Help with camscanning full film lettering on 35mm film

I'm hoping to get some advice from the community on a scanning challenge I'm working through and couldn't find a solution yet.

I'm trying to scan my 35mm negatives with the full border visible, with the complete border, including all the lettering and frame numbers along the edges. I like having that information preserved in my scans, because I can crop it after if I don't want it. So better having it before archiving my negatives, than not.

I've been using Negative Supply's "full border mask" for the 35mm film carrier, but I've found it still trims off a tiny portion of the lettering on the edges, which is necessary to guide the film throughout the cassete. For my purposes, this isn't quite enough, as I'd really like to capture every last bit of those frame markings and text. I need that because I developed a software that gets images and stitch them side-by-side to create a virtual contact sheet, so the lettering cut is annoying me.

I'm considering trying Negative Supply's 120 film carrier as a workaround, since it would give me more room around the 35mm frame, but as far as I know there's no mask designed for it when used this way. Has anyone here successfully scanned 35mm with the absolute full border intact using camscan? I know that flatbeds can handle this better because you just lay the film against the glass, but I'd like to keep using my camscan because I scan using a GFX 100S (which is totally overkill for the task, LOL).

I am thinking about 3D printing a mask (or even using some thick black paper) with some sort of 35mm guardrails to route the 35mm film, and add on top of the 120 scanning kit.

I really appreciate any wisdom you can share. Thank you so much for taking the time to help any experience you might have. For reference, I attaching an image showing how the lettering being cut affect my contact sheet thing. I would love to have the actual full lettering!

Thanks,
Rafael

You might do some comparison testing both with and without the borders, paying critical attention to image contrast. The light shining through the sprocket holes can sometimes cause slight veiling flare and reduction in contrast, depending on what lens you are using to copy the negatives. Hopefully, that will not be a problem for you, but I would want to rule it out before spending a lot of time digitizing a shoe box full of negatives.

It can be time consuming, but I prefer to edit the metadata for my scanned negatives to include the film type, and other analog details. One advantage of having the film details embedded in the EXIF metadata, is that it becomes searchable on your computer.

Yeah I was going to say something similar to runswithsizzers.

Especially with color negative film, because of its colored base and comparatively low contrast, light coming through anywhere but the picture area can potentially produce flare/abberation on the image. So, if you want to preserve the border you can, but just know that there is no free lunch. Film flatness can suffer with larger border scans as well, unless you are using glass.

I've found that my Essential Film Holder borderless 35mm mask only holds it flat enough to get corner sharpness around f/10-f/11 when making 7000-long pixel digitizations. f/8 gives me sharpness across on about 90% of the frame, but not near the long edges. Any glassless scanning solution is going to be similar, especially if it shows borders. If you only need low to medium resolution, it may not matter to you.

Yeah, I use the Negative Supply stuff, they do a good job on getting the film lettering, but it cuts a tiny bit of it, for example:

Without a glass film holder, the quality of completely full frame scans will likely vary from roll to roll due to film flatness challenges.

runswithsizzers said:

You might do some comparison testing both with and without the borders, paying critical attention to image contrast. The light shining through the sprocket holes can sometimes cause slight veiling flare and reduction in contrast, depending on what lens you are using to copy the negatives. Hopefully, that will not be a problem for you, but I would want to rule it out before spending a lot of time digitizing a shoe box full of negatives.

It can be time consuming, but I prefer to edit the metadata for my scanned negatives to include the film type, and other analog details. One advantage of having the film details embedded in the EXIF metadata, is that it becomes searchable on your computer.

Click to expand...

Yes, I do that too, and trimming out the border when scanning would let me getting the lens way closer to the actual photo, I'm spending pixels by doing that (especially because of aspect ratio). But I find it so cool to have the borders!
When converting with NLP, I use the border buffer option to have the borders outside the analysis, and I usually profile from one shot and replicate to all others, I use the lettering on the border color as that "color target" aspect too.

Forgot to mention. You can buy anti-newton glass in various sizes from optical manufacturers (or take them from old slide mounts). I bought mine from Knight Optical. You can tape your own custom mask to the glass. I like thin plastic cut with a razor for this purpose. The hard part is positioning your negative exactly right in relation to the mask and keeping it there.

As @MattKing said, you will need a glass holder or you will have problems with flatness. And when you have a glass holder you will have problems with dust and slow throughput.

No free lunch, I'm afraid.

A piece of ANR glass over the negative should do the trick.

RafLopes said:

When converting with NLP, I use the border buffer option to have the borders outside the analysis,

Click to expand...

Using NLP's "border buffer" setting is a good way to exclude the influence of the bright sprocket holes from affecting NLP's processing -- but it will not prevent glare/flair within the lens. Today's modern coating are amazing, and if you are using a Fuji lens on your GFX, Fuji coatings are among the best. Still, I would not assume the glare from the sprocket holes are not decreasing the quality of my scans without doing some testing to prove it.