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old negatives to disc

PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 2:37 pm
by Big Red
I was just wondering how you go about scanning old negatives [not slides] and putting them on to disc ?

or is it better to scan the old 6 x 4 prints ?

these are from 1980 ish and are colour.

Re: old negatives to disc

PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 2:56 pm
by Antsl
For the hell of it.. see if you can borrow a slide copier with a mount that will let you fold film strips in it... then photograph the negatives, import them into Photoshop, invert the files and then apply curves to it using the highlight, shadow and neutral eyedropper tools. It will probably be quicker than scanning all those negatives ... assuming that you have a lot of them. My advice would be then to scan just the images that you really feel compelled to produce at a larger size sometime. :P Should mean less work for you. Cheers, A

Re: old negatives to disc

PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 2:57 pm
by ATJ
Shane,

If you have access to a film scanner or a flatbed scanner capable of scanning negs (like the Epson V700), you will be able to get better quality from the negs because the "orginals" won't already be "copies". That said, it may be more difficult to get accurate colours etc. from the negs, although having the prints available will certainly help.

If you only have a flatbed scanner, then scanning the prints is the only alternative.

Re: old negatives to disc

PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 3:33 pm
by rcg
Or check out what it would cost you to get your local lab to do it that way it's no hassle to you. We just charge the cost of the CDs at the mini lab i work at

Re: old negatives to disc

PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 3:54 pm
by big pix
send then down and I will do them........ but at a price....... you will end up with 70meg Tiff files. if the quality of the negs are good you will be able to do enlargements from the digital files....... have just finished 200+ for a client, negs and transparencys...... I was amazed at the quality of the digital files I was getting.....

Re: old negatives to disc

PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 8:11 pm
by Big Red
i dont even know where they are but didn't know if you could save them to disc or not.

will have to go through them and see if any snapshots are worth looking at.

old girlfriends, cars, bikes etc

Re: old negatives to disc

PostPosted: Thu Feb 28, 2008 10:55 pm
by big pix
I have just saved and retouched some very early 1900's B&W negs for a client....... cars and bikes are a must to save...... old girl friends I may do for free....... depends :shock: :wink: