Scanning Project

[TomNY]

Hi, First post here. I recently completed, after over 10 years and several scanners, in my spare time, scanning my collection of family photographs. My great grandfather was a photographer in the late 1890's so we had a long photographic history starting with him and following through the years. We're not talking art, we're talking family snapshots after great grand-dads stint, which were portraiture. I always bought decent scanners for prints and my last and current scanner is an Epson V600. So after the prints were finally done I decided to try out the few dozen slides I had, both 35mm and 110. I was very pleased with the results so I started experimenting with some negatives in 120 & 35mm and I have to say that, for family snapsots, the results blew me away, I was seeing details that I never knew were there. I have no negatives dating prior to about 1958 so I thought since I have the scanner I'd work my way through the negatives. I don't know how long this will take but I started at the beginning with some 616, 127 and 120 color and monochrome negatives from the 50s and 60s. The monochromes are beautiful and the color held up surprisingly well. Then the family moved to 126 film, the details are good but boy that film from the late 1960s thru late 1970s has faded. In 1977 we moved to 110 and I was actually very pleased with what I was getting (for 110 anyway) from the negs aside from some serious color shifts. Then, like magic, in the 1979 negatives the colors are there, right through the time I thankfully embraced 35mm in 1982. Thereafter they all seem OK. I started shooting 120 in 2003 and those look great. These negatives were stored in less than ideal circumstances, but they didn't spend any time in a hot attic or moist basement or any other extreme. The lions share are 35mm from 82 forward, and, since I work from home I'm able to scan them almost continuously. While it is tedious, the results are gratifying. I know the shortcomings of scanning on a flatbed, but for the quality of my originals, this more than suffices. For the past couple of years when I shoot film (about 10% compared to digital), I have it scanned at the time of processing.

 

[artobest]

Hi, welcome and thanks for the post - sounds like you've got some solid scanning experience under your belt! You might find it interesting to read Digital Restoration from Start to Finish by Ctein - it has lots of useful information about what to do with those faded 60s-70s negs of yours, amongst a whole lot of other stuff.