remember it being a good trip... what I remember of it at least...

to do a whole directory under mac : find *.PCD -exec ~/pcdtojpeg -q 100 -r 4 {} ;

where ~/pcdtojpeg is the directory of the pcdtojpeg binary

you can try -r 5 which is a higher resolution but it was not present in my PCD files...

The command line part scares me. It been a while since I monkeyed around with DOS type stuff. I tried that first. I'm running Windows 8 and the command line appeared and then disappeared.

I got Infaview to work on one of my shots but then it didn't. I'll work on it more today. Consider that one could take a glass plate negative from 100 years ago and print it but one has to go through all of this trouble to open a 20 year old file is ridiculous.

Whatever remains of Kodak should just allow Adobe to use the technology. I read that Photoshop CS2 & 3 can open these files, just not save in the format.