Converting 35mm negatives to digital

breadandjam

I have a couple of thousand old Black and white negatives that I want to upload to my PC. What's my best option to do this?
I have a HP photosmart 4480 printer/scanner is there anything I can get for the job compatible with that?

Zillah

Photo places have automatic machines that can fly through them. They'll then burn them to CD. Probably pretty cheap too.

DaireQuinlan

Do a search on 'scanning film' or something similar on the forum, this has been discussed many times. There are a couple of different routes you can go down. You can get them scanned, either in some photo place as Zillah mentions, or send them off to some online outfit that'll do them, or you can do them yourself. If you have a lot then you might be best off just dumping them all into a photo place to get low quality scans of the entire pile of them, and then selectively picking which you might want to get good quality scans of.

Doing it yourself is a lot more laborious and potentially more expensive. You'll have to buy a scanner of some description (read the threads for advice) and get up to speed on how to use it effectively. Alternatively places like RuaRed have quite good quality scanners to rent so that's another option.

breadandjam

Thanks for the replies. I'll try getting some of them scanned to see what the quality is like-and the price I'll also price scanner and attachment options. Thanks again

pixelpixel

I seen this last night. You can scan without the need for a computer and it dumps it onto SD card.

ION All In One 7 x 5" Photo, Negative & Slide Scanner with 2GB SD Card

breadandjam

Thanks that looks interesting

pixelpixel

breadandjam wrote: »

Thanks that looks interesting

Its really just a camera that takes a picture. I have seen them before without the photo part on them. Last night it showed the menu system and the options for scanning was 5MB or 10MB and it was instant. I am sure you can get other brands that do the same thing.

DaireQuinlan

breadandjam wrote: »

Thanks that looks interesting

They're pretty appalling quality wise though. They pop up all over the place under a number of slightlyyy different designs and different brands. A cheap canon flatbed with a transparency adapter wouldn't be the best either, but it would be considerably better than one of those piles of junk.

ClickityClick

I got a veho VFS-002 slide and negative scanner as a gift but all I'm getting are negative images!!!! can't figure out how to transfer them to positive. Must have a look around and find a place that will scan all my negs, as mentioned in other posts. This thing is really fiddley and time-consuming, with no positive results.

ClickityClick

I got a veho slide and neg scanner as a gift, but can't figure out how to turn my negatives into positive images. Must have a look around for someplace that will scan all my negs at a reasonable cost. This thing is fiddley and tiresome.

breadandjam

ClickityClick wrote: »

I got a veho slide and neg scanner as a gift, but can't figure out how to turn my negatives into positive images. Must have a look around for someplace that will scan all my negs at a reasonable cost. This thing is fiddley and tiresome.

When you put them on your PC open them in whatever graphics programme you have and then use invert colours that will givee you a positive.

Buckz

I have about 15 years of slides to scan, and have tried a selection of unsuccessful ways to convert them, include ION scanner (quick but soft) slide duplicator (soft and contrasty,) Microtek scanner (better but slow) access to an Epson flatbed with slide attachment, (really slow, but acceptable quality, but access was limited- should've bought one of these years ago)What has Ruared got for hire?

Heebie

Have you brought a sample batch to your local photolab? (I'd recommend someplace with a Fuji Frontier system.. I really prefer the scanners.)

They should be able to do it a lot more quickly than you can, and it should certainly be a reasonable result.

If you're patient & would really rather do it yourself.. then buy an Epson scanner with the slide attachment. I can scan 4 at a go. If the exposures on them are all good, you could add some software like Silverfast to pretty much automate everything but changing the slides.

aidanic

One of our customers (based in NZ) used Scancafe for a very large batch of neg, slides and photos. He sent them a box of stuff, and then you can view the results online. You can "reject" up to 20% of scans you don't want. He sent me a full res scan of a few photos, and they are pretty good, done on a Nikon Coolscan 9000.

Heebie

The Coolscan 9000 is an absolutely killer scanner. If their price is reasonable..and you can get a guarantee on the condition on arrival of your originals, it could very well be worth looking at. They should be able to do up to like 4,000dpi at the size of the original an a 9000!

aidanic wrote: »

One of our customers (based in NZ) used Scancafe for a very large batch of neg, slides and photos. He sent them a box of stuff, and then you can view the results online. You can "reject" up to 20% of scans you don't want. He sent me a full res scan of a few photos, and they are pretty good, done on a Nikon Coolscan 9000.