I have a lot of photographic negatives going back to the late 1970’s (and beyond up to maybe 20 years ago) and I am finally thinking of scanning them.
I know this has been discussed before but I am looking for advice on a scanner … I don’t really have a budget but don’t want to spend a lot of time and decide I need to start again with a better scanner.
I am just interested in 35mm negatives and not prints.
I don’t want to spend a fortune and (say) £1k I would consider too much.
[Digitizing my CD’s was a pain – I started with Exact Audio Copy and moved to dbPowerAmp – but at least I knew I had perfect copies. With scanning the negatives I know that if I scan them and am not happy, I can get a better scanner to get better results. But also I have to start all over again].
The Shutterstock blog has advice on how to scan your negatives at home with advice on scanner types and costs and also the software suited for that purpose.
I purchased a Nikon Cool Scan decade’s ago to digitise my years of dedicated film photography.
I lost heart in the end as the equipment was slow to use and cleaning up any marks from the negatives became a real chore.
On the flip side, I could spend all day in the darkroom printing to my hearts content.
I had a Canon flatbed document scanner (not what you want) but it came with a 35mm negative attachment. You just clipped it on to the main bed and bed in the film manually. It would scan and separate out about 5 negatives at a time. I think the maximum resolution was 1200dpi. Anyway, the main point is, it was dead simple and cheap as chips. Maybe about $250.
Back in the late 90s, I had a professional film scanner from when I used to work as a graphic artist. It cost a fortune and a decade or so later, that cheap as chips Canon did a better job despite being nearly a toy.
This something I am exploring to digitise my 35mm colour slides.
My preferred route is via my digital camera, a close-up lens or lens and extension tube, some form of lightbox and a 35mm slide holder. Perhaps more costly than a scanner but certainly quicker.
There are many good tutorials for the above on YouTube, including homemade setups.
Ummmm, what could be quicker than putting your film on a Canon Lide400 with the film attachment, pressing “Scan” and having 5 normal pics appear on your desktop a minute later?
I had a friend in same predicament, he bought a pretty decent scanner form an auction site, think it was a Leica (was a while ago now) and scanned all his stuff then relisted it and actually made a few quid on it when sold ! Might be easy way to do it with minimal cost.
I have done this with a Nikon dedicated film scanner. IMHO a flatbed scanner is nothing like good enough. It’s a significant undertaking though, with multiple passes and infra red dust detection being required. FWIW, I used VueScan software.
Although I didn’t try it, I did consider a digital camera with suitable lens and negative holder which has already been suggested. I think it may have been a lot quicker than scanning.
I own a Canon flatbed scanner and have used it for scanning 35mm slides and negatives… discounting the set up time in putting the film on scanner before scanning, pressing a shutter button doesn’t take a minute. YMMV.
The old school reply would be an Ohnar duplicator with a T2 mount to your DSLR of choice. Then shove them into Photoshop….
Indeed, I’ve been giving this some thought recently. I have a couple of dozen slides that I’d like to digitise. I already run LR & PS, and the Ohnars go for pin money on the auction site.
There are several options to choose from. Which is best for you depends on various factors, including : the quality of the scan you require; what you plan to do with them; the number you wish to scan; the time you wish to devote to scanning and, of course, the price you are prepared to pay. While a simple flat bed scanner may be adequate and cost effective, I understand purpose-built film scanners will provide superior results, albeit at a price. I believe the Nikon Coolscan was very well regarded but is no longer in production. A good secondhand one will set you back over £2k and the associated software is not the easiest or most effective to use. Then, as has been suggested here, you can set up your own system using a DSLR with an appropriate lens, lighting, copy-stand, etc.
I have thousands of negatives and transparencies I would like to scan, but have never found a solution that works for me in terms of offering the right combination of quality, time and cost.
I’ve scanned several thousand of my negatives (color and B&W) and several thousand of my colour slides. I tried out:
– Using a camera and backlighting
– Using a flatbed scanner
– Using a dedicated 35mm film scanner (more than one)
– Hiring professionals (different companies)
And many variants on all of the above. I got what I needed to do done, but I spent plenty of money and countless hours getting it done. You need to accept that this is not exact digital file replication and there are many opportunities for file quality to degrade substantially. You will also need to understand some things like bit depth and digital resolution. Don’t forget that you will need to know how to remove the orange cast while maintaining the original colors and keeping flash tones “fleshy”. This is a very incomplete list of the skills/knowledge you will need to acquire.
In short all of the methods above take lots of time, and if you try to short circuit the time, you pay the price in quality.
If you found it a “pain” to rip your CDs then you are in for a whole new world of hurt here. I’ve ripped a whole lot of CDs; there’s no comparison. I’m not trying to rain on the parade, but if a friend asked me how to do this I would tell them not to start. That is my honest answer. If there are some you really need to digitize then I suggest you whittle the number down to a very small list of “must save” negs, and then pass a very small part of that list say 4 or 5 to a professional. Unfortunately, that is still no guarantee of quality.
If someone says “rubbish to all this, I did it and had no problems!” Then ask how many files did they do, and can the results be printed at a very modest size of A4?
I still have a Coolscan, but haven’t used it for ages. The original software is no longer compatible with recent OS, but there are alternatives (Vuescan and others), that may even be better.
The main issue, as indicated above, is the time spent. Like many others, I have thousands of slides, it would take me aeons to digitise them all - I have more or less given up…
I ran an advertising company darkroom for over thirty years; sound advice.
I have a large suitcase full of Kodachrome and Agfa 35mm and 120 slides of my travels and family events, that haven’t been looked at for the best part of forty years.
I came across them when we moved last September, and since have been mulling over whether it’s worth the effort to digitise them and by what method.
Like my defunct CDs - moving home, I now haven’t the space to store them and now stream - the slides, apart from the odd few, are probably going to be dumped. I don’t have kids and nobody is interested in them.
My iPhone contains over 10,000 images, that I barely look at, they’re stored because, well, they can, serving little purpose in my life. Increasingly I’m coming to the conclusion that all of this ‘stuff’ is digital ‘clutter’ that I can be well shot of.
The difference being that before digital cameras became ubiquitous, people curated their experiences more because they had a roll of 36 shots that cost money to buy, effort to take, and money again to develop. When my mum found a bag of undeveloped film my late father took in the 70s we knew having 20 rolls scanned was worth it. Turned up a time capsule of his time stationed in Thailand and other places.
Now we have phones with 10,000 pics of what we ate for dinner and utterly banal rubbish.
So I’d assume film had more carefully selected pics than the modern equivalent, say a corrupt hard drive with 250GiB of snaps to retrieve.
@Bonang
As others have commented, it’s all quite an undertaking if you have more than a few tens of slides to digitise. I have recently used a 60mm macro lens attached to my Nikon Z6, and a Nikon slide holder attached to the lens, this worked well but it’s not quick.
Of the collections I have sifted through, I have probably digitised 5% and binned the rest.
In order to rapidly sort through the slides, I bought a light table, A4 size, on Amazon for about £15. Simply lay the slides on it, and turn on the light, and it makes sorting out the wheat from the chaff much easier and quicker.
In the past it took time, effort and money to record images; many didn’t have a decent camera to record their lives, so quite often it was a visit to a studio for a portrait etc. I well remember the anticipation of sending off my slide films and awaiting the results to arrive in the post. Cine film cameras were pretty niche, now all of this - still and video - is high quality and instant, to hand, on our phones.
As I wrote, my wife and I don’t have children to pass on our ‘stuff’; so we’re being pretty ruthless in what we’re keeping. The vast majority of our books, kept on shelving and not opened since the initial reading, have gone, donated to charity shops or given away. Some of our unwanted ‘stuff’ has been auctioned.
To be honest it’s all been rather therapeutic and freeing.
Thanks to everyone for all the helpful suggestions. I might just buy a really cheap scanner and get some idea how much work is involved by scanning a few strips of negative. Then, if I decide the effort is worthwhile, I can look at getting something decent.