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Scanning 4x5 negatives with a digital camera screen capture of large format photography forum post.

Scanning 4×5 Negatives for HABS/HAER/HALS

Posted on September 21, 2025September 21, 2025 by schafphoto

There’s a really good (ongoing) discussion on the Large Format Forum about camera-scanning 4×5 and 5×7 negatives for HABS, HAER, or HALS. I use a DSLR (or Mirrorless) camera and a copy stand to photograph my negatives and create 30+ Megapixel digital photographs. Follow the discussion here: https://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?157757-4×5-amp-5×7-Negatives-Camera-Scanning-with-Nikon-D800E&highlight=habs

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Topanga Ranch Motel Lost to Fire HABS CA-3002

Posted on January 14, 2025 by HABS HAER Photographer Stephen Schafer

Today, I got an official HABS number from HDP, after looking through some files and finding the negatives. HABS CA-3002. This week the motel was lost in the Palisades Fire.

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New HABS Photo Scans on the LoC Website

Posted on January 1, 2025 by HABS HAER Photographer Stephen Schafer

Just found two new sets of scanned records on the HABS site today. As the LoC slowly gets through the backlog of HABS/HAER/HALS photos waiting for scans from the last couple decades. It's nice to see some of my photos out in the public domain where they belong. These two examples of historic survey photography…

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Introduction to (landscape) Photography video now available. (Free)

Posted on December 27, 2021 by HABS HAER Photographer Stephen Schafer

… honored to be included in this short educational photography session sponsored by the California Preservation Foundation (californiapreservation.org) and the California Garden and Landscape History Society (cglhs.org).

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LA County Hospital HABS photography by Stephen Schafer.

Posted on February 27, 2021 by HABS HAER Photographer Stephen Schafer

Photography of The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner Building is part of the LAC+USC Medical Center campus in Lincoln Heights.

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Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) Highlights: 9430 Wilshire Blvd. May-2016

Posted on August 7, 2019 by HABS HAER Photographer Stephen Schafer

Here’s some highlights from my documentation of 9430 Wilshire Blvd in Beverly Hills… Often the images in the HABS, HAER and HALS collections take years to be digitized…

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Photographer’s Eye: Capturing History Forever, Photographing for the Historic American Buildings Survey

Posted on May 18, 2019 by HABS HAER Photographer Stephen Schafer

HABS, as the Historic American Buildings Survey is informally called, is arguably the best documentation program in the world for historic buildings. Stephen Schafer has been practicing this archival photographic process to capture sites in California as diverse as an 1840s adobe and a Cold-War stealth ship.

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HABS/HAER/HALS Documentations from 2017 and 2018

Posted on October 7, 2018 by HABS HAER Photographer Stephen Schafer

A selection of my favorite large format negatives from the last couple years of Historic American Buildings Survey photography (HABS). By Stephen Schafer, Ventura, California, (805)-652-1000

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HABS Mitigation for CEQA (Part 1: Is Cheaper Also Better?)

Posted on July 18, 2018 by HABS HAER Photographer Stephen Schafer

Documentation of historic resources is one way to mitigate impacts to significant properties and photographic documentation is one facet of a comprehensive CEQA mitigation strategy, and donating it to the National Park Service through their informal donation policy is less expensive than distributing multiple archival copies locally. The data created for HABS/HAER/HALS requires a Life Expectancy of over 500 years…  Can your local historical society do that?

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Photographing the First California HAER Documentation, HAER-CA-1 (again)

Posted on November 30, 2017 by HABS HAER Photographer Stephen Schafer

We executed a documentation mitigation to HABS/HAER/HALS standards to be transmitted as an addendum to the 1975 materials. New drawings and report were prepared by historical architecture firm Garavaglia Architecture in Downtown San Francisco and we were brought in to document the exterior and interior before changes were made. 

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ABOUT HABS PHOTOGRAPHY EXPOSED

The best time to photograph our heritage was 50 years ago, the second best time is now.

-Schaf
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