Friday, April 25, 2014

Food Friday - Deviled Eggs

I had never cooked deviled eggs before and decided to give it a try. 

First I needed to hard boil some eggs.  This is how I did it:
Place eggs pan that has a cover.
Add water to cover  two inches above the eggs
Add a bit of salt if desired.
Bring water to a boil.
Remove from heat, cover and let it sit for twelve minutes.
Remove eggs, cool down with cold water.

Next was making the eggs:
12 Hardboiled eggs
1/2 Cup Mayonnaise
2 Teaspoons Mustard
Paprika

Peel eggs then slice eggs lengthwise in half
Remove yolks.  Place in bowl.  Blend well with Mayonnaise and Mustard. 
Put blended material back into the sectioned egg white.
Sprinkle with paprika
Keep refrigerated until ready to eat

And this was the end result:

Deviled Eggs - MI00184

Not bad.

Sunday, April 06, 2014

Super 8 Film Reels and Slides

Recording Super 8 Film Reels and Slides into a digital format

My mother was once an avid photographer.  I had inherited her Super 8 film reels all 37 of them. 
A short while ago I came across an article somewhere that mentioned old family films.  It stated that over time the film becomes brittle and that also the quality of the color can diminish.  My films had been sitting in rather poor storage conditions for quite some time.  I came to the decision that I should try to have them recorded digitally and now. 

I sent out a small reel to a professional transfer company to see what it would look like.  They immediately warned me before even doing the work that with the quality of the film I might not be happy with the results.  I had them proceed.  Yeah, you could tell it was an old home movie.  Shopped around around on line and found a company that I thought had a good balance of quality and economy.  If I would use the to go convert all the films it would cost me roughly eight hundred dollars.  At that cost I decided to experiment and try to do it myself.

I took out the small hand cranked viewer that I had, and tried recording the images with a digital camera.  It was pointless.  The two were no compatible.  Most everything came up on the camera as a bright blur.

 Next I decided to take out the old projector.  My sister had a projector screen, and let me borrow it for the project.  The projector, like the films were stored in the shed some time ago.  This was a bad decision on my part as they were exposed to excessive temperature extremes.  And then of course,  that was the shed that blew away (really it was. Find it in an older post).  I started up the projector.  The motor struggled sounding like an out of shape runner in a marathon.  The reels jolted with varying speeds and sometimes stood still.  This obviously just wouldn't work.

I had a friend that had a old projector and was nice enough to let me borrow it.  With borrowed projector and screen, I continued.  I play the films and recorded them with a digital camera.  The digital camera produced a Quicktime file.  I gave up on one of the reels, as it broke several times during the attempted play, and a second one later on, but the rest played adequately.

I downloaded two programs, DeVeDe and Brasero and used them to convert the files and then burn them onto DVDs that I can  watch them on my television.

My sister had slides and a slide projector.  The two of us worked together.  She worked the projector while I snapped the camera.  The work was in itself simple, but was an effort as there were about four thousand pictures.  When done, I burned all these images to DVD.  I think we picked a good time for the project as some of the slides were showing signs that the quality was degrading.


In hindsight, I learned more camera technique while going along with all this and could have done a bit better.  Overall, I think the results were of good quality considering the source materials, and the cost was minimal.