Negative Scanner advice needed

[Maddie2]

Hello all. I have a 100s of old photo negatives - 110, 126, 35mm from over the years. Some mine, some from my parents. Would guess they range from the mid 1970s until basic digital cameras. None of them are professional - just snap and shoot. Simple.

I am looking for advice as I'd like to purchase a negative scanner to be able to view and digitize these photos. There is potential that I'd like to print some, but I would think I mostly just want jpegs. There is potential that I'd want to take the jpegs and make a photo book, but I won't know that until I've had a chance to see what I really have in this box. I've barely begun to look at them.

I haven't looked much at scanners yet, though after just looking at a few on Amazon, they regularly show up on my Facebook feed and homepage. We do have a desktop scanner, but I want something smaller and something that didn't need to be plugged into a computer all the time. I'd love to be able to view the negatives and scan them on a handheld device away from my computer.

Any advice on what to get, what to avoid, any experience with them would be greatly appreciated. The ones that tend to pop on my feed are in the 150 range. That seems like a decent price range I'd like to stay in. If a scanner that is far better is a little more than that, that's doable too. TIA!

 

[jec6613]

Film scanning is tricky, especially as you get into older stocks. I tried a bunch up to about $500, but ended up picking up a used Nikon Coolscan 5000 (no longer available new). Straight up - most scans you're going to get from inexpensive scanners are very poor for older film. Forget JPEG, they can't even balance out the shifts in the color of the film over the years.

Oh, and if any are slides, those are a special case where there are almost no new scanners that can handle Kodachrome (which is a special case within a special case).

My advice: either pay somebody else to do it (Kodak memory box, The Darkroom, etc) or buy a proper film scanner - used Nikon Coolscan or one of the spendy Epson perfection. Shipping it out will likely give you better results from their Noritsu or Hasselblad scanners, but a desktop scanner gives you more control.

 

[cobright]

1. Take a tablet with a good quality screen and adjustable color temperature.
2. Set negative strips on screen and cover with a very clean piece of glass. Use clips to hold in place.
3. Using tablet as a backlight, set good camera up on tripod and take photo of the whole thing. Best to use a remote. Even better to have camera plugged into computer so the shot can be used right away.

Take that contact sheet pic and apply a negative filter. Use that to determine which negatives to use. Then go take full frame shots of those negatives.

If your not lined up perfect and image is a little skewed, no worries. You know the dimensions of the negative, just correct the perspective in your editing software.

It’s a little more of a hassle but I really get results as good as my dedicated film scanner and this way I can save RAW and make adjustment long after the fact.

 

[_19disnA]

Rather then buy an expensive piece of photographic equipment you will probably only use this one time, I would look around online for companies who can do this for you. 110 is that TINY film format used in very cheap cameras many years ago. The quality was never very good and due to the small frame size, you probably won't be happy with the results no matter which method you use. 126 and 35mm might yield better results and still depends on what you plan to do with the images.

Once they are converted to images, you can more easily review them to see which are worth enlarging or placing in that scrapbook you want to put together. Likely there will be duplicates of some images (similar image from a slightly different position) and others just may not be worth saving. We found a box of old photos from my grandparents and aren't even sure who many of the people in the images are. Perhaps former friends of theirs we never knew. You might have the same experience if the pictures originally belonged to your parents.

 

[boBQuincy]

I use a camera with a close up lens for copying negatives and slides. A north facing window can be a good light source with a piece of vellum to diffuse the light. Hang the negative in front of the vellum.

My camera is set up with a medium telephoto lens (to flatten the field) and a close-up filter to get close enough focus distance to fill the frame. The setup is on a tripod. I use a Canon 500D close up, they are better than the single lens type.

Take the photo then transfer it into your editing program to convert the negative into a positive and remove the orange color cast. Here is an old negative I copied that way: