C Company 1st Battalion 27th Marines 5th Marine Division photograph

My dad was in C Company 1st Battalion 27th Marines 5th Marine Division that was at the center of the invasion of Iwo Jima. This is also the same company of the Guadalcanal Medal of Honor winner, “Manila John” Basilone. He is sitting in the front row center of the entire company. Dad never talked about his experiences there very much, but one thing he did mention was witnessing Basilone being blown into the air by a Japanese mortar.

Long after dad's passing, I was again looking through his old lockbox he kept where this picture was kept along with other old documents and newspaper clippings he considered to be worthy and memorable keepsakes. It is a photograph of the entire company and measures 8 inches by 29 inches long.

I tried running this picture through my scanner, but the quality of the copy was a complete disaster. I truly would like to get this photo copied and digitized but I don't know of any reputable and trustworthy provider to send it to.

I have done a cursory search for this particular photograph on the internet and haven't been successful in finding it at all at this point.

Anyone have any suggestions as to where I can get this thing copied and digitized?

a reply to: Antisocialist

A commercial print shop can do it but like you say they’d need to be reputable.

My sister uses a digital camera facing down onto the table mounted on a tripod. She slides the picture along a straight edge and snaps sections. Then the individual pictures are photoshopped together.

Old family school pictures and such.

Good luck and I’d love to see the result.

a reply to: NorthOfStuff

Thought of that but my digital camera crapped out long ago.

a reply to: Antisocialist

With something this important to you, I would go to my local recruiter and ask for their guidance. They walked me through the process in return for a digital copy for themselves. Marines are big on their history as you know. My father was a chosen few Marine of the Korean conflict. He passed in 2003. Now I have the original as well as a digital copy of him in a frozen foxhole and so does the recruiting center. They were so happy to have it, they paid for it all. Good luck 👍

a reply to: Antisocialist
Try an android app like CamScanner.
I use it for documents mostly but have done a few old photos.Its free and will save as jpg or pdf.
Worth a try and simple to use.

a reply to: Antisocialist

Digital version should be a format like .png, NOT .jpg (lossy compression).

Cheers

a reply to: Antisocialist

It's great that you have that memorabilia to remember your Father and his legacy.

The image is a very wide panorama. It's wider than A3 and just under A1 size. Any good printing shop will have an A1 line scanner. Basically, the document to be scanned travels through the linear laser scanner, as opposed to a flatbed scanner where the document stays put and the laser moves. Unless the picture is in a poor state and falling apart, it should be safe to have it scanned in this way.

Alternatively, if you want to try again with your home scanner you need to push the resolution as high as possible. Around 600 dpi should be ok. As F2d5thCavv2 rightly advised, go for the png format. TIFF is also an option and will produce better printed results once it's digitised.

If you manage to scan it in sections, overlapping a little each scan, then I'm sure there are many Photoshoppers here who could stitch all the scans together to reproduce the entire picture. I, too, would gladly do it for you. I can even fix any blemishes, stains, cracking, etc. once it's digital.

In fact, it could be a nice challenge for us digital artists to see who can get the best result.

If you manage it, please upload the images to some cloud based file sharing service (Google Drive, etc.) so we can grab them. Don't upload to ATS as we would need the highest resolution images possible.