Michael

I am finished digitizing my slides, and these are the pictures I took quite a while ago in Asia. They might not quite qualify as historical, but they also are not contemporary.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mksfca/...7623183156017/

Best viewed as full screen slide shows.

Kathie

Thanks for sharing your old photos. Looking at how things have changed in the intervening years inspires me to digitize some of my old photos!

rhkkmk

i loved looking at the thai pics.....as kathie says WOW, things have changed for the people of thailand and those of us lucky enough to visit there...

rkkwan

Very very nice. Thanks for posting and sharing.

crellston

Excellent photos. Thank you for sharing them. It must have taken ages!

BostonHarbor

Michael, the photos from Shanghai in 1979 are amazing. I went through them twice.

How did you get access to psychiatric facilities, hospitals and and schools? Were you on a mission/official trip of some sort?

BTW, the lighting on the monk in the Temple of the Jade Buddha is gorgeous (this is the one I'm talking about: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mksfca/...7623032617314/)

It is wonderful seeing your "film captures" in digital form. I cannot imagine how long that must have taken. Thanks for the effort and for sharing these moments.

BostonHarbor

Oops, the parenthesis end ")" got caught as part of the link and it breaks the link. Here's a good one:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mksfca/...7623032617314/

Michael

We were one of the first non-Friends-of-China groups to be allowed to go to China officially after it was recognized. Officially we were students, although half the group was composed of individuals in their thirties and up. Our American leader was a psychology professor, and in those days, China was more interested in showing its modern facilities than its antiques (with the exception of the Forbidden City). So we visited a hospital and a commune in Canton, a college in Guilin, the psychiatric hospital and a housing compound in Shanghai--Beijing was the exception in that we only saw official sights (Forbidden City, various temples, the Summer Palace, the Great Wall).

Duplicating slides does not take that long, depending on the size one uses and the dust removal system. Eventually I gave up on the dust removal, which works extremely well, but more than doubles the time. The size I have uploaded takes less than a minute per slide, and then I edited them with Photoshop, mainly to remove dust. I did not notice the dust in all the pictures, and eventually I will have to go back over the pictures to re-edit some of them.

mohan

Thanks for sharing. I went to the Canton in 1979 I think, and Beijing, Inner Mongolia in 1982. Now China is a completely different country. I also have hundreds of slides need to be digitized. I am still looking for the machine. Do you like yours? Would you recommend it?

Michael

mohan,

I used an Epson Perfection V500 Photo and was very happy with it. It comes with Photoshop Element which was enough for my editing purposes, which included dust removal and some enhancing. It does take a while to get down to a rhythm and know what size to choose. I chose with 1200 dpi, knowing that I was not going to blow up my pictures and that it suffices for digital projection; 4 slides took less than 4 minutes. I also discovered that Photoshop does a better job of color correction than the built-in color correction of the Epson.

KMLoke

So far only viewed the Malaysia and Singapore photos. Thanks.

Visited Guangzhou and Beijing in mid 80s with a good friend. Still have vivid memories. The infrastructure for FITs wasn't quite developed then.

Cicerone

The Hong Kong shots are quite interesting, thanks for posting them. While the buildings are certainly taller now, and the harbour a bit more filled in, what is striking me most is <i>how clean the air was</i>. That is definitely our biggest change --- and biggest loss.

I am happy to see that the street markets are much the same, as are many of the New Territories scenes. While thankfully many of the hillside shanties are gone and people have moved to government housing, you can still find pockets, even on Hong Kong Island (i.e. Pok Fu Lam). It seems you took some photos from the airplane when approaching or leaving from Kai Tak; that thrilling landing exists no longer of course, as that airport has closed.

The Great Wall shots actually look quite hazy, but I am assuming that was fog rather than major air pollution in 1979. Pollution would make them quite hazy today I think.

Michael

I do not recall how I took the pictures of the housing, but I don't think that it was from the airplane. I am not that fast a photographer.

It may have been pollution that made the Great Wall pictures hazy. It was too hot for fog. However, I recall a haze elsewhere in China due to all the coal burning cooking implements. Or maybe I am confusing that with Indonesia.

Michael

Or maybe it was just plain hot and muggy, creating a haze that would not qualify as fog, and would not be attributed to pollution.

rkkwan

Photo "03 Hong Kong" looks like the Sham Shui Po area taken from a right side window on approach to Kai Tak Runway 13, about the time when it started that famous right-hand turn before final.

Michael

rkkwan,

Your familiarity with the area makes you the expert. I accept your definition.