Scanning Old Film Negatives

[apoptygma]

I have a box of thousands of old negatives.
A recent family situation made me realize that it is high time to digitize them for posterity.
I have looked at a few negative scanners on Amazon, and it looks like a decent one goes for about $100 - $150.
However, I am now very suspect of Amazon's 'customer reviews', and am very critical about them unless I know a lot about the type of product I am buying, which in this case, I do not.
Does anyone have any positive experience with a particular make/model of negative scanner?
I am not looking to spend more than $150, but I will if it means I'll get a superior device.
Looking for a quick and easy process, and good quality digital images.

Thanks for any input you may be able to offer!

 

[glamphotographer]

Affordable mid range scanners

https://petapixel.com/2017/04/20/5-best-film-scanners-200/

If you have the money....Get the Hasselblad, last scanner in the article.

https://www.adorama.com/alc/best-film-scanners-for-photographers

on Amazon.ca I would probably get this one...

https://www.amazon.ca/Kodak-Scanza-...d=1540623211&sr=8-4&keywords=negative+scanner

 

[essguy_]

I had a dedicated film scanner (Minolta Dimage Scandual) but it was no longer being supported so went with various flatbed scanners with negative carriers. I now use the Epson V600 and it is very good (also a good scanner, period). Highly recommend this model. It’s reviewed in one of the links from glamphotographer (I also use Vuescan which is fantastic scanning software - cheap, with lifetime upgrades). I also got a glass plate film holder from betterscanning.com for holding large format negatives and 35 mm negs that had curled (my Dad and Grandfather had cans of old negatives which were stored uncut in the old film canisters so were badly curled.) The standard Epson film holder works well for standard cut negatives that have been stored flat.

Here are some tips - number one being handle the negs with care, by their edges. If they have fingerprints clean (carefully) using a soft micro fibre cloth and some negative cleaner (Eg: Edwal’s anti-stat Negative cleaner). Blow the dust off of the negative (I use a blower brush as compressed air can sometimes be too powerful for old negatives). Remember - Time spent cleaning the negative will save time spent retouching the scan.

If you have thousands of negatives, I would invest in a decent program for storing/cataloging/retouching/adjustment. I have Adobe Lightroom (I subscribe to Adobe CC so get Photoshop and other programs too). I’ve been using Lightroom for years (since the first version came out) and it can do 95% of what I need to do. Fantastic for retouching and adjusting and has a great print module too. Worth the investment if you are serious, but does take a little bit of time to learn.

Now the sober, bad news: Old colour negatives do not store well, especially if they were just put into a box. So be prepared to do a LOT of retouching/adjustments. You will find that little dots of emulsion will be missing (which will create a white spot on the picture) and there will be scratches and other defects. The worst is colour fading. Old colour film is just not that stable, and may have been handled roughly when cut - especially if it was run through a quick lab when originally processed. That is why a good retouching program can come in handy. You’ll need to do a lot of work to restore colour and contrast and retouch defects. The good news is the colour and contrast adjustments are usually uniform across an entire roll of film. Black and white and old slide film tends to hold up much better. I like the imperfect look of old film photo’s and will sometimes scan and print so that the negative edge shows. Old film is kind of like the equivalent of listening to vinyl - there are imperfections, but they add life.

Last tip: You will be spending a lot of time to archive old photos - so with that time investment, make sure that you have good backup and archiving habits. I keep full libraries on my iMac with disk backup and also backup to the cloud automatically. This brings up naming convention when scanning. Think about a naming convention - I use “YYYYMMDD_description” and store in a folder structure of: YYYY/YYYYMM. You’ll see the logic of this after you have scanned a few dozen pictures - after you have done hundreds it makes it a lot easier, especially if you are sharing your archive.

 

[apoptygma]

Thanks for your advice guys.
I saw the Kodak Scanza and was impressed by it, compared to other similar devices at slightly lower prices.
I am not looking for a flatbed scanner... I don't have the space, and if I need to scan full sheets of paper I can do that at work.

My main goal right now is to just digitize these negatives.
essguy... you talk a lot about old negatives needing colour tweaking.
I'm fairly tech-savvy (25 years in IT will do that do you), but I am pretty ignorant in this regard.
Does it matter WHEN the colour correction (if needed) is done?
I mean, can I just scan all negatives as quickly as possible just to get it done, and then colour correct the JPG if/when I need to use that photo?
I don't want to worry about colour-correcting each negative as I scan them in... most of these pictures will never see the light of day... but I must at the very least digitize them all.

 

[daboy]

How about slides.
I have about 500 I would like to move to digital
Thanks in advance for any help

 

[oldjones]

Tagging onto essguy's excellent advice: Speaking as an ex-librarian and father of a digital image librarian, the days when any archive could be considered permanent are behind us, although good ink on quality paper s till holds up better than most other media, and has the advantage of needing no technology other than good light to access the content. But the celluloid, vinyl, acetate and ferrite records, films and tapes we once thought 'permanent' are all degrading. And the rapidity that computers and digital devices and protocols become obsolete and are replaced by newer has hugely exacerbated the technological archiving issue: These days it's not enough to keep the material intact and maintained in good condition, you also have to keep the technology to read and access it, in functioning repair.

Which is why operations like the CBC collect 2" videotape machines and 35mm projectors and Steenbecks. But now that it has come time to deal with archival originals on 5.25" disks (that really were floppy), or their 3.5" plastic-encased offspring, content recognized only by ancient computers that can still run even older OSs, the archivists have begun to realize they could never keep up enough technology to cope. Tape decks for old mainframes? Someone might have those in working order. I still have have old cassettes with programs I wrote and saved in BASIC, and operations like the CBC have shelves full of similar vintage 'puter saves.

Whose machines still burn and read disks — CD or DVD? How do you archive thumb drives and know which one has what material? Does anyone have software for early .avi files? That's all original, historically valuable source material. So now they're batch scanning and converting it all — we hope accurately, meticulously, and with no losses, but as essguy says, you have to inspect every image minutely to know, and no one has that much time or money — to current image and audio standards. At least that's what the contract says is being done.

But in the forseeable future, today's current standards will become yesterday's obsolete ones, and so the plan is to do it all over again. And again. And again. And again. And again … …

Corporations, governments and institutions live forever, apoptygma, so they hafta think about such stuff, even if management practices make it impossible to actually put such schemes into operation. You can hope that the technology you convert your slides to will outlive you, and your grateful heirs will have to do the next round.

But don't count on it.

 

[shakenbake]

How about slides.
I have about 500 I would like to move to digital
Thanks in advance for any help

Depending on what types of slides, they tend to last longer than negatives. Kodachrome was touted and being able to last more than 100 years. Ektachrome lasts easily 100 to 200 years if stored properly.

http://www.wilhelm-research.com/pdf/HW_Book_05_of_20_HiRes_v1c.pdf

 

[essguy_]

Speaking as an ex-librarian and father of a digital image librarian, the days when any archive could be considered permanent are behind us, although good ink on quality paper s till holds up better than most other media, and has the advantage of needing no technology other than good light to access the content. But the celluloid, vinyl, acetate and ferrite records, films and tapes we once thought 'permanent' are all degrading. And the rapidity that computers and digital devices and protocols become obsolete and are replaced by newer has hugely exacerbated the technological archiving issue: These days it's not enough to keep the material intact and maintained in good condition, you also have to keep the technology to read and access it, in functioning repair.

This is very important info for anybody who has spent time preserving memories. Eg: burnable CD/DVD. I used to use these for backup. But their shelf life is VERY limited. If you’ve done this - check them ASAP and backup the data.

Lesson learned - always try to stay current with storage. Now I have files on local disk AND the cloud, with redundancies (eg: I have way too much storage on the cloud but use this for redundancy). But even cloud storage rapidly changes as companies enter the space or change their terms of service - which is why even cloud redundancy is good. And then you need to think about how you will share your archive in easy, presentable formats.

Another example - I have tapes of my kids going back to the day they were born - but as oldjones warned - how do you access these tapes going forward? These are pre-digital so the only way I can get them into my computer is to connect the actual cameras via a conversion cable into my desktop or in the case of older tapes through a VCR. So you need to keep this equipment. My Dad and Grandfather have 8mm and super 8mm film going back to the early 60’s. I don’t even have a projector to watch this, let alone digitize it.

Since I don’t do this for a living, I’ll go through periods where I will convert some stuff on a weekend, then go months before I touch it again. It will be years before I finish, if ever.

apotgygma - you don’t need to adjust your scans immediately BUT - At the very least it is critically important to take the time to name, date (and ideally keyword) your scanned photos in a way that makes future retrieval easy. Do this from the beginning.

Daboy - as shakenbake said, and from my experience slides hold up much better, especially Kodachrome. Also, slides were usually handled with greater care at the processing level since each frame had to be individually mounted. The worst is colour film processed at a 1 hour lab where they printed the photos from the processing machine then cut the roll into strips afterward. These are usually very badly faded and scratched. In these cases, it’s often better to scan the print instead of the negative.

AND SINCE THIS IS TERB... a warning. Keep your personal sex tapes totally separate from your family photo/video Archive. I have nightmare visions of my future grandkids exploring the family archive and stumbling upon something I posted by mistake... “Eewwwww, why is Grandpa sticking his thing in that girl’s mouth...” so be careful about what you’re backing up. LOL!

 

[The Hof]

Lots of good advice around storage / backup etc. Before you get there though you need to scan and that’ll require you establish and follow a scanning routine with really clean habits. Anything like fingerprints and dust will scan in as well and it’s like listening to scratches on your fave record vs CD. With all the native digital pictures that are everywhere now we forget what “scratchy” pictures look like. Even the software that tries to clean up scanning messes doesn’t always get you there. You can’t really replace a solid up front workflow.

Anyway, Make sure you got some decent anti static cloth safe for negatives and one of those air blower cans on hand.

Comparing my scans to my ex’s scans... and the huge amount of effort for her to clean up hers afterwards. Definitely put the effort in to do it right upfront.

 

[Ceiling Cat]

I scanned my 35mm film and slides using a DSLR and a simple film and slide scanner. It is a basic tub that holds the film/slides in front of the lens. I also have older larger format film that I scanned using a home made device, you can find the instructions on how to make your own device on Youtube. If you are only trying to preserve these images for personal use then it is fine, but if you want the absolute best quality then you will have to spend a few bucks on a dedicated film scanner.