Photograph of unidentified pilot and assistant found in the 1987 slide collection.
Recognizing the utility of up-to-date near-shore oblique aerial photography for the staff of the California Coastal Commission and others interested in the coastal zone, in 1987 the California Coastal Commission contracted with the California Department of Water Resources to create this photographic survey of the California Coastline, not done since 1972.
The California Department of Water Resources administered the contract, provided the photographer (Robert Eplett), and subcontracted for the plane and pilot.
Photograph of unidentified pilot and assistant found in the 1987 slide collection.
The coast was almost completely photographed in early 1987, and a second, more limited survey was completed in early 1989 to close some of the gaps left in the first survey. Because there is some overlap between the two, they are presented here separately.
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| The resulting slides have been stored in cardboard boxes and binders in the Commission's San Francisco office. | ||
A small sample of the 1987 slides were examined to determine the type of film used, which appears to be Kodak type 5017 Ektachrome X Professional, ASA 64. Two sets of the 1987 slides exist; one set has been proven to be a copy and the other set is presumed to be the original. Both sets were scanned for posterity. In creating the website the copy was only used when an original was missing; there are about 100 of these instances.
Some of the original notes describing the 1987 slides can be found here.
Similar to the 1972 and 1979 imagery, these slides were scanned with a Nikon Coolscan 5000 and a Nikon SF-21 feeder at 2000 lines per inch, 16-bit color depth, and the output was saved in an uncompressed TIFF format. No color correction was performed in the scanner, but a later color restoration was performed using an Apple PowerMac G4 running Photoshop 7 with the Applied Science Fiction Digital ROC Professional plug-in (Set for Brightness 25, Black Clip .5%, White Clip .5%, Digital Camera input), followed by an Auto Color Balance in Photoshop. The Digital ROC plug-in is designed to restore the original colors from time-faded color films.
After scanning, over 530 DVDs in three sets were written with the original scans for archival purposes.
Once the color restoration was completed, Photoshop was used in a fashion similar to that used on the contemporary photographs to produce the downsized images used on this web site, and the photographs were indexed for display in a fashion similar to the 1972 and 1979 imagery. The 1987 imagery consists of 4173 slides, of which a visual match was made on 529 images, and the 1989 imagery consists of 1074 slides, of which a visual match was made on 120 images. If you find errors in the position information, please call it to our attention. It is important that you identify the Image Number of the mis-indexed 1987 or 1989 photograph along with the Image Number of the closest 2002 or 2004 photograph.