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The Keith Berry Photo Archive

Morturn

Morturn

Super Moderator
Staff member

Methodology for Processing the Keith Berry Image Collection​

This document outlines the process used to prepare the images from the Keith Berry PDF collection for online presentation on the Birmingham History Forum. The primary goals were to preserve the historical integrity of the images while ensuring a consistent and high-quality viewing experience within the forum's technical constraints.

1. Source Material & Historical Context
The images were extracted from 15 PDF files, which were created from the personal website of the late local historian, Keith Berry. Research indicates that Mr. Berry was a film photographer, and these images are scans of physical photographs that were subsequently shared online. As such, they are derivative copies, not original digital files. The processing aimed to enhance these existing digital files for web display.

2. Extraction and Archiving

  • The images were extracted from the PDFs using Adobe Acrobat Pro.
  • The extraction format was TIFF to create a high-quality, lossless master archive for long-term preservation.
3. Image Processing and Sizing
A tiered approach was used based on the condition of each extracted image:

  • A. Standard Sizing (majority of images): Images that were already close to the target size were resized in a single step to 799 pixels on the longest side using Photoshop's "Preserve Details 2.0" algorithm.
  • B. Non-Destructive Upscaling (for smaller, lower-resolution images): Images requiring significant enlargement (more than a 10-pixel adjustment or with a resolution below 150 PPI) were processed using a non-destructive workflow:
    1. The image layer was duplicated.
    2. The top layer was converted into a Smart Object.
    3. The Smart Object was resized to 799 pixels on the longest side using the "Preserve Details 2.0" algorithm.
    4. The upscaled result was compared directly to the original by toggling the layer visibility to ensure quality was maintained or improved.
4. Final Sharpening and Optimization

  • A subtle application of the Unsharp Mask filter was applied to the resized images to enhance clarity for web viewing. Typical settings were:
    • Amount: 85%
    • Radius: 1 pixel
    • Threshold: 4 levels
  • This filter was applied as a Smart Filter wherever possible, allowing for future adjustments without quality loss.
  • Final images were saved as JPEG format, with compression levels adjusted to meet the forum's 250KB file size limit while maximizing visual quality.
5. Descriptive Text
All descriptive text accompanying the images in the original PDFs was preserved and will be paired with the corresponding images upon upload to provide essential historical context.

This methodology prioritizes transparency, preservation, and thoughtful enhancement to make this valuable collection accessible to the community.
 
Hadn't realised the Keith Berry Archive contained images as late as 2006/7.I noticed he was using colour photography at that time too. Is 2006/7 the latest date of images in the collection ?
 
Vivienne14 said:
Hadn't realised the Keith Berry Archive contained images as late as 2006/7.I noticed he was using colour photography at that time too. Is 2006/7 the latest date of images in the collection ?
Click to expand...
Hi Viv, it seems so at the moment. I have the impression he was once a memebr of this site, can you confirm this?
 
The Keith Berry Photo Archive - Old Birmingham

Keith Berry left us a selection of his scanned photographs and slides, together with his accompanying notes, taken between the 1960s and 1990s in and around Birmingham, Bromsgrove, Smethwick, West Bromwich, and Walsall. How many photos Keith took we will never know, but I imagine we are only seeing a small snippet.

These scanned photos were on display on his website until he passed away. It appears that the hosting site deleted the archive when the annual fee was not paid. So as far as this collection and the work I have done is concerned, this was a salvage operation, not a restoration. I know that some of his photographs are in the possession of others and are often posted on other sites, but this collection seems to be the most comprehensive and complete set as a whole.

The total value of collections in terms of historical significance will always be greater than the sum of their individual parts—or in this case, images. As a contribution to our understanding of the past and the record of social change, this collection is priceless. That is why I put a significant amount of time into salvaging it.

There were few technical challenges in obtaining reasonably decent and viewable images that we can now share on this forum, while minimising loss of quality.

Keith was clearly a very experienced and competent photographer in terms of composition and image quality. From the collection, I infer he used quality cameras—three as far as I can tell:

The Kiev rangefinder – These are derivatives of the pre-WW2 Contax rangefinder bodies and were made after the war by the Zavod Arsenal factory in Kiev, Ukraine. Kiev rangefinders were produced from 1947 until 1986, meaning more than 50 years of production of the basic Contax rangefinder design. Over one million cameras were sold worldwide.

The Contax – A range of cameras with a proprietary bayonet mount made by Zeiss Ikon. The first Contax rangefinder camera, launched in 1932 as a response to the Leica, was aimed at professionals and journalists who needed a reliable and precise instrument. It was accompanied by a large variety of lenses and accessories to form a complete photographic system.

The Minox 35 GL – This followed the Minox 35 EL in Minox's successful range of 35mm compact cameras, reputedly the smallest full-frame 35mm cameras ever made. The lens retracts into the camera body when closed, and fully opening the cover activates the battery. Different models in the Minox 35 range were identified by shutter release buttons in different colours: the GL is quickly recognised by its orange shutter release button.

With the first two of these cameras, he used quality lenses—a 28mm Kiev lens, for example. He sold the complete four-lens outfit for £100 in the 1980s. Today these are sought-after items and fetch over £800.

The images range from monochrome sepia and black and white to colour. I do not know if he processed his own photos or had them commercially developed. The quality of the sepia images is superb, with a great dynamic range, while the later black and white images are grainier and slightly burnt out in the highlights. The colour images have that look of Ektachrome slide photos.

Ektachrome has a characteristic look that became familiar to many readers of National Geographic, which used it extensively for colour photographs for decades. It does not have the heavily saturated look of older slide films, giving a more natural, faithful rendering of the world around us with its subtle colours. Kodachrome was a lovely medium but a bit on the slower side.

To display his images on a website, Keith scanned them. As we know, scanning is painfully slow—hence why we may only have a small cross-section of his work. The scanning process itself would have introduced artefacts and quality changes, as would uploading them to a web server. Images would have been downsampled, leading to a further loss of quality.

The salvage operation was the best I could do. I have left a trail of breadcrumbs in the documentation of the methodology and the TIFF images for anyone in the future who, with developing technology, may wish to revisit the collection.

A word on the text: I have reproduced Keith’s text as faithfully as possible, with only minor, non-photographic edits made for public display. The original, unaltered documentation has been preserved separately. This follows the normal good practice for historical documents while being mindful of the public forum context.

I am always impressed by the quality of research the members of this forum are able to undertake, both in archival research and in downright good detective and logical working, collaboratively. So perhaps it would be a worthy project to find out a few things about this collection, and also about Keith himself, or any comments about the locations including local memories.

I am also on the lookout for any of Keith’s images that are not in this collection, or if Keith has any family who may still have the original images. I say that history is not just about building a body of knowledge—it is about gaining a better understanding of the past and making history a place of possibilities. So let’s see what we can do.
 
Follow-up post – New discoveries about Keith Berry

Since posting the original salvage of Keith Berry's photo collection, I've uncovered a little more information about Keith himself, his equipment, and his working methods. I wanted to share this as an update to keep the conversation going — and to see if anyone else has further pieces to add.

Biographical details

Keith attended King Edward's Grammar School in Aston, Birmingham, from 1952 to 1956. In the 1960s, he worked briefly in a camera shop on Erdington High Street but appears to have changed jobs several times. He continued taking photographs until at least 2006, and he seems to have owned an Olympus C-750 digital camera. He passed away sometime before May 2009.

His later digitisation method

In his notes on the canal series, Keith describes rediscovering old rolls of 35mm black and white negatives:

*"A few of these pictures were printed at the time and some of the prints were scanned and added into my album of Old Birmingham pictures, but I have just run all of these negatives through a video slide duplicator attached to my Olympus C-750 digital camera and to my eye they possess more clarity than the prints that had been digitised by a flatbed scanner. What do you think?"*

This tells us two important things. First, Keith was actively re-digitising his own archive using a hybrid analogue-digital workflow. Second, he believed this method produced better clarity than flatbed scanning — a useful insight for anyone comparing image quality across the collection.

Digital editing — an artistic choice

Looking more closely at Keith's comments on the canal collection, it appears that after digitising the originals, he also did some editing. He removed modern skylines from some images to make them look, in his own words, "more as it would (should) have been seen at the time."

This is worth noting. Keith was not simply a documentary photographer capturing what was there. He was actively recreating a past landscape — removing intrusions of the present to show scenes as he believed they ought to be remembered. Looking back, it has also crossed my mind that he may have digitally edited some of the earlier black and white images that he scanned on his flatbed scanner.

This does not diminish the historical value of the collection. If anything, it adds another layer: we are looking not just at old Birmingham, but at Keith's vision of old Birmingham — which is itself a fascinating insight into his relationship with the changing city around him.

Missing images and unanswered questions

I now believe Keith may have hosted his images on more than one site. I know he used PBase, but I have no leads on the other. In his notes on Collection 15, he writes:

"There were 20 photos of Bewdley c1981 but the archiver only captured three of them. If anyone managed to copy the others I could insert them in this pdf. Maybe BHF member will have some thoughts about this."

So even Keith himself knew the salvage was incomplete. If any forum member has copies of those missing Bewdley photos — or knows of other Keith Berry images held elsewhere, or has memories of Keith himself — I would be very glad to hear from you.

What next?

I'll keep digging. If anyone else has leads on the second hosting site, or happens to have saved images from Keith's original PBase galleries, please do get in touch. And if any former colleague from the Erdington camera shop or any schoolmate from King Edward's Grammar School remembers him — that would be remarkable to hear.

As I said in the original post: history is not just about building a body of knowledge. It's about gaining a better understanding of the past and making history a place of possibilities.

Let's see what else we can find.
 
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