Warwick records office

[cath151]

Hi
I will be visiting Warwick Records Office hopefully next week sometime. I have discovered they hold some photographs of my Grandfather and his business. I would love to have a few copies of these photos and wondered how the best way to get them was. Does the Record Office have facilities for copying photos or is there another way,  perhaps someone has done this before.
Thanks for any advice

Cathy

[YatesJones]

We visited an eldery relative a while back and had a one off opportunity to get copies of some great old family photos - used a decent camera phone, got the picture in a decent light without any glare and took a few shots.

We have since reproduced ours and they are fab; sometimes its the only way to take a decent copy and if its digital you can usually clean or sharpen it up.

[cath151]

Great, thanks so much , I will definitely try that, so surprised to see they were in the archives and so looking forward to seeing them.
Thanks again for your good advice
Cathy

[goldie61]

Hi Cath
I should check first with Warwick RO that they are actual photographs, and not negatives.
I too was very excited to find some 'photographs' of my great grandfather on The National Archives website, held at Greater Manchester Record Office. They had been deposited there in the 1960s, (unbeknownst to anybody else in the family!), so of course before anything digital. They turned out to be in thumbnail negative form, which meant I had to order photographs to be produced from the negatives, which took a couple of weeks if I remember rightly.
Very exciting to find them thought!

[cath151]

Hi
thanks, good advice , I will check, I wondered too how they found their way to the records office,
always worth trying their search facility, you never know what you might find.
Cathy

[goldie61]

I think the story eventually came out that in the 1960s, there was a sort of 'heritage' push, and people were asked if they had anything interesting to add to the archives. (I think they might have gone round organisations like the WI). And my lovely aunt deposited a handful of photos and a short piece of writing to go with each one. Bless her! 

[BushInn1746]

Hi

I have usually found the light too poor at Warwick CRO and have had to take many photographs, to get one half reasonable one, but even then, they don't have the sharpness of a scan because of camera shake, due to low shutter speeds.

I ordered a colour scan of a map in 3 x A3 overlapping scans and they were superb quality from WCRO on a CD, even when enlarged 3 or 4 times, the tiniest inked writing detail could be seen, without pixelating and lost quality, but I explained what I wanted, paid the fees and an outside person authorised by WCRO scanned it.

Mark

[cath151]

Thankyoy Mark
Sound advice, I think I will probably take photos for reference, see how usable they are and decide to order my favourite photos copies from WRO or , as Christmas is coming ask for them as a gift!
Best wishes
Cathy

[BushInn1746]

Hi Cathy

You could ask if WCRO has a camera stand, if your camera has a tripod socket.

Flash is banned (& also no good due to whiteout close-up), someone with steady hands inside really needs 1/60th of a second exposure time, or faster to get a clear photo, but their fluorescent lighting only gave longer exposure times, so some photos had camera shake.

Many years ago they had deliberately allowed bushes to grow near their small windows claiming it protected documents from sunlight.

Camera Fees
Generally, I see archive Camera Fees (just to use a camera can be as much as £20). This will often pay for one, two or three good resolution scan/s of postcard size photos anyway, depending on the camera fee amount & archive charges for scans.

Travel Cost
With the cost of fuel and relying on a driver, or cheapest train fares with a Railcard, if there is only a handful of items, or the archives can easily see which bits I want, I order from home and take my chance, from the Catalogue description.

A recent Will in colour was £25 posted, but the cheap train fare with a Railcard to Lincolnshire to read it first, would have cost more than £25, plus I would also need a midday meal too.

Plus, if the Will had been useful, I would have wanted to buy a colour copy anyway.

Mark