Converting old negatives to digital?

jester77

I hope this is the right place for this.

I've alot of old pictures that I would like to convert into digital format for storage on a media server so I can share with family and friends. What is the best way to go about doing this?

I went into a local camera shop beside me but he quoted me 25c per picture and €5 for each CD used. I thought this sounded a little steep or maybe it's not? What is the process involved in this? I would have thought it was just a matter of putting the negative into some sort of scanner that would create the digital image. Sorry for my ignorance

Also if I do get this done do I get to specify the size of the images or is this determined by the negative quality? And what can I expect the end result to look like (taking a modern point and click digital camera as a rough guide)? Would it be of similar quality?

Thanks!

DaireQuinlan

If you just want them to put online then the best bet would probably be to get a set of prints made and then scan them in on some cheap flatbed scanner. If you're looking for reasonably good archive quality, or of sufficient quality to get prints made from them then a dedicated film scanner is your best bet. Trouble is, they're expensive.

Ask what procedure the guys in the camera shop use. Apparently those fuji frontier digital printers that are used all over the place can do pretty reasonable scans of 35mm (roughly 3000 dpi or something IIRC) which should be enough. If you want to go the home route, It'll cost you. I recently bought a Nikon Coolscan V which does pretty good scans with zero noise and good colour reproduction. The resolution (more than 4000x5000) is good enough that 400 asa film grain is actually the limiting factor. I'm looking forward to trying it on 100 or 50 asa slide next...

D.

joolsveer

Over the last year or so I engaged in a similar exercise. I collected prints and negatives I could from my family and digitised them. I decided to buy an Epson flat bed scanner which would also scan negatives up to 5X4 inch size. The job was very tedious and I was not always happy with the resulting quality. Some of the negatives were scratched and dirty and did not scan well. A more high end scanner than I had bought would have infra red scratch removal which would speed up the process.

In short I think that 25 cents per negative is not a bad price. Where did you get this price?

jester77

Thanks! Didn't realise you could buy a scanner for negatives, that's good to know. Will look into this, family and friends would also be interested so might be cost efficient to go this way.

I live in Germany, that price was from a shop in Hamburg that use kodak equipment. Might do a trial run with them to see what the quality is like.

Edit: Forgot to ask. What is the scanning process like from negative to digital using the scanner? Is it just as simple as scanning and the software converting or is there alot of optimisation work involved afterwards to get the picture to look good?

lensman

jester77 wrote:

Thanks! Didn't realise you could buy a scanner for negatives, that's good to know. Will look into this, family and friends would also be interested so might be cost efficient to go this way.

I live in Germany, that price was from a shop in Hamburg that use kodak equipment. Might do a trial run with them to see what the quality is like.

Edit: Forgot to ask. What is the scanning process like from negative to digital using the scanner? Is it just as simple as scanning and the software converting or is there alot of optimisation work involved afterwards to get the picture to look good?

It's all very simple these days, if you have a lot of different formats to scan ie: photos, negs, slides you should consider buying a scanner that can cope with it see here
good luck

jester77

Thanks everyone, think I will start reading up on the scanners. Didn't realise it was so straight-forward and the prices for the scanners seem reasonable especially when you take what it would cost to get a large batch converted in a shop! Looks like I will go this route.

Alun

Like others have said, if you have a scanner it is a fairly straightforward process. It is however mind numbingly tedious and boring if you have to do mich more than a film or two at one sitting. Believe me, once you've done a couple of hundred scans, you'll start to think that €0.25 per negative is cheap at twice the price!

DaireQuinlan

Alun wrote:

Like others have said, if you have a scanner it is a fairly straightforward process. It is however mind numbingly tedious and boring if you have to do mich more than a film or two at one sitting. Believe me, once you've done a couple of hundred scans, you'll start to think that €0.25 per negative is cheap at twice the price!

This is very true It all boils down to what you think your time is worth I guess ! I only ever get about 2 or 3 pictures I actually like from any roll of film, which I then scan in and obsess over before sending it off to get printed so the nikon V suits me just fine. The OP could do worse than reading that Ken Rockwell piece on film scanners ... http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/scanrex.htm

He's a staunch advocate of the epson 4990. IIRC you can load up an entire roll of 24 onto the flatbed of the 4990 and scan them all in one batch. Might just be the thing.

D.

JMcL

if you have a lot to do, a scanner that will cope with multiple scans simultaneously like the Epson is a must. Also, automated dirt/scratch repair (ICE) will save you a lot of time, bearing in mind what Ken Rockwell says in that article about B&W film etc (can't confirm this as I've never tried it)

I can confirm that it's tedious though!

fatladysang

Can anyone send me in the right direction to have my slides put on CD. I don't mind paying for the service .There are loads of companys on the net but I can't find any in Ireland.

ryanoj

Hi folks, I recently bought an Epson V100 scanner(109 in Dixons) and it does a decent job of scanning negatives, positives & slides. It has dust removal, colour correction etc. It can scan at 3200 dpi.

Dimy

I just bought a Canon 8400F scanner for my dad last week as he wanted to scan his old slides. It also scans negatives both 35mm and 120mm. It comes with Photoshop Elements 2.0 so if you don't have an image editor yet this scanner also gives you one of the best picture editing software available. I bought it for 140 euro in Holland, so I imagine prices in Germany should be similar. I've seen it in action and am pretty impressed with the results.

Fionn

i have a Canon 8400F scanner and it's the biz for photos negs and slides and all that very nice machine has retouching softwarer too and elements etc.

pretty good results from it!!