Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, Georgia
Shortly before our vacation in August, I received a mailing from Seattle Film Works. It contained two rolls of 35mm film and catchy descriptions of the types of processing they perform. No longer do they only develop and print photographs; they now produce digitized images on CD-ROM, they e-mail you a link to a Web site where your own digitized pictures are stored, and they will store those images there forever for free as long as you process at least two rolls of film each year. I decided to experiment with my vacation photography by using a roll of Seattle's film, a roll of Kodak film and a Fuji disposable camera.

We visited several family cemeteries during our vacation in South Carolina and took pictures with each of the cameras. On our way home, we stopped overnight in Savannah, GA, and spent the next morning wandering through the incredible Bonaventure Cemetery. You will recall it as one of the venues in John Berendt's bestseller, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. It was in this wonderful place on a hot, muggy August morning that we finished our film taking pictures of some of the more interesting, poignant and extraordinary grave markers in the South.

On our return home, I took film to the local pharmacy and requested prints and photo CDs of two rolls of Kodak film and of the Fuji disposable camera. I also mailed the other roll to Seattle Film Works. The results were interesting.

The Kodak and Fuji film came back as prints and on photo CDs. Included was a Kodak program that helped me with several functions, most importantly with modifying the images and saving them to my computer's hard disk. As a genealogist studying these tombstones, the "enhance" function allowed me to trim (crop) the picture to make it more attractive or to highlight a detailed area. In addition, I was able to adjust the brightness and contrast of the picture, and another function called "sharpen" added a somewhat more granular effect to the image. By using one or more of these three functions, I actually sharpened the detail on the even the worst of the photographs so that the inscriptions could be read with much greater clarity.

Seattle Film Works (http://www.filmworks.com) sent me an e-mail with the Web address where my pictures could be viewed. The prints and photo CD were already on the way. At the Web site, I could see the results and even e-mail them to myself and others. When the package arrived, it contained the prints, the CD and a new (free) roll of film. Seattle's CD also contained software that performed all the functions on the Kodak CD. I was able to manipulate and enhance/improve the photos we had taken.

From a cost perspective, Seattle was the better deal. Their processing cost for everything was $14.90; processing for two rolls of 35mm Kodak film and the Fuji camera through the pharmacy was $66.80 (or $22.26 each).

The Digital Camera
Digital cameras have taken the photography world by storm. They promise perfect pictures each and every time because you can compose them on the spot and preview them immediately after you take them. The fact is that the cameras can cost you a lot of money up front, but you do get a great deal of control over your final product.

We recently purchased a digital camera through the Internet. We comparison shopped for the basic features we wanted in a price range we could afford. Once we had the make and model number, we then searched the Web and found a number of dealers. We were astonished at the price range for the camera we wanted: $234 to $479—for the identical camera!

When the camera arrived, I read the instructions for this complicated little item and began snapping pictures, reviewing them and deleting them. The pictures are stored on a SmartCard, which is something like a floppy disk. Whenever you're ready or when you have filled the card, you connect the camera to your computer and transfer the pictures. That means that, if I'm in the middle of a cemetery and have filled my SmartCard, I have to either replace the SmartCard or head back to my computer and transfer the pictures.

The card that came with my camera is 2MB which can contain 12-13 images. Other cards may be ordered in 4MB, 8MB, 16MB and 32MB sizes to hold larger amounts of data. I quickly ordered the 32MB card for $49 more. The software that comes with a digital camera allows you to transfer the pictures to the computer and then to edit them just as the Kodak and Seattle CDs do. And you will need the software because you will, indeed, want to crop and sharpen images for clarity and aesthetics.

Digital Photography and Your Genealogy
Photographs are an integral part of our genealogical materials. Not only do we want to preserve the images of our families and friends for an extended period of time, but we use photos to capture images of homes, buildings, weddings, parties, reunions, cemeteries, gravestones, and a variety of other subjects.

Using digital cameras and photo CDs, and the software that comes with them, we are now able to capture these moments and edit the pictures to their best advantage. Poor photographs such as my gravestone pictures can be enhanced to bring out details that otherwise would be lost. In addition, these electronic images can be stored for longer periods without the degradation of color quality that occurs in the printed photographs we took a mere twenty years ago.

These images can be stored on your computer, sent via e-mail to family and friends, incorporated into some of the genealogical database programs, printed and processed in other ways. Given all this flexibility, you may want to consider digital photographs for your future needs. Not everyone will want to invest several hundred dollars in a digital camera, but the photo CD option will provide you with digital photography tools to create and manage your photo needs. Try it on your next cemetery trip!

Happy hunting!

George

The article originally appeared in the Genealogy Forum on America Online. You may send e-mail to alonglines@aol.com. George Morgan would like to hear from you but, because of the volume of e-mail, is unable to personally respond to each letter individually. He also regrets that he cannot assist you with your personal genealogical research.

George is also the author of "The Genealogy Forum on America Online," which is available in the Ancestry Online Store at: http://shop.myfamily.com/ancestrycatalog/
product.asp?pf%5Fid=1101046&dept%5Fid=10102000