Converting colour negatives to positive

Hi,
I've taken some photos of colour negatives (C41) with my K200D thinking that it would be easy to convert them to positives in Elements 6. Well I was wrong I then installed Gimp hoping it would be able to do the conversion, wrong again. The original photo has an orange colour cast which converts to a blue cast on “Inverting”. I’ve tried manipulating the picture in RAW and can get closer to the correct colours but not nearly correct and all my attempts have a hazy appearance. If I use my Canon 8400F scanner they come out correctly but the scanning process takes ages compared to photographing the negative.

I’m hoping that there is a Plug-in or Add-on for Gimp or Elements 6 which will do the job but I’ve not yet found one.

I’m at my wits end and need help.

Greg

I have a negative scanner which converts them automatically.
Not much help to you, I know and you are a bit too far for me to nip over with it

Have a look at this page, specifically at the steps at the bottom. Hope it may help a bit.

Ray

Thanks,
Having done a lot more searching and reading your link I can see that photographing all my negatives will be a waste of time, almost worse than scanning on a flat bed, the manual tweaking involved is not acceptable. Converting them to black and white is maybe just OK but still means processing each pic individually.

So that means I must get a film scanner, which is a good one at a reasonable price, I know search the archives but it will be quicker if you tell me here

Greg

Set your camera white balance to tungsten that should clear the blue cast I believe or I've the colour temperatures wrong in my head...

My experience is that Film Scanners are very slow devices. Expect about 1 minute per frame. If you wish to digitally clean the dust, then expect considerably more time.
There are not many new ones on the market now. Minolta have gone and Canon have discontinued. Have a look at Nikon (quality) and Plustech (budget) Film Scanners.

Stefan, I agree, tungsten did give the best colour but it's still way out. I tried a full range of custom colour temperatures but I could not get rid of the orange colour cast.

Graham, I see that there is an old Canon FS-4000 for sale in our local classifieds for about UKP 75.00 but it is old and I wonder if the software is XP compatible.

Thanks, Greg

Had a quick go at it, not quite there yet but in the right direction maybe?

What light did you use to lighten the photo up?
If you've a flash use that since those are daylight temperature, a tungsten light source would only make it more orange.

The orange is an overall mask, so converting using a tungsten setting isn't ideal. You need to subtract the orange from the scan, which a scanner will do automatically.

Depending on how good you need to make the final image (which depends on the purpose) then there are cheap scanners available, or maybe a Nikon Coolscan second hand if you can fine one if you need top class results.

Steve, As you say getting there, it's the part after this that I found almost impossible to do. And for the amount of work involved, with lots of slides, it's a no-go option.

Stefan, I used a daylight fluorescent lamp and set the camera to the same, I played with the colour temps in Adobe Raw.

John, what I don't understand is if there is software written for scanners to do the conversion correctly why has it not been done for the photo editing programs, surely the same principals apply.

Greg

Perhaps there is some software - perhaps a Google search?

The Plustech models have got some pretty good reviews from the camera mags and certainly represent the best bang for the buck. The dynamic range is borderline for slides, apparently, but they do a decent job with negs. The big-name scanners will handle it better, presumably, but at a price unless you can find a reconditioned one. Incidentally, I picked up a Tevion film "scanner" (aka Veho and others) in Aldi the other day because I was curious what sort of scanner -- although it's basically a 5MP digicam with a close-up lens -- you can get for £34. You get a £34 scanner, it turns out -- pooor sharpness, some CA and a colour cast. With a lot of post processing (although I don't know why you'd want to process a post), you can get away with a 5x7 print if you're prepared to settle for less than perfection. Probably good enough for copying old negs from the family album and other less-critical work.

Edited because my post was probably a little harsh.

Al







Al

Spent a lot of time doing just that this evening and from the various forum comments I'm getting very bad vibes, that's why, much to my dismay I'm now looking at scanners
The only possibility might be the Kodak's or VieScan's products, I'll check tomorrow.

Greg

I have a device I bought off eBay - brand name Summit PhotoFix - which is essentially a 5meg camera with a negative holder built in. Connects to a PC via USB.

Works a treat and was only £25UKP. Scans at the rate of about 5 seconds per negative (I think), although I agree with Aero - images are a little soft

The new price is around £50UKP. There are plenty of identical devices out there under different brand names.

Doesn't do very well with slides, however

Our old friends SRS sell them, (http://www.srsmicrosystems.co.uk/1164/Summit-PhotoFix-Slide-Neg-Copier-.html), plus the new version out which has a built in LCD screen and doesn't need a PC - it can scan direct to a memory card. (http://www.srsmicrosystems.co.uk/4239/Summit-PhotoFix-SP5-Copier-.html)

SRS unfortunately seem a bit expensive compared to other sources, and I'm not sure whether they mail to South Africa. Must be local suppliers.