Negative to jpeg HOW

What is the best way to convert all my 35mm negatives into jpeg files.
I have seen so many different scanners for sale ranging from £35 to over £300.
I plan to keep the negatives but want to be able to browse the photos on my PC and pass copy's to the family on DVD.

Thanks

Les

How many negative do you want to convert, I think that's the main question which machine might be the best for you.

If it's just a couple you might want to use a normal scanner even, don't know how good they are but at least you can do more with it then convert negatives.

There are really two issues here.

One is quality, and the other is the effort required to digitise a large number of negatives.

I agonised long and hard about this towards the end of last year, and eventually went for nearly the most expensive solution - a Nikon Coolscan 5000. I've blogged a little about my experiences to date, but I must confess I lost momentum a little when I discovered (after doing about 2000), that rather than 4000 negs to scan, it was closer to 10,000.

Ideally, I'd like to offer negative scanning as a service, to recoup a bit of the high cost of the scanner. But as a piece of kit, I can't imagine it being any easier or quicker to use, and the results are good.

I posted a few of the better ones here, but it's just a sample, not at all a technical review of the scanner's capabilities.

Hi Stefan,

It could be several hundred over a period of time. Its all my photos prior to going digital. I plan to review them and just copy the ones of significance. I am building a family photo album for my Granddaughter.

Some will be over 25 years old

Les

Chris knows a lot about scanning a lot of negative, he is the expert of the forum about this

Chris How long did it took you in the end, a good month if I remember correctly?

Most of these will be snapshots from compact film camera,s so if I can get a resonable reproduction I would be happy. The intention is to take my time even if it takes many months.

I've a read about it in Silvershotz between the different devices, will summarize it for you.

Drum Scanners
Highest quality - very expensive

Dictated Film Scanners
High quality - good for regular scanners

Flatbed Scanners
Have come a long way - TPU (Transparency Units) can eb sued to scan film

Then there is a lot of talk about bit depth and resolution.

Top of the rang is Drum scanner no doubt about that but not within most of our budgets.

For resolution.
dictated film scanners are round the 4000-5000 DPI
flatbed scanners go over that these days with around 6400 DPI

For smaller film high resolution is important with medium format it's most likely over kill.
Over 4800 DPI you will most likely just enlarge the grain of the film.

Bit Depth
seems there isn't much of a deference there, all good scanners can scan at 16bit.

What's is best for you something you must figure out for yourself.
If you want I could scan the article for you?

Looking at the dates on the TIFFs, I started on 23rd Sept, and the last one I did was on the 15th Nov last year.

In that time I scanned just over 2500 negs.

I really need to get the momentum back - I hadn't realised I'd had quite so much of a break.

I thought I was half way through, and then I found some more books of negs, so I'm only a quarter of the way through. I guess that dented my enthusiasm a bit.

Once I got into my stride, I could do a strip of four in about 7 minutes, very much 'feed and forget'. So a roll per hour is perfectly achievable if you really go at it.

Several years back I'd had a go with a mid-range Epson flat bed scanner, and the thing that completely put me off was all the dust and crap that inevitably got on the negs and ruined the scan, no matter how careful I was.

That alone is why I'd never go back to a non-dedicated scanner, especially if it didn't have the auto-scratch and spot removal (digital ICE on the Nikon scanners), which adds eons to the elapsed time if you want a decent result and have to do it manually.

The other thing you need to consider is where you're going to put all these scans. If it's only a few hundred, then it's probably not much of an issue to back up the results (you *so* don't want to have to do it twice).

But with thousands, at 70MB per hi-res TIFF, you do need to think about it.

I ended up getting three 1TB disks, and sorted out a rational backup strategy for it all.

Converting negatives into digital files is a long-winded task. First the negatives have to be carefully loaded into a carrier and then either scanned or copied.
There are some cheap film copiers on the market that take a picture of the negative or slide on a cheap inbuilt camera. From what people have said, image quality is rather poor.
The other choice in copying is to use an optical copier and your DSLR, such as an Ohnar. See the SRB website for copying equipment. Some copiers were made for full frame format and will crop the image using a Pentax DSLR.

Next choice would be a Flatbed Scanner with a negative/tranparency scanning capability. Most good Flatbeds now have this capability. Output quality is fairly good but is generaly in line with the price you pay. In my opinion Epson Flatbed Scanners are excellent.

Top choice for quality is a dedicated Film Scanner. these are still made by Nikon and Plustek. Secondhand one are avaiable in Canon and Minolta brands.

The problem with old negatives, can be strong colour casts. These will require correction in either the scanner or computer software.

I thought you where already done with scanning, wow

yeah that's the major problem with a flatbed but the current ones and the ones also designed for film in mind have the software you talk about and the advantage is that you can use the flatbed for more things on the other hand if you don't need a flatbed and just need a scanner for photos a dictated one would be better.

All in all the quality of both scanners should be pretty equal.

I should throw in my experience, which was the the quality from the Ohnar slide copier I picked up on Ebay was FAR inferior to the results from a £30 webcam-based negative scanner. Not to mention the fact that the Ohnar will crop all your shots if you use an APS-C camera (I think you might be able to fix this with an extension tube, but I haven't tried)

The results from webcam-based scanners are not too bad (see here), but obviously not on a par with a dedicated scanner. However I find them good enough for family snaps. The main benefit is that it is fast, I can do a roll of film in around 10 minutes, but your negs need to be clean otherwise you'll need to use PS to heal out dust spots etc.

I have a Minolta Scsn Dual III which i purchased new some 5 or 6 years ago.(They till turn up regularly on E-Bay) The neg`s can be pre-scanned so that you have a comprehensive set of adjustment tools to play with before making a final scan if you wish or simply pile em through 4 at a time on auto! It does`nt offer the pixel count of a new Nikon Cool Scan but i have made some superb A4 prints at 300dpi from a cropped image. You might still find a review on the E-photozine website for this and most of the other Scanners.

Regards - Pete.

I bought an Epson V500 (photo-enabled flatbed) last year and over 12 months I've worked my way through about 150 sets of negatives and 40 slide films - I've not digitised everything, but used the 'preview' to decide what's worth including. I set up a quick mode for snaps and a slower, higher-resolution one for quality images. The IQ is satisfactory for what I want (I'm keeping the originals), and now I've almost finished I have a much better flatbed scanner than the multifunction machine in my office.

I agree with ChrisA about the amount of crud on the slides/negatives, even after gentle cleaning. Also some of the older ones are washed out or have a colour cast. I'm slowly editing them with Photoshop; the automatic processing mode wasn't particularly effective so I stopped using it (and had to re-scan a few images that it had over-corrected).

I've also played with digitally restoring some old (c. 1900-1930) prints using the scanner and Photoshop, though I could probably get just as good results by photographing off the tripod.

Thanks for all the advice. The results from the webcam based scanner look to be pretty good for the price of the scanner and may well do for my snaps. For the rest, and there will not be many I will find service to do them for me.

Les