A Motorcycle trip from the past.

[jomike]

I have been wanting to digitise my old photos for a while now, but my old HP scanner will not work with Vista. In another thread, Bodoman ( thanks Basil) mentioned just taking a photo of the photo, so I tried this. I used my Tamron 90mm macro and the camera set up on a tripod.
Quite pleased with the results, you can tweak the raw photos in Lightroom to look better than the originals.

Decided to share these of two motorcycle trips I made in 1981/2. I was living in Johannesburg South Africa at the time, and the trips were to Cape Town, a distance of 1000 miles/1600km.
All the photos were taken with cheap Kodak Instamatic type point and shoot cameras.

The only shot I seem to have of the first trip in 1981.

Setting off from home



This was a memorable trip, because I met my wife to be in Cape Town.

The next year we made the same trip again, two up this time. These pics were all taken by the mrs. for reasons I will explain.

In the Karoo



Hex River Valley. It started to rain here and we got soaked.



In the camping ground in Cape Town. The baby is the son of friends of ours who had travelled down by car. Ironically he was killed in a motorcycle accident about 5 years ago.



Cape Point, the meeting point of the Atlantic and Indian oceans.



The reason why none of my photos survived is because we had an accident between George and Knysna. luckily without serious injury. My camera did not survive though.



The bike was rebuilt. this was a few years later.



None of these photos are technically good, just snapshots. They do show why we take photos, to preserve memories, a point we sometimes forget when arguing about brands, technique, etc.

 

[scotty94]

Great post mate, I've got hundreds of pics from motorcycle racing that are on film, which I have been meaning to scan forever now.....must get to that sometime.

The bike looks mint after its rebuild as well

 

[Tobers]

I like those! I think you've gone to extremes shortening the wheelbase of the bike to improve turn-in though.

Cant say enough about how good those waterproof trousers look on you.

 

[Gordon @ Convergent AV]

Yes, memento is definately a reason for taking photographs.
I was at my parents a few weeks ago searching for an old photograph I had taken and ended up sitting for about an hour looking through old images of childhood holidays and birthdays. It was great.

 

[jomike]

Great post mate, I've got hundreds of pics from motorcycle racing that are on film, which I have been meaning to scan forever now.....must get to that sometime.

The bike looks mint after its rebuild as well

I think photographing the photo is quicker than scanning, and if you shoot in raw, you have more scope to fix the photo. The white balance on some of these was way out, and they were age yellowed. Easy to fix with one click in Lightroom.

The bike is a 1981 Kawasaki GPZ 550, the first in a long line of GPZ Kawas

I like those! I think you've gone to extremes shortening the wheelbase of the bike to improve turn-in though.

Cant say enough about how good those waterproof trousers look on you.

Well, always fashion conscious They let in a lot of water as well.

Yes, memento is definately a reason for taking photographs.
I was at my parents a few weeks ago searching for an old photograph I had taken and ended up sitting for about an hour looking through old images of childhood holidays and birthdays. It was great.

I spent most of last evening going through a large box of old photos. Still have hundreds I want to digitise.