Digitizing Negatives with a Digital Camera Basic Question

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Paul-H

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Hi all

Hopefully this will be a quick question

When Digitizing Negatives using a digital camera which way up do you have to negatives for the best results, film base up or emulsion side up.

Base up gives an image the correct way around but you are focussing on the base not the emulsion

Emulsion up gives a flipped image (Easy to fix in Photoshop) and you focus on the films emulsion so no distortion or degradation through the base layer.

Logic tels me Emulsion side up, but is that a correct assumption.

Thanks for any help with this.

Paul
 
I've found I can't see the difference.
Emulsion side up is recommended but I've tried both using various films and now just shoot with emulsion side down as it saves me having to flip later.

This is what Neg Lab Pro says.....

  1. Shoot with the emulsion (matte) side of film facing towards the camera if you can (it’s less reflective and less likely to catch the light reflecting back from your camera/lens). You can then just flip the image during editing later.
Try it for yourself and see what you think.

Paul
 
Kiwi Paul said:
I've found I can't see the difference.
Emulsion side up is recommended but I've tried both using various films and now just shoot with emulsion side down as it saves me having to flip later.

This is what Neg Lab Pro says.....

  1. Shoot with the emulsion (matte) side of film facing towards the camera if you can (it’s less reflective and less likely to catch the light reflecting back from your camera/lens). You can then just flip the image during editing later.
Try it for yourself and see what you think.

Paul
Click to expand...
That makes perfect sense to me but I've seen the opposite advice in a few places.

I'm about to start digitising some old slides I have so I'll experiment a bit before I get stuck into large numbers :)
 
I've tried both too (on 35mm and 120) and can't say I've noticed a difference.

I always do it in a dimly lit room with no overhead lights though - I should imagine an overhead light may cause problems.
 
Well I'll be using a Canon Slide Copier attachment which has a bellows to keep out stray light (for the 35mm slides and negs) but will be doing 6 x 6 also so may need a different solution for those
 
Paul-H said:
Hi all

Hopefully this will be a quick question

When Digitizing Negatives using a digital camera which way up do you have to negatives for the best results, film base up or emulsion side up.

Base up gives an image the correct way around but you are focussing on the base not the emulsion

Emulsion up gives a flipped image (Easy to fix in Photoshop) and you focus on the films emulsion so no distortion or degradation through the base layer.

Logic tels me Emulsion side up, but is that a correct assumption.

Thanks for any help with this.

Paul
Click to expand...
No matter which way you orient the negative, NEVER focus on the film base!
 
Paul-H said:
With the film base facing up how do you avoid focusing on it ?
Click to expand...
I've never had any issues with focus, I set my camera with macro lens to auto focus and it focuses just fine.
I've read where you should manual focus on the grain but I've never been able to do that. I've manual focuses on the negative but found auto focus works just as well and is a lot easier and quicker, all my scans are in focus.
 
I suspect even if quite a wide aperture was used depth of field although shallow would still be deeper than the film thickness, so autofocus should be enough regardless of which way around the film was.

Will have a practice and see if it makes any difference shooting with base up or emulsion up.

Will post back with the results if I find any difference.

Paul
 
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