Scanning old photos (negatives and slides)

[koraks]

I've never used a flatbed scanner for film, but from what I read, the quality from 135 film may tend more toward "fair" and not so much "great"?

I use a flatbed for film regularly, mostly 35mm. "Fair" and "great" are of course subjective assessments. I've also scanned lots of family archive stuff from the 1960s-1990s and found the flatbed perfectly adequate for the job.
The main advantage of a flatbed like the old 4990 I use is that I can slap a bunch of slides/negatives on it, then scan the entire surface area in one go and archive if it that way. This results in rather big (BIG!) files which can be split out later on if so desired (I usually don't bother until/unless I need a frame here or there).

I usually scan mounted slides by tiling them directly onto the glass. Strips of film go into the Epson film holders. I scan everything as positive (16 bit/channel) with no adjustments in the scanning software. I then either store as scanned so I can do adjustments at a later stage, or I invert/color balance it and ensure no shadows or highlights are clipped and then store away as viewable positive.

This is what a 35mm HP5+ frame looks like when digitized with this scanner:

This is a 100% crop at 2400dpi from the same frame with some mild sharpening applied:

Here's a late 1960s color slide from the family archive, scanned in the way described above:

I only scanned this at 1200dpi (not really worth the bother going higher); 100%, with the same sharpening applied as above:

For me, this is perfectly adequate.

Camera scanning is also a possibility, but I don't think it's quite as swift as scanning in the way I described above.
I've also used a dedicated film scanner for 35mm negative, but such scanners are pricey (if you want them to be any good), particularly so if you also need to handle 120 film, and the process is pretty darn slow because you're limited to scanning on a frame-by-frame basis.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Just remember if you choose to undertake this yourself you will need to carefully clean all your negatives, slides and prints preferably before scanning, although with a bit more effort, they can be cleaned in post. Either way, a time-consuming and detail-oriented chore.

Epsonscan on an Epson flat bed like a V600 or V850 has ICE that spots out automatically. Not sure how and if that would work with a camera scan setup.

 

[Romanko]

Not sure how and if that would work with a camera scan setup.

It won't work as it requires an infra-red sensitive channel for ICE.

 

[_T_]

I hope your intention is not to scan the film and then dispose of it.

In 100 years your family could still be able to see their ancestors photos if you save the film. If all you keep are the digital files they will cease to exist likely within your lifetime

 

[Pieter12]

Epsonscan on an Epson flat bed like a V600 or V850 has ICE that spots out automatically. Not sure how and if that would work with a camera scan setup.

My V600 scanner cannot implement ICE with the current Mac OS.

 

[Pieter12]

I hope your intention is not to scan the film and then dispose of it.

In 100 years your family could still be able to see their ancestors photos if you save the film. If all you keep are the digital files they will cease to exist likely within your lifetime

Film deteriorates too if not properly fixed and stored.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

My V600 scanner cannot implement ICE with the current Mac OS.

I run Epsonscan on a Windows 11 computer which allows ICE. Apple uses a different Epsonscan 2 program. I don't know why Epsonscan 2 doesn't do ICE like Epsonscan.

 

[Les Sarile]

Also,

It's a few hundred. Mostly 35mm but some 120 as well and I;m just going to keep them on a stick

Also, mostly 35mm or MF as well as mostly slides or color negatives?

If mostly 35mm and you have a smartphone then I would suggest those supercheap film holder that uses your phone and free app to get a baseline. It will be the cheapest and most basic and just maybe you may find the results good enough. If not good enough then the next thing to try is using a scan service. Send a couple or few that you've tried and see if the results improve.

If your volume is in the low side of hundreds I don't think it's worth the time and effort to buy anything over a $100 unless you want to get into it specially when scanning color negatives.

I've not tried their service but check into ScanCafe.com. Their prices are enticing and looks like you have the option of having them scan with Nikon Coolscans.

 

[wiltw]

While digital cameras can photograph slides or prints, the color negative is particularly challenging to do with a digital camera due to the orangish mask color of the film. Software is available which permits correction of the color to a nice looking image, but simply using postprocessing tools found in software like PaintShop or Photoshop does a substandard conversion.
This was an attempt by me to use camera to digital a color neg, then use PaintShop color inversion (note: the image is inverted because I did not mirror the image during postprocessing)

And this was using the software for my flatbed scanner (Canon 8800F) in its color neg scan mode...much nicer outcome, close to the print in quality,

 

[Les Sarile]

While digital cameras can photograph slides or prints, the color negative is particularly challenging to do with a digital camera due to the orangish mask color of the film. Software is available which permits correction of the color to a nice looking image, but simply using postprocessing tools found in software like PaintShop or Photoshop does a substandard conversion.
This was an attempt by me to use camera to digital a color neg, then use PaintShop color inversion (note: the image is inverted because I did not mirror the image during postprocessing)


And this was using the software for my flatbed scanner (Canon 8800F) in its color neg scan mode...much nicer outcome, close to the print in quality,

My own attempts have also not been as good as scans from my scanner specifically with color negatives conversions. I'm hoping AI will be able to greatly simplify that as well as dust and scratch removal which is not very good yet.

 

[bud007]

A couple of decades ago, I had a darkroom going in my basement, and solicited my parents, grand parents and aunts and uncles that I wanted their negatives. It didn't result in much and the world turned digital and the darkroom went dark. But my dad apparently heard me, as when I was cleaning out their house recently after he had passed away... I found lots of old negatives he had acquired from family and saved for me. I have an old Nikon Coolscan 8000 scanner I picked up long ago as a way of transitioning to digital, so have been using it to go through all those old negatives. I put them up on Smugmug and share that with all my cousins and it's been a pretty fun process. My oldest grandchild just started kindergarten, so I sent him a copy of my pic from my first day of kindergarten, which I just came across in a old box. I had to come up with a custom holder for the Coolscan because some of these negatives are 616, so wider than the 85mm or so that any of the stock holders can handle.

One thing that gets painfully obvious, is how relatively poor the negative quality of the retail cameras got when color when mainstream in the late 60's - my parents went from medium format folders and an Argus C3 to a Kodak instamatic(126 film), and then an Kodak Instamatic 192 (110 film).

To date, I've just been looking through them and cherry picking and scanning anything that looks interesting. My plan is to get them all sleeved and numbered, then do contact prints of those sleeved pages with a flatbed, get those contact prints posted so i or someone else wants a specific scan, I can find the negative and do it. Don't think there's anyway I can scan them all individually. I guess I could send them out to a service once I get them organized, but, really, I don't think I need scans of all of them anyway.

Here's a neg from an unknown camera, likely a brownie or a folder, 120 or 620 film... my mom at age 4, 1941, on the farm where she grew up...





For comparison, here's something thirty years later, taken from almost the same spot, my parents and grandfather and my aunt... Instamatic 126 film...



Funny that so many of the family group photos are taken from the same spot over the decades... I think the routine was to take a pic as people were leaving after a visit - this spot is close to where people would park on the farm.

 

[Sirius Glass]

A couple of decades ago, I had a darkroom going in my basement, and solicited my parents, grand parents and aunts and uncles that I wanted their negatives. It didn't result in much and the world turned digital and the darkroom went dark. But my dad apparently heard me, as when I was cleaning out their house recently after he had passed away... I found lots of old negatives he had acquired from family and saved for me. I have an old Nikon Coolscan 8000 scanner I picked up long ago as a way of transitioning to digital, so have been using it to go through all those old negatives. I put them up on Smugmug and share that with all my cousins and it's been a pretty fun process. My oldest grandchild just started kindergarten, so I sent him a copy of my pic from my first day of kindergarten, which I just came across in a old box. I had to come up with a custom holder for the Coolscan because some of these negatives are 616, so wider than the 85mm or so that any of the stock holders can handle.

One thing that gets painfully obvious, is how relatively poor the negative quality of the retail cameras got when color when mainstream in the late 60's - my parents went from medium format folders and an Argus C3 to a Kodak instamatic(126 film), and then an Kodak Instamatic 192 (110 film).

To date, I've just been looking through them and cherry picking and scanning anything that looks interesting. My plan is to get them all sleeved and numbered, then do contact prints of those sleeved pages with a flatbed, get those contact prints posted so i or someone else wants a specific scan, I can find the negative and do it. Don't think there's anyway I can scan them all individually. I guess I could send them out to a service once I get them organized, but, really, I don't think I need scans of all of them anyway.

Here's a neg from an unknown camera, likely a brownie or a folder, 120 or 620 film... my mom at age 4, 1941, on the farm where she grew up...


View attachment 379777


For comparison, here's something thirty years later, taken from almost the same spot, my parents and grandfather and my aunt... Instamatic 126 film...

View attachment 379778

Funny that so many of the family group photos are taken from the same spot over the decades... I think the routine was to take a pic as people were leaving after a visit - this spot is close to where people would park on the farm.

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