Scanning negatives

[donmcc]

Does anyone have any experience with scanning negatives. I discovered that one of the collections in my local town museum is a collection of several thousand negatives that were once owned by the local photographers.

These would all be stored as b&W (primarily) negatives, although there will be some color. I would hate to have to get them all printed in a darkroom. Are there any tricks to scanning from the negative, then Photoshopping to create a digital file?

I hope to apply for a Heritage grant to allow (college) students to do such work.

[Bo Aakerstrom]

No tricks, you just need the right equipment.

A film scanner would be your best option, sadly these days they are not so easy to come by. I would have recommended one of Nikon's CoolScan units, but they are no longer available AFAIK. Perhaps EBAY is your friend here?

Plustek OpticFilm is one option, even if the software seems to be a weak spot. A 3rd party application would resolve that.

Hasselblad's more expensive offering is another.

Avoid using a flatbed scanner with a film attachment, I had a Canon CanoScan 9000 F, for a very short while. Not only painfully slow, the output was not much to write home about either.

[terrie]

donmcc: Are there any tricks to scanning from the negative, then Photoshopping to create a digital file?

Are they all 35mm?

As Bo notes, you need a film scanner (or a flatbed that will scan negs/slides--never used my Epson 2450 to scan negs/slides). As Bo also noted, dedicated neg/slide scanners can be hard to find and ebay is a good place to look. If you need other than 35mm, it gets trickier to find equipment...

I'd definitely recommend getting VueScan to use as your scanning software--wait until you know which scanner you will be using because while Vuescan works with most scanners, there are probably some it doesn't work with...

My scanning has been primarily (actually...all) with slides but I think with Vuescan you'd find neg scanning to be not that big a deal. I scan using VueScan basically doing the scans in batches--saved as TIFFs--and then I work on a group of scans in Photoshop--the Healing brush is absolutely indispensable because no matter how hard you try, you're never going to get a really clean neg/slide.

A few months ago, I boought a Plustek OptiFilm 7200 on ebay for a very good price--it was missing the power cord which I was able to find inexpensively online. It only does 35mm (negs/slides).

Terrie

[donmcc]

That is the thing, they will have many that are larger formats, as they are older files from the 50s and before.

Thanks for the links.

[terrie]

donmcc: That is the thing, they will have many that are larger formats, as they are older files from the 50s and before.

Ahhh...that's what I thought might be the case...

I'd take a browse at ebay for slide scanners and see what's out there...I'll try and see what I can find...

Terrie

[BobRoosth]

Yes, you need a dedicated film scanner. That is the only kind that really understands how to remove the orange mask used in negative film.

Actually, I suppose Vuescan might know how to do that. I've never looked. I just know it needs to be done at the scanning stage, not later in Photoshop (or equivalent).

[donmcc]

The orange mask only applies in color negs, right? Photoshop should be able to fix a scan of a B&W photo.

[Bo Aakerstrom]

Originally Posted by donmcc

The orange mask only applies in color negs, right? Photoshop should be able to fix a scan of a B&W photo.

The main issue with colour negatives is that different film manufacturers/ film types use different colour masks, so it takes some amount of trial and error to fix, but when you have established what works you can always save it to use for that particular emulsion. Photographers tends to use the same film stock for most things, so hopefully this chap have done so too.

At least in The GIMP, the "auto white balance" works wonders, most of the time. I assume there is an equivalent option in Photoshop?

[Steve Rindsberg]

Way back in the days when you had to scan one pixel at a time and chisel its RGB values into the rock you were working on, I had a Howtek slide scanner. It was the most expensive, time-sucking, unreliable and ultimately useless pile of crap I've ever wasted money on.

It did have one feature that might apply here: for color negs, it'd have you scan a blank section of film (ie, processed but unexposed) to get a baseline for the orange mask. It'd save that as part of the profile for that particular film, then remove the orange color during the scan.

Then it'd crash or lock up or freeze or something equally annoying.

But it was a great idea. Could photoshop subtract an image of raw film from an image of exposed film and land on something useful, do you think?

[Bo Aakerstrom]

Originally Posted by Steve Rindsberg

Could photoshop subtract an image of raw film from an image of exposed film and land on something useful, do you think?

That's roughly how I would approach it if I had to go that route.

Pick the colour and save it under the name of the film type, so you can reuse it.

Create a new layer filled with the colour (as is or inverted) and have play with various blend modes and opacity levels.

Once you have established what works save the actions (or whatever PS calls it).

Or perhaps there are better ways to do this?