Scanning Negatives

Hello,

I have been going through my vast collection of old 35mm Negatives which are stored in boxes and in negative storage folders and wondered what the best option would be to get them converted into digital format to be viewed on screen and possibly be projected at my local camera club.

Would I be better off taking several sets of Negatives to my high street photo developer who offer this sort of service or would you suggest that I buy a Negative scanner?

If I go for the Negative scanner option, can you suggest any reasonably priced film scanners?

Best Regards,

Paul

I'd buy a scanner rather then send them to a lab, that way you can pick the best/ be selective without having to pay for them all. Also it sounds like a lot of negatives and I'd be wary of them getting lost.

If it is a lot, I'd be tempted to get a light box big enough to put several strips on and photo them to get an idea of which ones to scan. It takes a while to scan and categorise each one.

I can't help with scanners (I have a very old JS21 which will now be completely out of date), but you need to check it can do negatives an can compensate for the base colour of the film (usually orange-ish).

I can only write about my own experience with film scanning. Some time ago I was in a similar situation to yours, except that my collection of slides and negatives was not all that large. After having done some research I found a Minolta Dimage Scan Elite 5400 in good condition that I purchased. This is a dedicated film scanner for 35mm format, and is very well respected. It ranks among the best 35mm scanners along with the Nikon Coolscan scanners. I have so far only scanned a few hundred slides and negatives, but have found a workflow that suits me. The results that I get are pretty decent. I would suggest that you try to find a Minolta or Nikon Coolscan filmscanner (these can only be found second hand these days), or an Epson Perfection V700/750 flatbed scanner.

Some things to take into consideration:

1. It takes time to learn how to get good results with any film scanner.
2. The Minolta and Nikon film scanners for 35mm film are not in production anymore, and one has to take into consideration compatibility with the latest Windows OS or Mac OS X, if one buys one of these.
3. If the Minolta or Nikon scanners break down, it can possibly be hard to find spare parts.
4. Many medium and large format photographers use the current Epson Perfection V700/750 flatbed scanners. These are very good scanners for 120 film and larger formats, but probably not the best option for 35mm film.
5. What is the target for your scanning? Viewing on a computer screen, or print A3 or lager formats.
6. If your ambition is only to scan an archive from the past, you could buy a good scanner and then sell it when the job is done.

I hope this can be of some help!

Bjørn

You should check out the OpticFilm series of the Plustek. If I know it well they have the highest resolution (7200x7200 dpi) and the highest colour depth (48 bit/pixel) on the market.

Paul - here's a link to a similar thread. There's another couple of links within this thread you mat want to take a look at as well. Hope this helps you.

https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/old-family-photos-34085

In addition to my suggestions above, I would recommend you to do a search on this forum with the word "scanner". You will find so much material/information that you can spend your entire Easter holidays reading about scanning

Bjørn

I started a thread (link) to show how good scanners can be. The problem is that very cheap is fairly poor quality, reasonably cheap is good quality but slow and very expensive is, err, very expensive.

As has been suggested you can do a contact sheet using a flatbed and see which ones are worth scanning. Then either be prepared to spend a long time scanning them with a decent scanner or send them to a lab.

But you would need to discover the quality of scan the lab would do and a good scan will cost you. There is no easy and cheap option!

If it is a lot, I'd be tempted to get a light box big enough to put several strips on and photo them to get an idea of which ones to scan. It takes a while to scan and categorise each one.

My father has a dedicated Minolta film scanner and I've found it easy to get much better results with straight out of the supplied software than I have ever managed to achieve at home with a cheap flatbed scanner and lots of post-processing effort!.

They also have the advantage that you can load up a whole strip of negatives or a number of slides in one go. If you have a lot of film to scan, I'd certainly recommend one of the Mionlta or Nikon options, as it makes it easy to get quite good results for a lot of frames and then with a bit more time and effort, it is possible to achieve really good results on your favourites.

Hello and thank you for responding to my enquiry. With the amounts of negatives I have collected over the years it would probably cost me a fair amount of money to get them scanned in at a photo developer.

I've been looking on auction sites and noticed the Nikon and Minolta film scanners are selling at around £180. I noticed Jessops stocking a Plustek film scanner at about £185 so I might just pop down to Jessops in Manchester to have a look soon.

Best Regards,

Paul

That looks to be a clearance price for Jessops so I'd check to see they have one before you make a special journey. Alternatively (and for a bit less) link

John

I think the main difference (so far as I can tell) between the models is the software you get. Some is good as it improves the quality of the scan. Other included software is not essential if you have something else (Photoshop etc).

#

Totally agreed. I bought an Opticfilm 7500i and it workes excellently. I use it with the superb Vuescan software which has most of the legacy film type profiles included.

I scan at 3600/48bit Tiff instead of 7200 as 7200 was over the top and 400mb files was overkill.

I use Corel photopaint clone tool to get rid of any remaining scratches, and then import into Lightroom to process as I would my digital pics

Any idea of how the Opticfilm compares to a Nikon Collscan V? The Coolscan is quite expensive (and obviously used) and by what i have read it is still considered best in class. But you can get a new Opticfilm for less than half the price of a Coolscan. So I am wondering if there is really a big difference...

I was close to buying a Plustek a few years ago and all the reviews I read suggested it compared very well with the top models for scanning negatives. It fell a little behind with slides because of a lower Dmax rating, which meant it couldn't pick up quite as much detail in the shadows as the best of the rest. Current models are presumably better or at least as good. I wouldn't have hesitated in buying one if I hadn't been distracted (can't remember by what) and negative scanning fell down the priority list.

Al