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- Name
- Neil
- Edit My Images
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Mods, dont really know which section this should go in, so please feel free to move it to the appropriate section.
I was recently gifted a large collection of glass plate and large format negatives from the late 1940's and 50's of steam trains both here in the UK and in Africa, where the original photographer had served his national service.
I was presented with the problem of how could I see the images, I have a 35mm Nikon Coolscan but clearly that was no use. A large format negative scanner was going to be prohibitively expensive and I wasnt up for replacing my desktop scanner for one job.
So, as google is your friend, I set about looking for a solution, and many suggested snapping the negs with my DSLR and then reversing the images on the computer.
Tried that with very limited success.....
THEN.... brainwave.
Nipped down to the local art shop and bought a small light box for £20 to light the negs up.
THEN.... and this is the neat bit
Took out my Nokia N97 phone, set the inbuilt camera into negative mode and voila I could see the images perfectly.
Now not all camera phones have this facility but the Nokias of the last couple of years seem to.
Although not the perfect solution it did allow us to look through all 300+ negs for any hidden gems that we could then have hand printed. I even printed a couple of the scans to 10x8 and they were very acceptable.
I was recently gifted a large collection of glass plate and large format negatives from the late 1940's and 50's of steam trains both here in the UK and in Africa, where the original photographer had served his national service.
I was presented with the problem of how could I see the images, I have a 35mm Nikon Coolscan but clearly that was no use. A large format negative scanner was going to be prohibitively expensive and I wasnt up for replacing my desktop scanner for one job.
So, as google is your friend, I set about looking for a solution, and many suggested snapping the negs with my DSLR and then reversing the images on the computer.
Tried that with very limited success.....
THEN.... brainwave.
Nipped down to the local art shop and bought a small light box for £20 to light the negs up.
THEN.... and this is the neat bit
Took out my Nokia N97 phone, set the inbuilt camera into negative mode and voila I could see the images perfectly.
Now not all camera phones have this facility but the Nokias of the last couple of years seem to.
Although not the perfect solution it did allow us to look through all 300+ negs for any hidden gems that we could then have hand printed. I even printed a couple of the scans to 10x8 and they were very acceptable.