Madsen's Photo Service LLC

Madsen's Photo Service LLC See "about" for more details. In the early 1900s Edward L. Madsen, a streetcar conductor, bought a camera and decided to make a little extra money. Etc.

Madsen's Photo Services, LLC provides professional photographic services including: photo restoration, retouching, professional photography, custom work such as cards, and producing prints from slides and negatives. Each day, he would take photos of his passengers. That night he would develop prints and would sell them the next day. In 1923, he and his sons formed “Madsen’s Photo Service”, a compa

ny that ultimately processed photos for much of Chicago and was quite successful until about 1990 when it was clear that digital photography would become king. Edward’s grandson, Claude Fennema, became interested in photography in 1955 when, as a boy, he received his first “serious” 35 mm camera as a present from his relatives at Madsen’s Photo Service. Since then, he has taken many thousands of photographs: of people, of celestial formations, of birds and animals, of landscapes, of microbes, and some of an artistic nature. For many years he maintained a darkroom where he could develop and correct his own photographs in .. both black and white and color. For more than 45 years Dr. Fennema’s career was grounded in image sciences: image processing, computer vision, and the psychology of vision. By 1990, Dr. Fennema realized that photography was definitely going digital and he began digitizing all of his 35mm slides so he could use them in his work. Since 2000, Dr. Fennema has been working on his family history. His favorite part of this work was working with the old family slides and photographs, some taken in the late 1800s. Many of these had been badly damaged over time. The very old black and white photos had faded quite a bit. Color photographs either faded or experienced sever color shifts. Most were scratched. To make a nice family history for his family he repaired them all … digitally. In 2013, Dr. Fennema decided to form a company called “Madsen Photo Services, LLC”. It is a revival of the family business in today’s world of digital photography. The company offers Digital Photo Services: digitizing, enhancing, correcting, combining, composing, and printing photos. We also offer the services of a professional photographer. See "products" for current offerings.

02/14/2025

This past week Madsen's Photo Service officially discontinued it's LLC status. The page,however will remain ... mostly as a memory of "Madsens Photo Service", the company my grandfather started in the early 1920s ...and continued into the 1990s. Thecontent of this page ;will be mostly my comments and, perhaps, some discussion of photos and the photographic process, technology, and techniuques The page title will not change ... just remember that it is no longer a business of any kind. It is a discussion forum. The page name willl rememain so those of us who wish ... can find it :)

Roger C.  This is for you.
06/07/2024

Roger C. This is for you.

At the NRHA Futurity.  Fun.
11/29/2023

At the NRHA Futurity. Fun.

It always makes us feel good to restore a photo of a member of the armed services.  On the left .. a great photo bleache...
11/15/2022

It always makes us feel good to restore a photo of a member of the armed services. On the left .. a great photo bleached by time and, perhaps, sunlight. On the right ... restored by Madsens.

A day in Old Deerfield… a very old village with a collection of old buildings … some1600s … a number of 1700s… many 1800...
09/13/2022

A day in Old Deerfield… a very old village with a collection of old buildings … some1600s … a number of 1700s… many 1800s. It was closed when we were there but it was fun to see the collection.

Sometimes photos that are of great value to us get damaged   Here is a wedding photo that had been folded, probably to f...
09/09/2021

Sometimes photos that are of great value to us get damaged Here is a wedding photo that had been folded, probably to fit into an envelope. Over time, it got scratched and nicked up ... and it looks like something spilled on the bottom right (left photo). Madsen's fixed it up so it looks like it should.

The days of film based photography are "history" ... BUT ... many of us have slides and/or negatives  (first image below...
02/16/2021

The days of film based photography are "history" ... BUT ... many of us have slides and/or negatives (first image below) in a case, an envelope, a cabinet, or in a book ... and we'd love to see those images once in a while. Handling the photos in this form is pretty inconvenient ... especially if they are negatives or unmounted slides.

That is where we come in 😊 We can make a digital image from your slide or negative so you can put it on your page, phone, ... and ... if you like, we can make a high quality print of that digital image ... a 4x6, 8x10, 11x14, or 13x19. ... depending on the quality of your image.

Note: we can also do image restoration where possible if you like.

08/18/2020

We received a call the other day and was asked if we develop negatives. We do not. However, we definitely make prints from negatives that have been developed ... both color and black and white.

In the past (1915-2010) Madsen's Photo Service did develop photographic negatives. It was the major part of the business. In more recent years, however, the use of film has dwindled to the point that purchasing and keeping chemicals (they have a very limited lifetime) has become quite impractical.

We do often make prints from slides and from negatives in most sizes ... even old ones :)

There are times when we want to share  family portraits with the rest of the family and those portraits are old, damaged...
03/14/2020

There are times when we want to share family portraits with the rest of the family and those portraits are old, damaged, and framed ... and we want to share the entire effect. Madsen's Photo Service can do that by digitizing the entire ensemble and fixing the damage. The resulting jpegs can be shared with everyone in the family ... on their cellphones or, if you like, as new prints. The first image is a sample"before" image (digitized) and the second is the cleaned up version. [be sure to click on the images so you see the whole effect.]

More fun with cameras.  I took this photo with the Nikon A1000.  It is a hand held photo at nearly full telephoto.  It i...
02/20/2020

More fun with cameras. I took this photo with the Nikon A1000. It is a hand held photo at nearly full telephoto. It is not "straight from the camera". I did a fair amount of post processing on it ... mostly to get rid of noise and to enhance the detail. Not premium quality :) but not bad either.

I recently purchased a Nikon A1000 to serve as a camera I could use for when I want to take some good photos but did not...
02/20/2020

I recently purchased a Nikon A1000 to serve as a camera I could use for when I want to take some good photos but did not want to lug 5lbs of camera around with me. This camera is one of those "point and shoot" cameras with a phenomenal zoom ... roughly equivalent to a 24-625mm zoom on a DSLR. Of course, the question is ... "How well does it perform ?"

Well, it is slower than a professional DSLR. But the lens is pretty good. There were reviews that said it was not sharp at full zoom (the "625mm" end). I find this to be false. The attached photo was taken at full zoom. Judge for yourself.

Now, this was not a hand held shot. It was taken with the camera firmly held on my desktop while I took the photo. It looks good and it was taken in moderate room lighting.

At 625 mm, this is a very "long" telephoto. It will be very unforgiving when it comes to camera shake or motion in the scene. If the scene is very bright (daylight), it may be possible to take a hand-held photo with this focal length. To do so, however, the shutter speed will have to be on the order of 1/2000 second and, even then, you will want to keep the camera steady.

Not bad, though !! I will be experimenting more.

02/14/2020

I was asked if the camera used below does 300 dpi. This is an important issue because it indicates how sharp prints will be and, also, many publishers want 300 dpi photos. The answer is a tad complex:

The 300 dpi figure refers to a final print. The image on the sensor of a camera of this type is about 1/2" wide. This is a 16mp (4608 x 3456) camera so the image on the camera dpi in the camera is about 9215 dpi (4608 pixels in 1/2 inch).

Naturally, we enlarge these images to a 4x6, a 5x7, an 8x10 or, even something bigger. As we enlarge the image, the pixels get spread over a larger dimension. A 4x6 would be an enlargement of about 12x so the dpi on that print would be 1/12 of what it is on the sensor. This would be about 768 dpi. The same number of pixels would be spread over 6 inches, rather than 1/2 inch. Printing an 11x14, a pretty large print, would be magnifying the image by 28 so the dpi would be about 329 dpi ... still a very fine print and over 300 dpi. Larger than that you need a camera with more megapixels.

So, yes, a camera like this can produce a 300dpi image. The image will have to be passed through a bit of software to make it look like 300 dpi but that can be easy ..

Address

647 Faulkner Street
New Smyrna Beach, FL
32168

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 3pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 3pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 3pm

Telephone

+13864285905

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