Scanning negatives

S

susie

Guest
I have seen in various threads comments about scanning negatives to get them to digital format.
Is this something I can do on a normal scanner or does it need to be done on a special one to make sense of the colours? Its just that I have a drawer full of photos and negatives that I would like to get sorted out at some point, and looking at some of the negatives I have no idea what the pics supposed were of - nothings changed from there to looking at my digital ones :LOL:
 
You can scan photo's, (reflective material) with an ordinary scanner, but you can't scan film with it.
 
Just to add to what Joxby said to scan negatives or slides (both a transparencies) with a flatbed you need a scanner that has a light in the top as well as the bottom of the scanner.
 
If I'm lucky the light in the bottom will still work! No point me making an effort to unpack it though so I can put it somewhere out of the way and forget it now!
 
You can make it work....ghetto style, by having a lightbox above the scan glass with the film inbetween, its a bodgy Heath Robinson fix, and absolutely guaranteed to have you reaching for the diazapam or a shotgun in less than half an hour.
But, If you've nowt else to do...:LOL:


Srsly though, you need a scanner capable of scanning film, if its a flatbed, it will have a light above and below, a carrier to hold the negs in the correct position and suitable film scanning software.
 
It's frustrating enough trying to get images from a DSLR and I'm out of diazapam so I think the scanning will have to wait or go to a place that does it properly, anyway I have only just painted the walls so I don't want to be climbing them and getting dirty boot marks all over them :LOL:
 
If you want a cheap scanner to scan negatives then an Epson V200 is only about £60 and good quality too :)
 
Funnily enough QVC have been advertising a slide and negative scanner today, a very compact looking one too, i think it was about £50ish.
 
Thanks, I've not heard of QVC, but at least I now have some ideas for a combined Xmas present from the family!!
 
QVC is a shopping channel, it,s available on freeview and sky.
 
That explains it then, I rarely watch the normal channels and I don't have sky or freeview :LOL:
 
TG. said:
Funnily enough QVC have been advertising a slide and negative scanner today, a very compact looking one too, i think it was about £50ish.
Click to expand...

Sadly the scanner on offer from QVC will waste your money and time since its resolution is not high enough for prints much above 5x4" and it lacks any of the image enhancement features found on more serious kit. In particular it has no facility in hardware to remove dust spots etc from the scanned images which means that you will have a long job in PP to do this.

It all depends on how many images you will need to scan and to what size you will print the results, the more film you have the more likely it will be that you will need one of the Nikon Coolscans or Minolta Dimages to do a proper job in any reasonable time, these however don't come cheap!
 
Nicos Rex said:
Sadly the scanner on offer from QVC will waste your money and time since its resolution is not high enough for prints much above 5x4" and it lacks any of the image enhancement features found on more serious kit. In particular it has no facility in hardware to remove dust spots etc from the scanned images which means that you will have a long job in PP to do this
Click to expand...


Thanks for pointing that out Nicos, i very nearly bought one of those from QVC a couple of weeks ago and as i don't know much about scanners it would have been a waste of money, i will take a look at the Nikon ones though.


Apologies to Susie for giving wrong advice.
 
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