Photo Format

Photo prints

From a black-and-white image that took a whole day to expose to the colour prints every photo shop could make. Every print in the family album comes out of those two hundred years.

First photograph
1826
Taken by
Niépce
First colour photo
1861
Colour prints
1942 (Kodacolor)
Most common size
4R · 102 × 152 mm
Scan resolution
Up to 1200 dpi

Fig. 1 — Black-and-white prints from the 1950s

A stack of old black-and-white prints
Photographs1826Negatives1835Slides1936CD-ROM1985CF1994SmartMedia1995MMC1997SD1999xD2002

§ 01 — Timeline

From black and white to colour

  1. Niépce, View from the Window at Le Gras, 18261826
  2. A daguerreotype portrait, c. 18451839
  3. Maxwell, Tartan Ribbon, 18611861
  4. Eastman’s 1888 Kodak camera patent1888
  5. Stieglitz, Autochrome self-portrait, c. 19071907
  6. Kodacolor stamp on the back of a print1942
  7. An Epson photo scannerToday

1826 · 1 / 7

The first photograph

French inventor Nicéphore Niépce photographed the rooftops outside his window with an exposure lasting a whole day. It is the oldest surviving camera photograph.

Sorting through old prints
Fig. 2 — Sorting through decades of prints

§ 02 — Why digitise

Prints don’t stay new

Fading and yellowing

The dyes in colour prints break down over time, which is why so many 1970s and 80s photos have turned red or yellow. Black-and-white prints fade and develop a silvery sheen.

Damp, albums and sticking

  • Hong Kong’s humidity lets mould grow and prints stick together
  • Glue in old self-adhesive albums turns photos yellow
  • Without the negative, a lost print cannot be made again

Once scanned, every photo has a sharp digital copy and the originals can be put safely away.

Digitise my photos

§ 03 — Common sizes

Which prints do you have?

From Victorian cartes de visite to instant prints, Capture can scan photos up to 55 × 35 cm.

  • Carte de visite

    64 × 100 mm

    1860s

  • Cabinet card

    108 × 165 mm

    1870s

  • 3R

    89 × 127 mm

    Black & white

  • 4R

    102 × 152 mm

    Most common

  • 5R

    127 × 178 mm

    Enlargement

  • Polaroid

    88 × 107 mm

    Instant

  • Instax Mini

    54 × 86 mm

    Instant

Roughly to scale (in mm)

Digitise my photos

§ 04 — Preserve

Hand us the album

Photos that come out are scanned one by one. Those stuck in albums or framed behind glass are scanned in place with our 8-layer glare removal, with nothing taken apart.

Digitise my photos

Price

HK$2.5/ photo

Priced per photo. Each print is scanned at up to 1200 dpi, its colours restored with our patented colour science, and delivered as a high-quality JPEG.

Choose a USB drive or Google Photos for delivery.

Capture · Our team

Any Questions?
Feel free to contact
our Memory Specialists

Not sure what format you have or how best to handle it? WhatsApp us and one of the team will take a look.

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